5 July 2008: Lincoln, Nebraska

When I woke up this morning Ryan took me to get my pack from Andrew's shop and then dropped me off at Route 80 just outside of town. I was pretty tempted to stay longer, not because I had particularly enjoyed Laramie-- although it was certainly not a bad town-- but because the next week was Jubilee Days. Andrew had told me to stick around because it was the best time to be in Laramie, and to the best of my knowledge Laramie's Jubilee Days is kinda like a state fair but for cowboys. Carnivals and rodeos and that sort of thing.

Now, not that I really go for carnivals and rodeos and that sort of thing, but part of me wanted to stick around to see what the town was like during Laramie's finest week. Not to mention that it would have been interesting to contrast this college town's regular atmosphere to its festival atmosphere.

But what it came down to was that, regardless of how enjoyable staying around for Jubilee Days would have been, it would have been pretty shitty to stay for 4+ days in Laramie immediately following my week in Provo. I mean, what bigger way is there to minimize the importance of what that week meant-- and the sheer fact that I stayed a week-- than to approach a week in the very next town.

So I decided to hit the highway, and my day on the road started slowly enough with a 53 minute wait before Billy picked me up in a white Plymouth Voyager and told me he would take me as far as Cheyenne.

Billy was a crotchety old cowboy. This dude wasn't messing around. I told him I picked Laramie for my Fourth of July because I thought it'd be the ideal place for some old-fashioned patriotism, and he said "Well, people love our country but hate the fucking government." Right on, brother.

So I asked him what his problem with the government was and he went into a long-winded rant about the government trying to take away his Second Ammendment rights. Like I didn't see that coming. But what was interesting about Billy was that, make no mistake about it, all he was talking about was gun ownership "for hunting meat and vegetable trading." He said that, at least among the people he associates with, people mostly hunt for food rather than sport. And certainly not to go shoot some guns just for the hell of it, like Andrew's friend Cody the Cowboy. So that's something to think about.

The most interesting thing about this interesting dude, though, was when I pulled out my notebook to write something. And this old cowboy looked over at me and said "Yeah, everyone should keep a journal. You know, so they can have stories for their grandkids." Sure, I dig that.

When we got to Cheyenne he pulled up to a Sonic and we got out to get some lunch. When it came my turn to order, I took one of the biggest risks of the trip. I ordered a double-cheeseburger meal. With a strawberry limeade.

I was banking on Billy the Kid buying me lunch. He hadn't offered, but I figured he was a nice enough guy and seemed pretty happy to help me out with the ride, so I thought it was worth a shot. Bear in mind, if I had misjudged and the risk backfired, I would have been out $5 for a lunch. Or, to put it in other terms, I would have been out my dinner that night for a lunch.

Well, I guessed right. And I was rewarded for my risk with a feast.

After we finished, Billy drove off and I got back on the on-ramp. I tried thumbing for 15 minutes, and while that's nothing compared to the waits I'd been having recently it was very hot out and I didn't exactly have the best feeling about this particular spot. Not to mention that Sonic's happy hour had just begun, and you know what that means: half-price strawberry limeades!

So there I am, sitting in a booth and sipping on my strawberry limeade. The family in the booth on my left was cleaning up their stuff and the mom said something about taking some food for the drive. You don't take food for the drive if you're going an hour away, so I asked if they were going east and they said yes. Jackpot. I asked if I could get a ride, and the mom looked pretty uncomfortable and said she didn't think so.

I took that for an answer, but a minute or so later I asked merely out of curiosity where they were going. The mom said they were going back home to Ann Arbor, Michigan.

"You see, here's the thing..."

Now, for many reasons, there was no way on earth I wasn't getting in that car. And really, how could they possibly refuse a Wolverine? But the mom was adamant that they had no room. I couldn't believe it. They were literally driving to my ultimate destination and no farther, and they couldn't even give me a ride one state over. I was so mad.

So I was walking back to the on-ramp, and a car passed me and the Ann Arbor mom told me to get in. I knew she'd come through.

So there I was now, in the back of a black Ford Explorer, going 450 miles in one fell swoop from Cheyenne, Wyoming, to Lincoln, Nebraska. I couldn't believe my luck. The mom was Anne and the dad was Jeff, and there was a hot daughter named Jude and an autistic son named Gabe. They gave me their leftover food and offered me their portable DVD player to watch "Corpse Bride"-- though of course I said no, as that would have been crossing the line-- and just like the ride from Coalville to Laramie I was the king of the road.

Even more serendipitous than the previous ride that could have potentially get me as far east as Chicago was this ride which could have gotten me as far east as home. But not for one second did I consider taking it the whole way. Of course not.

So instead I had two options: 1) go forward with my plan and get to Lincoln at 10:00, 2) call an audible and get to Omaha at around 11:00. Now, as bad as arriving at a town at 10:00 is for one's chances of scoring a couch, arriving at 11:00 is an hour worse. So the choice seems like it should have been a no-brainer.

But given how late I would be arriving-- much later than a typical "late arrival"-- I was pretty sure I was fated to sleeping outside regardless of where I was. So the next question was, which of those two towns would be more friendly towards the homeless? I don't know anything about either one, but because Lincoln is the capital all I could think of was Trenton. Not a pretty place at night. And since the Counting Crows have a song all about Omaha, I knew it couldn't be a terrible place.

What it came down to in the end, though, was that the prospect of spending a few days at the University of Nebraska seemed a tad more interesting than Creighton University. So Lincoln it was.

They dropped me off about a mile from campus, and when I finally got there, boy, it was kamakaze time like never before. I went into a parking garage and changed my clothes behind a car. Then I went into a restaurant and brushed my teeth in the bathroom. I was ready to go.

I asked the first group of kids where a good student bar was and they said Buffalo Wild Wings. Uh, lame. But there eight of them, and the girls were cute and the guys seemed alright and, since they were heading to B-Dubs already, I headed there with them.

Let me tell you, B-Dubs was fucking PACKED. There was a UFC fight on the television and everyone was watching it like they were half-expecting Lindsay Lohan to appear out of nowhere and take her shirt off. Those Nebraska kids love their UFC. As one kid told me, "everyone comes here for fight night." Whoop de doo.

I was pretty hungry by this point since I hadn't eaten since lunch, so I grabbed a plate of nachos that was left on the table next to us and started eating, which, contrary to what I would have expected, the cute girl standing next to me thought was funny while the dudes thought I was a real jerk, apparently.

So for the next half hour or so I was talking to this one girl, while the five guys talked to the other two girls and gave me dirty looks. Finally, and I'm not sure how, it came up that each of the three girls were dating one of the guys. The girl I was talking to included. I figured they were chumps and wasn't all that fazed, but then the girl I was talking to mentioned they played college basketball. Check-mate. I asked her where they played, and she said at St. Ambrose University, a 4,000-student body Catholic school. Big fucking deal.

By this point the B-Dubs scene was boring me and the situation had just turned into a huge "whatever," so I headed out to the main drag to hit up some more bars.

Now, I of course still had my pack with me, but it being Saturday night most places weren't exactly pack-friendly. And the ones that were weren't anything to write home about. So eventually I made my way to the "hippie bar." A very cute girl named Jes was outside and asked me if I was traveling. I said something, she said something, I said something again, and we went in.

This was going very well for a while, and I thought I had my couch lined up. Or at least my night. But Jes slowly started to drift off and so I moved over to one of her friends. When the bar closed, the friend of Jes was going to a party and she told me to come with her. So I figured I was money again.

So the friend drove us and when we got to the party I put my pack in the apartment downstairs. Things were looking good. But slowly the friend of Jes started to drift off, and I moved over to a cute girl with bangs. Which is important because girls don't normally look that cute with bangs. In my humble opinion.

By this point the place was thinning, though, and I was getting pretty bored. Not to mention that my will to party had pretty much been extinguished by the false hope of Jes and her friend. So I retrieved my pack from the downstairs apartment and walked towards campus.

The first suitable place I found for crashing was on the grass outside the campus chapel, and so I lay down and went to sleep. This was the first time that I had slept outside during the entire trip, which is pretty impressive if you consider how long I had been on the road. Well, it was the first time if you don't count the night in Tempe-- er, Phoenix. Which I don't.

Not to mention, it was nice out and I always like sleeping outside once in a while. Really makes me feel like I'm homeless. And forget that I graduated from the University of Michigan.