We left Omaha late. John had a finish a paper for a psych class he was taking outside of Berkeley, so I left him at Borders with their free WiFi.

I did some laundry (woo-hoo, clean socks and underwear), filled the tires up, and then went over to the Horseshoe to actually meet the manager there who’d been gracious enough to give us a comp to the room at Harrah’s.

I’ll say this: I don’t see what Warren Buffet sees in Omaha. It looked flat, desolate, and barely alive. Of course, I was in one particular section – other parts may be lovely. But John and I were both eager to get out.

And that’s when things got weird. The further we went west in Nebraska, the more unusual things got. Now, we have lovely neighbors across the street and she’s from Nebraska. I have no doubt that the farmers there are the salt of the earth. But the I-80 corridor and its truck stops – well, it’s a different world out there.

Then as the evening got later and we got into deep western Nebraska, it just got stranger, until we stopped at a truck stop right on the Nebraska/Wyoming border. I found this T-shirt:

That pretty much summed up the situation.

Then the clerk there, who was moving at the speed of light on something, started talking to us. The police and prosecutors are in bed together, I mean, they walked in his store yesterday and arrested some guy for doing nothing (but let him go) and he’s studying business because he’s going to get a franchise on a place like that but can’t stay there because it’s hell, man, it’s hell.

John and I thanked him for the advice and then took it – we blew that town. In fact, I don’t think we were very far from Dodge, NE, which would have been worth going to just so we could literally get the hell out of Dodge.

We rolled into Cheyenne around 1:30 AM local time with our La Quinta reservation waiting for us. We went past a gas processing facility that looked like a cross between northern New Jersey and the fires of Hell. I wanted to write an opera.

The La Quinta had only one room left and it smelled like an ashtray. I told them I wasn’t staying there and the desk clerk agreed. The Microtel right down the street had their jacuzzi suite available and at that hour, they gave it to us for $85. Nice. On our way to breakfast, I told John I’d be fine as long as I didn’t have to face the TV.

“Why?”

“Because it will be on Fox News.”

“How do you know that?”

“Dude. We’re in Wyoming.”

We walked into the breakfast room and looked at each other. Good thing for John we didn’t have a bet down.

More coming soon.