Nebraska: Part 2 (and still more miles to go)

Beatrice - Hastings: 108 miles
I left Beatrice at 5:30AM, a half-hour before sunrise. The first several miles had no wind and the sun rose in a clear sky, clear on its side. The west was increasingly dark with lightning and the wind, after its sudden arrival, increasingly strong.

I could hardly pedal and at one point dismounted. I reached a farm and approached the house just as a woman peeked through the drawn curtains to check the weather. We exchanged waves and when she opened the door I asked if I could stay in their shed until the storm blew over. She said the shop would be better and opened it for me: clean, well lit, and chairs. The shop was large enough to hold shelves of tools and supplies, a work-bench, a weeder, an ATV, and a pick-up and still be only about half full. A while later, her husband, who had been doing chores and did not know I was there, came in to turn off the lights, thinking they had been left on accidentally. I stood and began to explain how I got there. At first seeing me, he glanced down at my hand, back up to meet my eyes, then, back at what I was holding in my hand: ah, just a book, just a book. He smiled, gave his name, shook my hand, then excused himself for having to keep moving, needing to take pigs to a stockyard: "If you're a corporation, you can bring your pigs any time you want; but the small farmer has to be sure to get his in when he can."
    I wondered about my luxury of time and continued to read. About three hours later, I continued on though the wind was still strong. One gust knocked me off the bike. Within an hour, the sky was completely blue though the wind continued throughout the day. When I was going north, it would push me along several mph faster than my usual rate but heading west I would lean slightly into the wind to keep balanced.
    I got into Hastings, a town of around 24,000, around sunset. The campground I found had no trees for a hammock and more storms were possible so I stayed in the $35/night Rainbow Motel.

Hastings - Elm Creek: 65 miles
I rode on dirt roads for the first time in this trip, taking county roads V, 38, W, 34, V again, and 30. One of these took me through Lewiston (I think that was the name), now composed of  a couple houses at an intersection of dirt roads. For a few years in the later part of the 1800's, it was a rail terminus where cattle from Texas were brought: "It was a town of 30 saloons and 15 hotels," before the railway was extended a person from the area told me. He also advised me of a side-road I could take to see a restored house from that era.  The dirt roads, like all the paved ones in Nebraska up to this point, are between corn fields.
     I had thought of staying at Kearney (Kar-knee) State Park but read my stopwatch that had been running for a while rather than the regular setting so thought I had more time than I did, position of the sun irrelevant at that point (heatstroke danger signal?). I ended up sleeping in the bush near some back-water of the Platte. Mosquitos swarmed as I set up camp, making me all the more appreciative of the hammock's netting.

Elm Creek - North Platte: 81 miles
I stopped for breakfast in Lexington, about 20 miles from the camping spot, then went to the library to check email and post some progress reports on the blog. When I came out, I saw two guys inspecting my bike. They were especially interested in--impressed by, actually (making my day)--how I'd rigged two knapsacks together to make saddle bags that sit over the waterproof bag with clothes and bedding, as an alternative to spending a couple hundred bucks to realize the same functions. They had just graduated from college and are on their way from Minnesota to Arizona, where one of them will do volunteer work "in the desert". Real nice kids and we enjoyed sharing our biking experiences.
    After they had gone in to the library and I was repacking my water bottles, filled from the library's water fountain, I heard two guys speaking in Swahili and ended up talking with one of them for some time.
     There was no head wind and the roads were, surprise surprise, mostly flat so I had easy riding to North Platte. I had about ten miles all to myself since that section had been closed to automobiles due to a low-lying bridge having been damaged by the flooding.
     The sky was storm dark as I approached North Platte so I decided to stay at a cheap motel. The first one I went to had a No Vacancy sign but I parked the bike and started for the office to see where I might find a similar motel. Before I got to it, the owner, reminding me of my Korean aunt, came from a nearby group of people around a couple tables and said "Have some fruit." I stood and watched her fill a plate with a salad of fresh strawberries, blueberries and melons and bring it to me. She motioned to a seat and was off as I thanked her. Before I finished the salad, she brought me a dish of baked beans, potato salad, and a big, thick, juicy, barbecued steak. No explanation. But an older lady sitting across from me explained that this was Nebraska Land Day and the motel was providing a meal for its residents--and anyone else lucky enough to come by just before things were put away.
    I made it to another motel as wind swung signs and blew papers and branches across the streets and a few minutes before the rain came.
    I found out that the "Buffalo Bill Ranch" campground where I had planned to stay was under water.

North Platte - Big Springs: 62 miles
Corn in the flats giving way to cattle in the hills.
Another evening thunder storm. I had a great tail wind for several miles and thought it might be pushing the storm clouds away. But then the wind shifted and the lightning neared.
    I stopped at a house that had an abandoned one in front of it and asked the owners if I could wait out the storm in the abandoned house or in their tractor shed. No, it was better to wait it out in their shop, they said: a shop much like the one I had taken shelter in the day before.
    Cameron, his wife and two young boys had moved into this house a couple years ago. It is located between the ranch that he is taking over from his grandfather and parents and the school where he teaches VocEd. He had thought of doing ranching only, but after a bad year thought he better use his college degree and have a supplemental source of income. His approach to ranching--and the system within which his small ranch ("only 2000 acres") operates is very much in keeping with Michael Pollan's excellent New York Times article "Power Steer" (March 31, 2002). During his college days in Wyoming, he worked with cattle in an area near "The Hole in the Wall" where Butch Cassidy et al. took refuge. One elder from the area remembered stories from her grandparents about the gang, about, for example, realizing that some of their horses had been taken but then having them show up later, sweating from hard riding but otherwise fine. No questions, no problems.
     While we were talking, as the worst of one storm passed over, the wife came in to say that another storm was coming so I shouldn't try to continue on. Hail to the north, tornado warnings to the south. I spent the night in their shop, two barn kittens napping on my stomach.

Big Springs - Sydney: 62 miles
Only sixty miles but this was the most exhausting day of my trip so far: 20-30 mph sidewinds from the north the whole way. When I stood to pump the pedals, I sensed the wheels of the bike might wrap around my left leg. The wind, combined with a flat and a spare tube that had a hole in it early in the day and with rain as I neared Sydney, also blew away wispy thoughts of camping out tonight. Thank-goodness for budget motels. Today's "is not a junky motel", the clerk assures me. Neither is it a target for petty thieves, I hope, since the plywood door's latch can be made immobile by a turn of the key but is not long enough for that to make any difference to one wanting to gain entry.