oday was Monday, June 21st and the first day continuing eastward from the Tour-de-Nebraska.

I don’t have many pictures today because I never really saw anything I haven’t shown you. Cornfield, cornfield, small town, grain elevator, cornfield, oil refinery, cornfield, small town, cattle feedlot, then repeat pretty much describes what I’m seeing every day.

Today was a 67 mile ride from Kearney to Central City, NE. I feel like I’m leaving the safety net of the TDN and it will be 8 days of riding before I see anyone I know. I’ll miss riding with other people too – now that I’m on my own for a whole week. Winds were light and although they increased as the day went on, they didn’t hamper me too much.

Random observations:

Small towns – very depressing for the most part. Some seem as if they are holding up reasonably well, but most seem to just be in a long constant decline. Whatever downtown areas were there seem to have been decimated by Dollar General, Walmart, and fast-food outlets. I’ve no idea how to reverse the decline, but it’s sad to see. How do you get young people to stay instead of heading for the big city for education or better jobs – or how do you attract them back at some point? Here’s the one-block long business district for Wood River, NE – most of the storefronts were vacant and looked as if they had been for a while:

Heart

0

Comment

0

Link

Log in to comment or reply

Roadkill – When driving through the US we are all used to seeing larger animals on the side of the road – deer, racoons, opossums, etc… On a bike you also notice smaller animals. There are a LOT of birds killed by cars lying by the roadside that drivers can’t really see. Also smaller critters like squirrels and mice (I almost hit a mouse today.) And animals I don’t see regularly – I’ve never seen a badger in the wild but have seen at least 3 dead on this trip, so they are around. On Day 5 I ran over part of what I thought was a porcupine, although it was hard to tell for sure.

I stopped at a family-owned restaurant in Grand Island for lunch and had a really good slice of strawberry-rhubarb pie to finish up. I love pie, and my mother used to do amazing things with rhubarb, so I’ve always liked it. On this ride I don’t feel guilty eating pie, so I’m going to!

Heart

0

Comment

0

Link

Log in to comment or reply

The standout track today was “Purple Rain” by Prince. It’s not a fast high-energy track (at first) but I was losing steam, and this song sort of revived me. That song always makes me think of Prince’s amazing Superbowl half-time performance, which usually brings me to tears – especially now that he’s gone. I wiped away a few tears and rode stronger for a while after that. You can see that on Youtube (complete with annoying commentary) here.

Tomorrow I head to Wahoo, NE – my last night in Nebraska.