Cold Facts

I didn't post when we got here last night because I had misplaced my skeleton, probably in the big bucket of grease I fell into somewhere long about Kearney, Nebraska.

By which I mean to say: I was tired, and unclean.

We drove yesterday from Cheyenne, Wyoming to Des Moines, Iowa -- well, Colfax, Iowa, if you want to get technical about it, but I'm not sure if you'll find Colfax on any map. Except for Google. Because everywhere's on Google Maps. So never mind.

Still tired, in case you can't tell. It's 4:30 a.m. (ignore the time stamp on this post: the computer doesn't know what the hell time it is, anymore). I went to sleep at 11:00 or so and I've been up since 3:00, because 38 years of thunderstorms in Massachusetts did nothing to prepare me for the Iowa variety. FLASH! CRASH! BANG! BOOM! Right through the curtains and the earplugs. Dang.

Still dirty, too, in case you were wondering.

So let's see... Yesterday we did this:



For about eleven hours.

We'd heard all kinds of horror stories about the truckers in Nebraska, but don't you believe a word. Truck drivers are always so nice. Best drivers on the road. I briefly considered lifting my shirt for one of them on our way out of the state -- you know, as a sort of "thanks for proving the naysayers wrong" salute -- but then I remembered I'm not twenty anymore. Nobody would feel appreciated if I made them look at that. I might as well just shoot their tires and blow them to smithereens.

When we were in Wyoming, whatever the hell day that was, I took this picture:


I included it in my post that day, with a snarky comment questioning the usefulness of motorboats in Wyoming. Then I remembered motorboats work in small bodies of water, too, not just in oceans like where I live. So I decided it wasn't funny, and I took it down.

Then, yesterday, I snapped this:

Who the hell needs a motorboat in goddamn Nebraska?

Oh yeah, it's the same dude all right. Turns out his license plate's from Maine. We didn't think there would be anybody on the road with us going farther than we were -- what with the, um, oceans on either side and all -- but we were wrong. We forgot about Vacationland. Although, if it's such an all-fired Vacationland, I'd sure like to know why he felt the need to drag his freaking boat across the country.

Here's a little poem I wrote about Lincoln, Nebraska:

Lincoln, Lincoln
I've been thinkin'
Just how bad
Your rest stop's stinkin'

And then we were in Iowa.

I took pictures of Iowa, but the camera seems to have decided it wants to keep them. That's fine with me, because seriously? Iowa looks exactly -- and I mean exactly -- like what you think. Corn. Hills. Silos. Farmhouses. We drove through a county named Polk or Harding or Cleveland or something, where apparently there are some covered bridges that somebody wrote a book about a couple years ago. I think there might have even been a movie made. But it was all in a language that I never learned to speak, so I am unfamiliar.

Today we're only going to Chicago. Three hundred or so miles. Compared to 620 yesterday, that's a walk in the cake. But I think I'm going to make One Friend do it all, because One Friend? Slept right through the flashcrashbangboom.

Apparently, tornadoes are de rigeur in California.