Nebraska

Okay, so first off, I just gotta say... DAMN! this country is big! Almost as big as mine! I have car butt now from sitting in a moving vehicle for soooo long! But it was worth it!

Corn, corn, corn

There's lots of corn grown in this country... or at least in the country I travelled through. Corn and soy. Different from the endless wheat fields I'm used to seeing. But if you squint, it looks exactly the same. Felt like I was driving across Saskatchewan and Manitoba most of the time.

Nebraskan fast food

In Nebraka, there's a fast food chain, Runza's Restaurants, that make runzas. What's a runza, you ask? It's a whole bunch of ground beef with cheese wrapped in dough that's then cooked. And it's damn good - too bad there aren't any of them here 'cause they'd probably get added to my list of favorite fast food places.

The wedding

Only one word describes this wedding: beautiful. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful! They are a fabulous couple and their happiness was a delight to see. Congratulations!

We are such geeks!

At the wedding reception, when people are supposed to be drinking and having a good time, someone at our table of eight mentioned Bentham's Panopticon... and we all nodded our heads 'cause we're all geeks who've read Foucault. Sheesh! I felt the need to drink after that just 'cause we were obviously thinking too hard!

There is such a thing as too much

Six states and fourteen hours of driving is just too much: Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania.

Holy Toledo!

So, now I know where the expression comes from... because we decided on the way back home that we'd have dinner in Toledo. We saw the sign for the Toledo zoo - probably not a great place for dinner, so we keep driving. And driving. About ten minutes later, it dawns on us that we must've blinked real hard and missed it, 'cause there ain't no Toledo to be seen, hence "Holy Toledo! We missed it!"

State Troopers

These are scary dudes, and I really don't ever want to meet one, which is why I was really glad that I got lucky in New York with them. No, not that kind of lucky. I mean that I didn't have to talk to one of them. I was in the left lane following this dude from Kansas who wasn't going as fast as I wanted him to but wasn't moving over to the right lane to let me pass. Well, we go past a cop on the side of the road who flips his lights on just after we pass him - he's after one of us. So I back off and shift to the right lane. Kansas didn't see him or something, 'cause he kept going at the same speed. Cop pulled past me and nailed Kansas instead. I'm sure some state troopers are really nice people, but I'm happy to say I have yet to meet one!

Home again, home again, jiggedy, jig

Three thousand miles of travelling under our belts, we run into our only snag a half hour out of Boston. A tractor trailer flipped, blocking two lanes of traffic. At least that's what the radio said. I believe it, 'cause when we turned off onto a side route that would go nearby my house anyway, we say nothing but stopped traffic for a couple of miles ahead. That last half hour actually took an hour and a half - a bit of a frustration after such a long travel!