Ames, IA to Omaha, NE (September 15)

Distance covered today: 183 miles

Distance covered total: 1,734 miles

Estimated mileage remaining: 1,766 miles (50% left to go)

“On a long and lonesome highway, east of Omaha…”

-Bob Seger, Turn the Page

Originally, I was only going to employ the above Bob Seger quote in reference to my geographic location, as this next leg of the trip involved taking roads that matched the same description.

But then, once the song’s opening line danced across my mind, it was inevitably followed by those soul-searching sax riffs that are the ballad’s distinguishing feature.  Pretty soon, I was reliving the song in its entirety and realized that Bob’s raspy howl really resonated with my new life as a nomadic waif of the road.

So instead of boring you with a play-by-play description of me rolling slowly through 183 miles of cornfields, I’m going to exercise a little artistic license and expound upon the relevance of a few select lines from Turn the Page.

“You feel the eyes upon you as you’re shakin’ off the cold”

Man, was it cold…

I woke up to find that the seat of my scooter had been vandalized.  It was scarred with odd markings that had not been there the night before.  But this wasn’t the work of some minor league neighborhood delinquent- this was a sign of much graver danger.

It was the handiwork of the infamous Jack Frost, evidently out of the joint and back to terrorize the heartland earlier than expected.  Only halfway through September, and not even halfway to my destination, and I found myself facing 34-degree temperatures with the frost to prove it.  I just hoped that the cold-hearted Frost wouldn’t break his parole and stalk me for the remainder of my trip (a chilling prospect, indeed).

After shivering through yesterday’s frigid temperatures (which were downright balmy by comparison), I considered staying put in Ames for another day to wait for warmer weather to return.  This stall tactic would give me a chance to go back to the slaughterhouse and tackle The Sloppy Southerner.  But if the slaughterhouse had taught me anything, it was that I had entered the part of the country where nothin’ comes easy- including your heart’s ability to easily pump your blood through your veins.  In the bigger picture though, this meant that I just had to bite the bullet and hop in the saddle to head down the old dusty (or in this case, frosty) trail to Omaha, like hundreds of road-weary cowboys before me.

Summoning all hands to the front, I donned practically all of my clothing in a desperate effort to brave the cold (heaping five thin layers on my upper body and wearing basketball shorts under my pants).

Iowa and corn. Pretty much says it all, right here.

 

“You can listen to the engine moanin’ out its one-note song…

But your thoughts will soon be wandering the way they always do

When you’re riding sixteen hours and there’s nothing else to do”

OK, so I didn’t quite ride for sixteen hours, but these lines really capture the loneliness and solitude of long-distance scooting.  At this point, I was well accustomed to having only a couple stray thoughts rattling around in my head to keep me company, but the complete lack of stimuli between Ames and Omaha led to an even more introspective day than usual.  Farm after farm and cornfield after cornfield made me think that someday I might want to try my hand at farming and attempt to live off the fat of the land.  It would be tough to get started and brutally hard work, but food has to come from somewhere.  Something to consider if this writing thing doesn’t work out.

Alone with my thoughts, I also hatched a crazy plan for the road ahead.  Everyone I had talked to had warned me of how painfully boring my three-day push across Nebraska would be.  Initially I was determined to “stay the course” since I’m all about giving new places a fair chance without forming an opinion of a place solely through word-of-mouth (for instance, I love my hometowns of Voorheesville and Cleveland, but, let’s face it, they don’t generate too many rave reviews from outsiders).  Soon I began to think that maybe central Nebraska wasn’t the tourists’ delight I had been hoping for, and started considering alternatives.  I wanted to make the Plains chapter of my trip something to be enjoyed and not merely something to be endured.

Fortunately, I had an ace up my sleeve that could help make for a memorable Great Plains experience.  Back at Carleton, I had taken a course called “Writing the Great Plains” taught by a visiting professor who ran a buffalo ranch in southwestern South Dakota.  I decided that I’d call him up once I reached Omaha to see if he would be willing to accommodate a visitor/ranch-hand on short notice.  I felt like a visit to a buffalo ranch would inject a much welcome dose of adventure into my trip (and into this blog), thereby justifying a 400-mile and two- or three-day detour.  Besides, does a trip across the Plains even count if you don’t see a buffalo?

Another sign that says it all.  Those four words are the official slogan of my trip.

“And you don’t feel much like riding, you just wish the trip was through”

I’ll beg to differ with Bob on this one.  Scooting through the cold for hours on end does get pretty tiresome, and my straight line through Iowa had been less than action-packed, but by no means was I hoping for the trip to be finished.

With another disaster-free day of travel and another state crossed off the list, I felt my typical glow of satisfaction for reaching my destination for the night, but my pride in pulling up to my friend Tim’s apartment in Omaha was even more pronounced than usual.  Reaching Omaha represented a major milestone, as the aptly nicknamed “Gate to the West” almost perfectly marked the halfway-point of my trip (check out the mileage at the top of the post… obviously the percentage would change if I followed through with the “Wild Idea” to visit Wild Idea Buffalo Ranch in South Dakota).

So, to borrow Bob’s term, Omaha marked a “turning of the page” as the first half of my trip came to a close, with the second half about to begin.  It was hard to believe that my chain of hosts had come to an end, and while I would miss having a friendly face greeting me each night, I was really excited to unearth the tent from beneath the seat and tame the West mano-a-mano.  With National Parks, the Rockies, the stark beauty of the Plains, and maybe even real-life buffalo dotting the road ahead, there was a lot to look forward to.

*For a drive that was considerably lacking in action (or perhaps because I was looking for something to do), I ended up with a decent collection of photos to show for my day...

The Boone River proves that Iowa is not entirely corn.

The Eli to the Continental Divide's Peyton.

Map of the Lincoln Highway at an info center near the Missouri River. It looked as though I'd come so far (roughly 10 feet)!

My first ever visit to the Home of Arbor Day.

Towns of the Day:

Boone, IA; Glidden, IA

Shout-outs:

-Girl about my age with Texas plates who slowed down to yell out the window that she had the same type of scooter back home.

-Iowa farm kid who faked swerving toward me in his truck.  Pretending to run over scooterists: classic rural Iowa fun right there.

-Tim “Bikelock”, my host in Omaha. We’ll be singing more of this guy’s praises in future posts…

Rock Island, IL to Ames, IA (September 14)

Distance covered today: 200 miles

Distance covered total: 1,551 miles

Estimated mileage remaining: 1,949 miles (56% left to go)

When morning broke in Rock Island, I had been expecting to be greeted by more of the perfect weather that had helped make yesterday’s drive so enjoyable.  That was far from the case.  It was cold and damp, with a steady mist and light rain coming from dull gray skies.  Basically, it looked like I was back in New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan again.

I had never been to Iowa before, a surprising fact considering that my college years were spent in southern Minnesota (then again, maybe that says something about Iowa).  To put it another way, if my life’s travels were documented on an antiqued-looking nautical map, Iowa would’ve been the place in some remote sea where the black and foreboding sea monster illustration is etched.  I had really been looking forward to finally seeing what all the fuss was about, and had envisioned a glorious introduction to the state, crossing over a sun-splashed Mississippi River on that towering arched bridge shown in the movie Sugar, and then taking a triumphant picture at a colorful “Welcome to Iowa” sign…

But none of my fantasized “Welcome to Iowa” scenarios played out, and what was supposed to be a symbolic river crossing amounted to an anticlimactic letdown.  The bad weather had a lot to do with it, but the route I had chosen took me across an ordinary, rusty bridge that had no “Iowa Welcomes You” sign on the other side.  It really wasn’t that big of a deal- on my only other drive out West, I remembered thinking that the Missouri River, not the Mississippi, unofficially heralded entrance into the West- but when you spend heaps of mostly uneventful hours on a scooter, you look forward to stupid little things like state welcome signs.  They provide a sense of gratification and the illusion of forward progress, clearly mark the start of a new chapter of the journey, and break up some of the monotony of driving through the Upper Midwest.

Getting over my disappointment, I motored through the bustling river town of Davenport, the largest of the Quad Cities.  Davenport was big enough to get slightly lost in, but it tapered off soon enough, and then I found myself surrounded by the world famous cornfields of Iowa.  Who would’ve suspected, but those tattered-map sea monsters I mentioned earlier weren’t anywhere to be found in The Hawkeye State.  There was however, an ocean of corn, churning tirelessly in winds that would make even the scurviest and most peg-legged sailors yearn for the safety of the harbor.  The ferocious crosswinds blew me around within my lane, making driving difficult and miserably cold, as I found myself yet a couple hundred miles from pulling into port in far-off Ames.

I spent the morning carving my way northward towards Highway 30, and then turned left once I got there.  And that just about concluded my turning for the day, as Route 30 would take me 130 miles in one long, straight, boring line all the way to Ames.

Davenport, IA, on the banks of the Mississippi.

Just a few miles down the road I pulled into the town of Mount Vernon, where I had a lunch engagement with a friend from Carleton named Alex.  Alex, a Mount Vernon native, had generously offered to treat me to lunch at a place called the Lincoln Café, on the town’s handsome main street.  Along with Cornell College, the Lincoln Café is Mount Vernon’s claim to fame, having garnered praise from a long list of newspapers, magazines, and cooking shows (and deservedly so, as I would attest after having eaten there).  Evidently management doesn’t let all the accolades get to their head, as the place retained a down-to-earth feel, and struck me as having perfectly captured the quintessential small-town diner ambiance.  It definitely gets my endorsement if you’re hungry and find yourself in east-central Iowa.

Shortly after my delightful lunch in Mount Vernon, I passed through Cedar Rapids, which is the kind of town that I would’ve half-jokingly made a big deal about if the movie Cedar Rapids (which I haven’t even seen) hadn’t beat me to the punch.  Apparently the movie comically portrays the bright lights and fast times that I’m sure characterize Iowa’s second largest city, which is notorious for living life on the edge.  I did my best to avoid the fun and craziness, remaining resolute about covering another hundred-plus miles to Ames.

After Cedar Rapids though, Route 30 turned into the very type of road that I had been trying all trip to avoid- an ugly divided highway with exits, billboards, litter, truck stops and traffic blowing past me in excess of 65 mph.  I was still legally allowed to drive on this stretch of highway, but it wasn’t very enjoyable, so I tried blazing my own path on country roads running parallel to Highway 30.  This experiment was short lived, as these country roads were almost all gravel or raw dirt, and were often marked with warning signs that read “Caution: Minimum Maintenance Road… Enter at Your Own Risk.”  I felt tough after conquering my first risky dirt road, but pretty soon I decided to get back on 30 and just gut it out all the way to Ames.

Life on the divided highway was bearable, but cold.  By this time, the skies had cleared up, but the cold persisted.  Temperatures were hovering around 50 degrees, but felt way more frigid with the relentless winds swirling about.  I hadn’t realized how cold I was until stopping for lunch back in Mount Vernon, where I experienced those shivers that start once you walk indoors, which lasted unabated for quite a while.  While exposed to the elements out on the road though, the most telltale sign of the penetrating cold were the stalactites of snot that would regularly issue from my nose in another graphic display of the gritty demands of transcontinental scooting.

As for the scenery, I found the claims of Iowa’s flatness and boringness to be overblown.  Corn is not necessarily synonymous with boring, especially when there are gently rolling hills, river valleys, and pockets of trees on hand to inject some variety and greenery into the landscape.  For the second consecutive day, the ride’s visual highlight was provided by another massive wind farm near Ames, with the white turbines glowing brightly in the setting sun.

The Metro doesn't back down from a challenge.

As that last sentence suggests, yet again, the sun was setting while I was still in transit.  Driving directly into its blinding rays I could scarcely see the road ahead of me (not that I really needed to, since it was so straight), but I was more concerned about the danger lurking behind me.  I was afraid that cars and trucks closing in on me from behind might not be able to make out my puny silhouette against the blazing sun, and would splatter me on their grill like a bug.  I kept a watchful eye on my rearview mirror, and there were a couple instances when semi-trucks barreling toward me swerved out of my lane at the last second.  I was proud of my awareness, but also glad that I never had to perform an emergency swerve over to the shoulder (where I would risk careening off of Iowa’s many sheer cliff faces).

The onset of night didn’t make things any warmer, and I’d heard whispers of frost warnings being issued overnight (in mid-September no less!).  Fortunately I was spared the development of any Dumb and Dumber-esque snot icicles as Ames sprang suddenly from the all-encompassing cornfields, and not too long after sunset I had reached the apartment of my friend Josh, a Voorheesville native currently in grad school at Iowa State.

Almost immediately after rolling into Josh’s driveway and plopping my backpack inside his place, we went out for dinner.  So far on the trip, I’d been trying to get my hosts to take me to iconic places that came highly recommended by locals and were regarded as “can’t miss” dining destinations.  This doesn’t necessarily mean I was seeking high-falutin’ gourmet restaurants, but rather places that were unique, had character, and would be more than simply a place to ingest calories.  In food jargon, I wanted a cultural experience as my side dish (if not main course).  Josh really came through in this category, delivering a visit to a very memorable dining establishment.

We went to a restaurant called Hickory Park.  This dimly-lit place was a true Western saloon-style slaughterhouse (swinging doors and all), said to serve 20,000 pounds of meat a week!  Carefully perusing their menu of good old American heart-stopping meals, my attention was drawn to something called the Saucy Southerner, which Josh laughingly told me was all of the undesirable and throwaway cuts of meat lumped into a sandwich and disguised under a masking agent cloak of sauce (apparently only a slight step above the “Potted Ham” described in The Jungle by Upton Sinclair).

Though fascinated by the Sloppy Southerner (a fitting nickname that I gave it by accident), I bailed on it at the last minute, opting instead for a chicken entrée that came with better side dishes.  One could say that I chickened out.

As is the case in most college towns, Iowa State University is the lifeblood of the community, so it was fitting that my time in Ames ended with a tour of campus.  I knew very little about ISU prior to my visit, but I came away with a favorable impression of the place thanks to a combination of the aesthetically pleasing grounds, my behind the scenes look at “The Bone Room” in the geology/paleontology building, and the nice bunch of Cyclones who showed me a good time at the slaughterhouse.

Even in the face of gale-force winds and bitter cold, my first taste of the Hawkeye State was a good one- especially in a literal sense, given my stops at two memorable restaurants.  Although my digestive system was probably grateful I’d avoided it, I still felt pangs of regret for not grabbing the Sloppy Southerner by the horns (or more aptly, by the entrails!).

Shout-Outs:

-Alex, for treating me to a great lunch at the Lincoln Café in Mount Vernon.  I owe ya one!

-Josh and friends, for the fun introduction to Iowa State and the town of Ames.  You guys sure come up with some creative solutions for the fill-in-the-blank bunny faces on the slaughterhouse placemats.

Town(s) of the Day:

Mount Vernon, IA; Ames, IA