Statistics:

July 17, 1981 - Grand Island to Lincoln, Nebraska - 90 miles;

July 18, 1981 - Lincoln, Nebraska - Day Off.

Description of Events:

July 17, 1981: Today was the kind of day you wish for when riding on a long bicycle tour... easy pedaling, no mechanical issues, and lots of effortless miles racked up. 

We got moving at 6:15 AM, after rising early, getting packed up, and eating a few PB&J sandwiches. We went down Locust Street to a Sambo's Restaurant, where my journal says we were ripped off because they charged us 50 cents each for a cup of coffee.

Seems comical to me now because, as you know, a cup of coffee costs at least five to ten times that today. Apparently, back then, half a dollar for a cup of coffee was highway robbery!

Ironically, this was the most expensive (50 cents) cup of coffee we encountered thus far in the trip. While the least expensive was 20 cents and was sold to us in Ansley, only a few miles back. 

Reminds me of a joke that I heard, years later, from a traveling salesman. We (Stan and I) met him while exploring a branch line of the abandoned railroad right-of-way that eventually became the Montour Trail. The fellow was from an obscure coal mining town, located about 25 miles South of Pittsburgh, known as Muse. He said, "People ask me, where is Muse? I tell them it's about $250.00 a month out of Pittsburgh." He laughed heartily at his own joke. We laughed too.

I suppose one could say that Ansley was about $250.00 a month out of Grand Island... or at least one might save a few bucks on coffee there.

By 6:45 AM, we were riding out of GI amidst an overcast sky and a few sprinkles of rain. The rain continued for the entire 17 miles we rode to Aurora but it was somewhat pleasant with all of the accompanying heat and humidity. 

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A short distance beyond the 40-mile mark for the day, we stopped at a farmhouse to ask for water. A very hospitable and friendly lady answered our knock. She provided us with cups of water (in addition to filling our bottles) and gave us some fruit. She also said we could take a break at her picnic table for as long as we would like.  We thanked her and stayed for a short while before moving on.

As we got rolling again, two cyclists from Omaha came by and stopped to talk. They had left the city at 1:00 AM and were trying to ride 200 miles in one day. This was training for a trip to occur in the near future. My thought was that these two fellows really needed some training on how to slow down a bit and to enjoy what was going on around them. They moved, talked, and thought at a pace of a mile-a-minute! One of the guys kept firing off questions to Paul. Then, without waiting for Paul to completely answer the previous inquiry, he was firing off a subsequent question. This went on for several rounds of questioning. It seemed he did not even hear or have any interest in the answers that Paul was trying to give him.  I suppose our tour had slowed us down too much for his patience level. I hope maybe they learned how to stop and smell the roses instead of ripping past them without even taking notice. 

The whole interaction reminds me of the Star Trek episode where the aliens (them) moved in the blink of an eye while the Enterprise crew (us) seemed frozen in time. 

By Seward, the weather began to clear. We took a break in front of a place called Bob's Barber Shop. Though it wasn't yet time for me to be shorn, we did go inside to talk with Bob and some of his customers. It was another good encounter with salt of the earth people. I much preferred them to the fast talking city-boy-cyclists we had met earlier in the day.

From Seward, we went on to our final destination, Lincoln, the capital city of Nebraska. Outside of the city limits, we met three long distance cyclists who stopped to chat. They were very negative about their time in Lincoln. Since we had already decided to take a day off there, we took their comments under advisement (and with perhaps a few grains of salt).

I'm happy to say, their experiences were not anything like ours, but you'll have to read on to find out what happened.

We headed into the city anyway, to Superior Street, then to N. 14th Street, and right through the campus of the University of Nebraska. At that time, the football Cornhuskers were a perennial college power. We looked around in awe at all of the sports banners. 

Our unplanned route took us right to the Lambda Chi Alpha (LXA) fraternity house. There I met two fraternity brothers, Brian-S and Jerry-F. Although they related that the house was closed for the Summer, they gave us the names of some other brothers to contact. We came up empty.

Inquiries for a place to stay at a few local churches also did not yield any success. We went back to campus, looked around a bit more, and finally found an air-conditioned TV lounge in Harper Hall (HH). HH was a dormitory near the campus sports complex. Since there were very few people (students) around in the middle of Summer, we had the place to ourselves. We were living large, once again!

July 18, 1981: We slept in, latest ever on this trip, until 10:00 AM. It was due to the lounge not having any windows and the rest of the area being relatively dark and quiet. The fact that we were a bit tired after several long and hot days of riding might also have played a role. Since this was a planned day off, it didn't really matter very much. 

I tried again, with success, to reach LXA fraternity brothers, Dan and Ken-P and Todd-L. They invited us to come over to their place, so we rode about 15 blocks, in the rain, to get there. Upon arriving, they treated us to a big breakfast of eggs and waffles. We all got to know each other and they asked a lot of questions about our trip. Then we "powdered our noses" and did our laundry. Todd took us for a ride in his RX-7, as he had to do some errands. We did some, as well and got to see a little more of this busy city.

Paul bought a new camp stove, as the one he had to start the trip had died and we were back to eating out more. I found a bike shop and got a couple of new tires. In an unspecified (by my journal) location (other than the place we had been invited to), I put on my new tires, all IRC... the High Racer on the front and the 85 psi high pressure tire on the back. The rear tire (that had been temporarily put on the front, due to its worn condition) had bitten the dust and I was not impressed enough with it to repurchase the same brand. Besides, the shop did not carry it anyway. I also cleaned the chain, the freewheel, and the front sprockets. When finished, it felt like I had a new bike. 

 Around 5:00 PM, I returned to Todd, Ken, and Dan's place (TDK place). Todd had a supper ready for what he must've figured were two voraciously hungry travelers. Afterwards, we showered and changed clothes, before attempting to tour the capitol building. Unfortunately, it was closed on a Saturday evening, but Todd showed us what he could of the place. It is a very impressive building. Todd then took us to the apartment of some of his friends, Neil-S and Jim-J, who were also LXA brothers. We all sat around laughing, joking, and telling stories until 11:00 PM. Following that, we returned to the TDK place and started playing pool until around 1:00 AM. We had a great time with all of those guys and felt very fortunate to have been able to meet and spend some quality time with them. Our experiences in Lincoln were fantastic and in stark contrast to those of the three cyclists we met before entering the city. I hope they had better luck somewhere else down the line.