Living Like a Husker

Kansas—due to being rather flat and uninteresting—took just a few hours, and rather late at night we ended up crossing into Nebraska.

Eric’s Great Uncle Harry had offered us a place to camp on his property, and so we were bent on getting all the way to Burwell, Nebraska that night. Get there we did at a little past midnight and set up a super spacious five-person tent. I have just a 3 or 4 person tent so it is nowhere near as luxurious, especially with three big dudes sleeping in it. We would all run into each other and end up accidentally spooning or something. Thank goodness that Tweedy found the five-person tent. My big ol’ memory foam pad gives me all the space I need and I sleep on that like a baby. Eric and Tweedy don’t have nearly as comfortable of sleeping pads as I do, but then they’re trying to keep all of their stuff in an even smaller vehicle.

So there were pulling up to Uncle Harry’s property at nearly 12:00 in the morning. It took a moment taking care of everything in the dark, but eventually we were all in the tent and passed clean out. I mean as far as non-athletic activities go, driving ranks pretty high up there for quotient of exhaustion to time spent doing the activity. I say this to try and legitimize the fact that we did not wake up until nearly 11:00 the next day, and we were woken up by Uncle Harry.

Uncle Harry will remain one of the legends of the trip and will be spoken of with a measure of reverence by all of us for years to come. This in no way means that he was a reverent individual, almost anything but (though he did have us come to church with him on Sunday morning). He was sarcastic as could be and loved spinning tales. Picture a nearly eighty-year-old man who has spent his life working the soil—sun worn, hands callused, and entire body still strong and wiry. This was the man that shouted into our tent to get up and quit being lazy. He made a very legitimate point that we were letting the day slip away. It took a moment to drag our groggy butts out of the tent, but then we got to have the grand tour of Uncle Harry’s property and chat with him about all of the ventures that he had a hand in throughout the years.

I think most people have heard of the Hydrogen Fuel Cell—the technology that could replace the gasoline combustion motor—well he had created conversion kits for combustion engines. They only would cost the consumer $2000 with installation and managed to improve the gas mileage of a Ford SUV to 100 miles per gallon. Unfortunately, this entire venture was shut down by the government, both by legal indictments and restriction of contracting and money flow. I’m not really one to believe in conspiracy theories, but I have been wondering why in the world I have not heard anything else about Hydrogen Fuel Cells after Honda did a test of a vehicle in Sacramento, CA and a city in Japan as well. It would all make sense if the oil companies that run the government just wanted the project shut down… just throwing that idea out there.

The crowning piece of Uncle Harry’s property was the river. We spent the greater majority of the day there by the water, and for good reason. Swimmable water is hard to find outdoors in the home state. In Colorado the water is always cold because it is only supplied by snowmelt and cold mountain springs. This river was warm, at least warm in comparison. So we waded through it and rinsed in it and just hung out in it for hours.

After that Uncle Harry took us out for lunch at a fun little cowboy bar in town. That little place had more character in it than any of the commercial bars I’ve ever been to. Plaques and pictures hung all over, including snippets from local newspapers. All of the paraphernalia served to remind the attendant that he or she was indeed in the country. The burgers that we had tasted delicious as well, of course that was the first thing we had eaten aside from beans, oats, or dried fruit. Back on the farm we helped the women set up for something called the Junk Jaunt that covers over 200 miles in Nebraska. This is an annual event where people from across the country visit different properties where antique pieces are sold that were collected during the previous year. Apparently it’s a pretty big thing. The property that we stayed on had a huge yard, 4 car garage, and a two story shed that was about 900 square feet and all of that ends up getting loaded with the antiques that will be sold to the people touring through.

Of course once that work was done there was one thing left to do. Go back to the river! And the river is where we remained until about midnight, cooking up a pot of the beans which are already becoming the favorite treat of the evening. I’m the chef on the trip, and I try to do the best I can to change up what goes into the mixture every evening. That particular night we had fresh vegetables from the garden, some bits of apple from the apple trees on the property, wild herb, and a dash of hot sauce. All of that was mixed into a base mixture that included baked beans, a can of chili, and some instant potatoes (those add salt and act as a thickening agent as well as a filler). Trust me, it tasted good. Good enough that I could not stop shoveling the mixture in until there was nothing at all left in the pan. Maybe it was just that I was hungry from playing in the water all day though. Or maybe it was an affect of all the smoke off of our little fire by the river.

The next day we woke up and broke down the tent. There was a moment of joining our hosts at the church they attended (a nice catholic church there in Burwell) before we went back to say thank you and goodbye before heading on for Lincoln, Nebraska. We were going there partially because Tweedy knew someone there and partially because, hey, it’s me. It really was just a stop off on the way into Kansas City. We arrived in Lincoln at the University of Nebraska at around seven o’ clock at night just to find out that Tweedy’s friend was not feeling good and so we had no one to see. With that being the case and the sun already on its way down we decided we would book it for Kansas City so that we could sleep inside that night.

Once again we crossed a state line when it was dark out.

The drive continued until about midnight when we met up with an old friend of Tweedy’s and Eric’s.

As far as chill and hospitable people go I’m pretty sure Katt would rank in the top 100 in the world. She let three guys roll into her place after midnight and set up camp in the living room of her apartment, not to mention that she made us some bomb tacos when we arrived. Once again it was the exhaustion of a long night of driving and we found ourselves crashing pretty hard just to wake up the next morning in our third state: Missouri.