Date With A Porn Star...

Curiosity killed the cat. Or maybe it was a raccoon. I saw dozens of dead raccoons, roadkill along I-80, like the official roadkill of the Midwest.

I had to check out this Maid-Rite thing. I had a sadistic fascination with anything as bizarre and porno-esque as a "loose meat sandwich" and I was in post-race repletion mode, so why not?

Conveniently, as I needed to stop for gas in Grimes, Iowa, there happened to be a Maid Rite place just behind the gas station off the exit.

I ordered a basic Maid-Rite basket, just a plain sandwich and fries, and a drink. They give you a spoon, too, in case you have some stray loose meat that falls out of the bun. I was impressed by the fact that they had hand sanitizer by the register and by the trash cans. How often do you see that in restaurants? Actually they should have that in all restaurants, and all hotel rooms for housekeeping staff to use between rooms. What a concept.

Anyway the plain old boring Maid-Rite sandwich wasn't too bad, it wasn't exciting or anything, but it was palatable. And a small, reasonably sized dose of French fries tasted pretty good too at that time.

The other thing was the portions were like normal food, not supersized like everything else in the world. I drank the iced tea for the caffeine, and hit the road again. I did a few laps around the parking lot before leaving, it felt so good to walk the stiffness off.

I lucked out again, the wind shifted yesterday from east to west, so I had a tailwind going home too! Nice for saving money on gas, and it made the trip a bit faster.

After a while I needed to stop again at a rest area just to walk and stretch out my legs. So I did that.









And then half an hour later I was starving again. I stopped in Kearney and for some reason I was craving Taco Bell, so I found one, and ordered one taco supreme and some beans, and that wasn't enough so I went back and ordered two more tacos. There I was, living out my Taco Bell fantasy.

Before I got back on the road, I felt sorry for Dennis tonight, after all this horrible road food.

I stopped one last time for gas and being hungry again, in Sidney, Nebraska. This time it was a McDonald's salad.

Then a couple of hours later I was home, with a beautiful sunset over the mountains.

It was so nice to be home to Dennis and the girls, I got the dramatic greeting from the Buffaloes, and we took them for a walk around the block to help me stretch my legs.

I feel pretty good despite the long hours on the road, I'm sure Tuesday I will be sore from sitting in the car, and I cannot wait to get back to eating salads and my other normal foods.

Maybe this would be a good time to get that colonoscopy over with...

Nebraska: Bug Guts, Road Work & Mudflap Chicks

The only thing about going to a race in Iowa when you live in Colorado is that you have to drive, unless you feel like paying lots of money for an airline ticket and rental car. I'm in a low budget mode this year, trying to recharge the savings account for future adventure runs.

The girls were not very happy to see me leave. Iris knew about the piles of mom's stuff, and insisted I take her for a run in the morning before I left. Isabelle refused to go, she stayed on the floor and pouted.

I left around 10 am and drove north to Cheyenne on I-25 instead of taking the back roads to Sterling and Julesburg.

From Cheyenne I turned east onto I-80 for the long haul across Nebraska and Iowa. It was a cloudy morning and early afternoon, the sun didn't come out until mid-afternoon when I was in central Nebraska, just in time for it to be warm and humid. Might as well do my humidity traning now, since that's what race conditions will be like. It didn't feel bad, even though it was warm enough that I wanted to turn on the A/C. I resisted. Gas is expensive enough,even though it's nearly 50 cents a gallon cheaper in some places in Nebraska than it is at home.

I've driven across Nebraska once, a long time ago, in the last century, to meet a friend in Omaha for a girls' weekend, because it was halfway for both of us. My memories from that trip include the Omaha zoo (very cool) and an encounter in the hotel lobby with a Promise Keepers convention (not so very cool). And since then I've never been back, except driving through parts of northwestern Nebraska on my way to the Black Hills. What's in Nebraska?

Well, they have windmills, new and old.

They have a lot of farmland with trees scattered throughout. It gets greener as you go east.

The scenery really wasn't that bad- I wasn't bored. There's plenty to look at, I found it pretty. I like landscapes with big open skies and space, with a few scattered trees.

They have big rivers, like the Platte.














Each town in central Nebraska has it's own grain elevator with the name of the town painted on it in big red letters.

They have nice rest areas with updated clean restrooms. I took a picture inside the bathroom, I was so impressed. They had wood planks on the ceiling!

What else does Nebraska have? They have big bugs that go SPLAT! on your windshield, leaving stars of yellow guts. They have old Pony Express stations.

And they have mudflap chicks.















And once you get east of Grand Island, you start to see some hills.

The worst thing about it was the road construction, across the entire state. Most of I-80 was a one lane road in each direction, and with all the semi trailers and traffic, it was annoying. I made decent time, but it would have been a much faster trip if the roads weren't narrowed to one lane. It's 450 miles from one end of the state to the other end on I-80, and I'd guess that 400 of it was under construction.

There's this bridge over the Interstate at Kearney. I didn't stop to check it out. I was already over the road work. By then I was just interested in making a beeline for Omaha.

When I got to Omaha, during rush hour, it really wasn't all that rushed. I had made reservations at a hotel in downtown Omaha for the first night, which was a good call. I got a nice room that was inexpensive and I was too tired to drive anywhere, ordered food delivered to the room from a Chinese restaurant and I got an incredible meal, it was hot when it arrived, with tons of veggies cooked just right, for less than $10 including tip. Holy crap you don't find those things in too many places!

Onward to Iowa, seeking truth...