The Home of the World's Only Chokecherry Jamboree!

June 28, 2013

Day 5: Ord, Nebraska to Broken Bow, Nebraska

I got a super-late start this morning, dawdling in the room until well after nine. As I ate some left over pizza for breakfast, I tried to find the local weather on the television, but the only Nebraska station I found was an odd show featuring two housewives showing YouTube videos of puppies falling asleep. I watched this for about five minutes, then got the hell out of the motel to find there was a strong wind out of the north. In hindsight, a 5:30 AM start would certainly have made more sense.

I got on Sargent Road, which was low-traffic and extremely scenic at first. Eventually the scenery changed back to flatter with fields of crops, but the traffic still remained minimal.

I saw a couple of unusual things on the 29 miles to Sargent:

Somewhere on the road I encountered a strange, abandoned windmill park of some sort. This was on a very windy ridge, and the rusty old windmills were making shockingly loud creaking noises. There were dozens of these windmills in varying states of disrepair. I stared and walked around for 20 minutes and never could figure out exactly what the point of the place was. There appeared to be some sort of religious component to it, and I imagined that the apparently abandoned project was the work of a feverishly obsessed man with some sort of vision. I've seen these types of scenes before while bike touring, but I've never actually spoken to one of the creators of these odd projects.

Also interesting: An abandoned church with many gravestones in a language I didn't recognize. Near the church was a large, old white building with a historical marking reading "National Hall ZCBJ WFLA Slavin #112." Some cursory Googling now reveals that this is apparently related to a fraternal organization for Czech Americans. The church and the building were in the middle of corn fields, and other than someone mowing near them, they appeared unused.

I finally got to Sargent, got a sandwich and chocolate milk and Diet Pepsi and went to the town park where I had lunch and took a nap. Signs in the park informed me that Sargent was the home of the "World's Only Chokecherry Jamboree." I actually find this claim extremely easy to believe. I suspect that the "chokecherry" is an unpopular food indeed, because really: Who wants to eat something whose name contains the word "choke?"

On the way out of town I stopped at a brand new "Trotters" gas station to buy Gatorade, and noticed that the otherwise professional-looking signs on the doors had an extremely obvious misspelling. It's probably unwise for me to make fun of things like this when this journal is undoubtedly full of grammatical and usage errors. My defense: I'm tired from riding a heavy bike all day.

The next sixteen miles were tough due to the wind, and when I finally turned south onto very scenic Round Ridge Road, I wasn't able to fully enjoy the tailwind and scenery because my rear tire went flat AGAIN. As I sat on the side of the ride and worked on it, two different men stopped to ask if I needed any help. Nebraska has proved to be a friendly place.

After fixing the flat (although still not sure I had discovered the cause), I made good time to Broken Bow, the largest town (4,000 people) I'd seen in a while.

I stopped in the police station to ask about camping, then located the nice-enough town park. It was only a block from a supermarket that was conducting a wine tasting, and the atmosphere there was lively, with several tipsy women: I heard a couple of mention that they had been through the wine tasting multiple times that day.

After a shower at the standard, grimy town park bathroom, I went back to the supermarket and purchased and ate my dinner there, while indulging in more people watching. After that, back to the tent where I was initially concerned about firecrackers and the loud train, but fell asleep quickly anyway.

Today's ride: 62 miles (100 km)
Total: 419 miles (674 km)

Rate this entry's writing	Heart	2
Comment on this entry	Comment	0