ACTUAL DATE OF TRAVEL: SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 17TH, 2011.
SMALL PICTURES WERE TAKEN BY ROSE ON HER IPHONE; LARGE (AND NOT BLURRY) PICTURES ARE MINE.
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BETWEEN DENVER, COLORADO AND LINCOLN, NEBRASKA
I didn’t really care to take too many photos in Lincoln because the place was pretty much a wash… so these are mostly Rose’s. Say hello to Nebraska! I’ll start off by saying that Rose was HORRIBLY excited for Nebraska, as it is the land of Saddle Creek and Conor Oberst. I could really care less about these things, but for her, it was quite exciting, and she did most of the driving through Nebraska, blasting a shit ton of SC bands – and waayyyyyyyyyyy too much Bright Eyes – along the way… I should also state that Nebraskans are super prideful of being Nebraskan, and Rose made fun of this sign a lot (it is an extremely plain state-welcoming sign compared to some of the other ones) but that making fun of fell among deaf ears, or at least, ears that did not agree… I think the response Michael, our CS host in Lincoln, gave was, “But it is the good life…”
Along the way, there wasn’t much interesting stuff to eat, and I wanted some real food, so rather than getting like, a salad or whatever for the same-ish price, I just went to town on this buffet in this random gas station. I think the restaurant was called Grandma’s or some shit, and definitely the buffet was the best vegetarian option around. Buffets are, for me – master binger – just the monetarily-sound way to go. I can eat a huge buffet meal and pack it away and then I don’t have to eat dinner, and frankly, I feel better that way most of the time…
[ROSE'S TUMBLR CAPTION: "Salad bar featuring pepperonis"]
Rose’s food – less spectacular if I do say so myself…
[ROSE'S TUMBLR CAPTION: "Grandma may not have veggie burgers but she's got smart balance" – apparently (I didn't hear it) lady was not stoked when Rose asked if they had veggie burgers...]
This is fucking grandma, dude, if you ever doubted her existence…
Funny picture for a burger challenge, which reads, “”Think climbing Mount Everest is a challenge Well, try this one on for size. Two pounds of ground beef on a large homemade bun topped with choice toppers. Four pounds total!!! Are you tough enough to try? If you can polish this baby off in less than an hour, we’ll give you a free shirt and hang your picture on the wall. Ya know what Andy Warhol said, “Everyone is famous for 15 minutes.” Well, here’s your chance.” YUMMMMMM! That reminds me of all the cow farms we passed on the way… I must say, though, there is a lot of grass-fed cow meat in Nebraska, or at least there is close to the highway, and it was actually getting slightly terrifying that I would be like, “MMMM! It smells good!” because the smell of grass would come wafting into the car, and then two seconds later we would pass a herd of cows, and I was just like, “Fuck!” It’s a little bit scary when cow shit apparently starts smelling really awesome…
Check out what’s considered “ethnic” food: Spaghetti & Meatballs and Nacho Supreme. Hahahahhahahahahahahah.
You can betchur buns these locals had the buffet! As I was finishing up my pretty healthy meal and getting a shit ton of brownies and ice cream for dessert, the guy behind us was like, “Ah, and here I was thinking she would be eating healthy!” He was a truck driver who was on his way back to Indiana after taking a trip to San Francisco. Guess dude does that every other week or something. He highly recommended the potato chowder, but I didn’t eat it because mmmmmehhhh. It probably had bacon in it. And I just wasn’t feeling it, in general. But nice to talk to you, dude!
Anyway… first round of foods and then the aftermath (see the brownie and ice cream action?!!!)…
Above: Love a good truck stop, dude; below: Rose taking a self-portrait because she was tired of my suck-at-posing-for-pictures ways.
Like I was saying…
I’m sure that is soooo what they want. Really, though, I don’t even think this offer is valid anymore. I think that shit be advertising for false.
Grandma’s parking lot capture which I really enjoy…
Being sad about balloons.
Oh, before we left, though… WE TOTALLY FOUND ANOTHER SINCLAIR DINOSAUR! Rose was hunting around for a person to take a photograph for us, and I wanted her to ask this dude who looked friendly and gave me a friendly smile; instead she found this dude simply because he had a nice car and he was the creepiest mofo. She was assuming her position on the dinosaur’s back, and he seriously said, “Yeah, tart it up, honey, tart it up.” UH-HUH. GOOD JOB.
I was trying to keep that broccoli stalk for a while because I’m gross. That’s about as dried out and interesting as it got. I actually really wanted to turn it into a sculptural work but it flew around the car and I forgot about it until way later on, when it changed shapes and stopped being uhhh something I really wanted to touch so much.
Anyway, there was a sign for this one place from far, far away, and like Little America, we just kept being excited to go to it. Finally, we made it… but it had closed the previous hour. FUCK. And unlike Little America, this place actually looked really fucking awesome… it was a museum of old shit that was “showing man’s progress” through the years. I mean, come on. How sick.
Anyway, along the way, we pulled down this random road to stop by a lake because the sun was coming down and Rose wanted to take some photos of some cows… On the way there, she pulled over and a truck with two dudes was coming from the opposite direction. She put on her hazards. They of course stopped to see if she needed any help. Of course she made it seem even more like we didn’t know what we were doing or where we were going by asking where the lake was though it was clearly the way we were headed. They eventually left after making small talk with her. We went to this lake that was in the middle of tons and tons of corn fields, but I got the grossest vibe from the place. Usually I don’t really get weirded out by being places, but the interaction, the isolation, the fact that we were two “ethnic” girls in the middle of nowhere in Nebraska (not even off a major freeway, but a farm thoroughfare freeway) just made me really paranoid and we only walked a little distance before I mentioned that we should just go. Snapped a couple shots (below) but mostly just ducked out of there. It just reminded me too much of when Lenny and I were in Montana and Native Americans almost ran us over with their truck.
Rose is kinda eternally hungry or at least needs to snack a lot more than I do, and we stopped by this AMAZING Mexican restaurant in po-dunk nowhere (Hastings, Nebraska). The restaurant chain is called El Puerto, and it was fucking delicious, and the service was top-notch… maybe even above-and-beyond x 10,000 with younger, fairly good-looking Mexican waiters… yeeeaaah, it was interesting. Guess they have restaurants in Kansas, too.
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LINCOLN, NEBRASKA
Finally arrived at our host’s house in Lincoln that evening, where they had been drinking ALL DAY. It was three dudes who lived together who had a really hilarious mega-gay dynamic (a big no-no in Lincoln), and they were nice, but I was sure that they were going to drink/party, and I was going to be whatevers about it all. And that turned out to be true, of course. This particular Saturday the Huskers football team had had a game, and especially in Lincoln, everyone is SUPER into football. I asked Michael about the people in town who didn’t like football, and he said that in Lincoln, “Even the people who don’t like football like football.” Which is funny. Apparently the Huskers’ season tickets have a waitlist of FORTY YEARS – longest season ticket sell-out ever — because people don’t give up their tickets if they already have them; you just keep having them through as many seasons as you want them. Fucking bizarre.
But we went to a dubstep show at The Bourbon Theatre, and I was really excited for the prospect, though less than excited that it was $15.00 – but I thought hey, why not? How bad could it really be! Turns out it can be really bad, and I should have known this from past experiences that going to random dubstep shows is not necessarily a good thing. What’s worse… asides from the CS host Michael himself, who very obviously liked dubstep and was into dancing, his girlfriend and his two roommates coughed up the dolla bills but were seriously not into it or dancing at all. So it was just kinda bad music and then all the more weird-vibed. The other two dudes left early and we hung out with gf and Michael for a little bit but eventually left soon thereafter. So… whatever.
Went to a bunch of bars. Had minimal conversation. There was one fun interaction in a pizza place where some guy from Austin saw me standing near the gumball machine, where I had just purchased a gumball, and asked me if I had change for $1.00; I said I did not, and he said I wasn’t allowed to stand by gumball machine if I didn’t have change! I suppose he maybe had a point, but I was just waiting for the bathroom, man!
Also went to this hella dance club crap with a buncha frat kids and got bought two drinks. Got a little drunk. It was whatevers, man. This picture would show an example of what the streets looked like, though. It was an early game so there were a lot of people out, but not nearly as many as there would have been had it been a late game; I guess the Huskers campus is a dry campus so people can’t actually drink on-campus so they hella wile out after the games are over.
Group pic later that evening. Blah, blah, who cares, blah, blah.
