Omaha to NYC Day 1



SOFAUS Day 1

I am sitting in the departure area at gate D25 at SeaTac … er SEA. The Brian-Eno-eque tones of the robotic wheelchairs echo off the terrazzo flooring. Eno invented ambient music with the aptly titled Music for Airports. It's great. Look it up. I am happy to be here. My driver's license, it turns out, expired 8 days ago. Amazingly, that was OK with TSA because they have a grave period. My decision to ride through a section of Canada looks like genius now because I have my passport with me and will be able to come home after the grace period of the driver's license expires.


I am sitting on the 737 watching Seattle’s low gray sky. For Omaha they load you on a bus and drive you to the plane. It rained on me and my fellow passengers as we queued between the bus and plane ramp. The fat, infrequent drops. We need the rain. So far so good. 


I am riding my bike! It's 4:00pm Central Time. Everything went to plan. The plane arrived at 2:00pm and I had my baggage by 2:30. It took an hour and a half to play my bike back together with no mishaps. The Welcome to Ohama guy took it all in stride. Omaha is a fairly big city, but the airport is small. He took my huge bike box when I was done. It wasn't long until I was on the road. 


The airport is only three miles from downtown. I quickly reached the Bob Kerry bridge that crosses the Missouri River into Iowa. After a quick stop for photos, I was off to Walmart for a stove fuel and food. While there a discovered that when I gave my keys to Hisako for safe keeping I forgot to take my bike lock key. Luckily, I was at Walmart! 


Half an hour later I was on the road to camp. The Hitchcock Nature Center is barely 12 miles from downtown Omaha, but has secluded walk-in campsites. The road quickly became rural. It was hot, but manageable. The air was filled with cicada and later crickets.


So I was at the Center. I read the fine print and learned their are no bikes on the trails because they erode the fine loess soils. I decided to play by the rules. It was a mile and a half to camp. How hard could it be? Answer: really hard. But it was gorgeous! I resorted to shuffling my bags. It took over an hour and I found an unoccupied camp closer to the road. I was hungry and tired. I quickly set up camp, ate, and went to bed.



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