NEBRASKA - uncommon hospitality!

Nebraska was hot and dry.  Vast corn fields and those metal spinning "Dorothy you're almost in Kansas" farm windmills were everywhere.  Mile-long trains loaded down with coal passed us at 20 minute intervals, all headed east.  The wind blew in our faces the entire time, despite all native Nebraskans telling us it usually blew in the opposite direction.  Worst of all, prickly "goat head" burrs dealt death-blows to our bike tires at least once or twice a day.

Despite all this, Nebraska grew on us.  We camped in the town park of tiny Broadwater, population 150, listening to the train whistles and watching the townspeople wave at each other, chat with their neighbors, and clip their hedges.  In the morning we had coffee and doughnuts at the town's only gas station/mini mart, where truckers and farmers gathered to talk and joke.

We spent a week in North Platte.  There I visited Buffalo Bill's green-striped Victorian house, complete with live buffalo, Wild West Show costumes, and original photos of Sitting Bull and Annie Oakley.  The town boasted the largest railroad switching yard in the country.  Streets downtown angled up and over the tracks, like a roller coaster.

Leaving North Platte we stopped at a bike shop for spare tubes.  Here we learned the Nebraskan or "Husker" bicyclist's method for living with goat head burrs: special extra-thick inner tubes lined with plenty of Slime brand tire goo, which would form a self-healing patch over punctures.  We also heard the welcome news that the menacing burrs only reached as far as Lincoln.

Nebraska hospitality was unbeatable.  Mark was limping along with three broken spokes and a severely bent wheel on the road from York to Seward when a fellow bicyclist, Arlo, stopped his car and invited us for dinner and a night's sleep in his Seward home.  We feasted on the fattest, juiciest pork chops and the sweetest corn we'd ever tasted.  ("They keep all the big chops here in state, and send the thin sickly ones over the border," Arlo joked.)

Arlo and his artist wife, Marilyn, treated us like long-lost relatives, letting us shower, doing our crusty laundry, chatting with us for hours over wine on their screened porch.  When Mark's wheel turned out to be unfixable even with Arlo's considerable array of tools, he insisted on driving us to the Wal-Mart in Lincoln.  Needless to say, we'll be going back to Nebraska.

Hang in there, lots more Nebraska soon!