A Kite Party, and then Finally Omaha

Our intrepid adventurers had just awoken in the middle of rural Nebraska and thought to themselves "why the hell are we still in the middle of rural Nebraska?"

We spent the night in Kearney, Nebraska. I briefly considered driving all the way up to Sioux City, South Dakota but I couldn't find anything there that would justify the trip.

Well, my ratty copy of 1,000 Places to See in the United States and Canada Before You Die had helpfully supplied an interesting destination: the Sandhills. The Sandhills are kind of cool. They are giant sand dunes that have been "stabilized" by grass growing on top of them. If you weren't paying attention you might just think they were weird hills. Anyway, crops can't be grown on these things so they serve as grazing land for cattle.

The Great Platte River Road Archway looks like what happens when you mix one of those highway visitor centers with a museum. It looked cool from the outside but was kind of expensive so we didn't go in.

I got a few pictures of the Sandhills but they mostly just look like hills.

We stopped for lunch at a pretty interesting place in Callaway, NE. I mostly stopped there because it was the only restaurant in town I could find.

There were all kinds of different cattle brands burned onto the ceiling. Despite it being lunch time they had a hearty buffet that we hopped in on. There was fried chicken and several medleys of meat and potatoes and such. Lydia said it was like cowboy food.

Fun fact: medley, melee, and meddle are all based the on medieval Latin misculare "to mix". I did not know that.

Once we were done eating I asked the proprietor in my best medieval Latin: "hey, which way to the kite flight?"

The Callaway Kite Flight is a Callaway-sized big ole deal. First of all, it is sanctioned by the American Kitefliers Association. Yes that's apparently a real thing. Admission was $2 a person and I was in the middle of doing that slow move for my wallet thing when I really want Lydia to pay for something when the ticket takers just waved us in. It was going to start raining any moment and they felt bad taking our money. I think that was a nice Nebraska memory for me.

The 17 people at this event were apparently enough to draw a Sasse for Senate campaign bus out from its lair. I wish so desperately that it is pronounced "Sassy". When Sassy launched his bid for U.S. Senate he said of Obamacare: "[i]f it lives, America as we know it will die." Classic Sassy.

I turned my head to look at kites for like 30 seconds and Lydia had already bought ice cream. You really have to watch her.

We weren't there long when the sky started spitting and we hit the road.

We took a quick peek at the capitol building in Lincoln and continued on to Omaha. Another fun fact is that Omaha was the capital city originally but for political reasons people were planning on moving the capital to nearby Lancaster. Well the powers that be in Omaha got the town of Lancaster renamed after the recently assassinated President Lincoln because they thought it would deter Confederate sympathizers in the state legislature from making it the new capital. They thought wrong apparently.

After finally arriving in Omaha we strolled around in Lauritzen Gardens.

I was excited to show off my spankin' new Nebraska state fair t-shirt to the envious public.

Our hotel downtown and within walking distance of the nice Old Market shopping/dining area.

Even the Goodwill here was fancy.

Everything inside was 99 cents, and there was a giant art installation thing on the wall.

We had a really nice dinner at a seafood restaurant. I figured we'd eaten so many corn dogs and other junk that we'd earned a nice meal. I found a coupon online for free oyster appetizers so that was fun.

We saw this limited release Irish movie Calvary at an artsy movie theater. I liked it a whole lot. It was a classic dinner and a movie, but it was a fancy version of both that we can't get in Neosho. We would go to these sort of places in St. Louis so frequently that it wasn't a big deal, but we both agreed that we appreciated the experience much more since it had become a rarity.

The Indianapolis 500!

Luckily we had already scouted out the Indy Speedway the day prior, because it was a teensy bit more crowded on race day.

In a major contrast with the gestapo-esque policies of the Kentucky Derby, bringing booze into the Indy 500 was just fine. I brought my trusty plastic bourbon pint with me. Securing a cup of ice to pour it into took a bit of work but after that was taken care of I was good to go.

The day started off pretty entertainingly, with some racing greats driving some classic cars around the track. Luckily I had enough of an education from the museum that I even recognized some of the winning racers' names.

As you can see our seats were excellent, with a nice overhang taking care of that pesky sun.

We were in a red state, and this was Memorial Day, which meant some heavy torture was in store for us. There were military guys driving around the track in cars. Then there was the pictured parade of military guys. Then we stood for the singing of multiple patriotic songs. Then there was a prayer that was about half military guys rah rah and half "lord please bless these turbo powered engines".

Finally the cars came out. They did a safety lap or two with the black pace car out in front. Then they gunned it!

Sure they go fast, but the sound was the most surprising thing for me. It was really loud and a lot higher pitched than I would have guessed, like a pack of giants honeybees. I only watched one or two passes before the ear plugs went in. It was kind of like listening to the opening part of Ride of the Valkyries really loud on loop.

Yes, this shirt came from Target. Yes it was on the clearance rack. Yes it is a camo print with mermaids on it. I figured it would class the place up a little.

After a few go-arounds we walked down to the track to get a closer look.

Luckily the fence from Jurassic Park was on hand to keep flying car chunks on their own side of the track.

I thought the in-car camera view was pretty sweet.

The driver from Colombia had a Juan Valdez sponsorship.

 Watched some pit stop time.



I experimented with the slow mo function on my iPhone for the first time. It's pretty darn cool. Watching a lady ram a hot dog in her mouth in slow motion is the best part.

 The race went pretty smoothly until the end, we got to see a couple of good crashes, with car pieces flying all over the place. They would put up a yellow flag while cleaning up, which meant the pace car would come back out and everyone would go slow around the track. Once guy hit the fence so hard that they had to have everyone go back to their pit stop area in order to do repairs to the track. Extreme!

The Indianapolis 500 Pre-Game

We'd already spent some time exploring Indiana and I'd say we'd made a pretty big dent in what was available to see. I had not yet seen the event of all events in Indiana, though.

When flipping through my copy of 1,000 Places to See in the United States and Canada Before You Die, I am often annoyed by the one time events. I couldn't just wake up tomorrow and go to the Kentucky Derby tomorrow, for example. I feel like a fairly spontaneous dude, which may hamper my ability to plan trips very far in advance. So as a result, the Indy 500 page of the book annoyed me greatly. It was something awesome that I had heard of but not yet done. How could this be? Luckily Lydia and her friends Steph and Amy are better at planning than I am. I donated the use of my rockin' car to the effort, and away we went.

In an interesting departure from my usual routine, we didn't leave right after work Friday evening. It was Memorial Day weekend, and the race wasn't going to happen until Sunday. This was kind of nice because I still had the option of hanging out with my pals one night. Sometimes too much weekend globetrotting makes me feel a bit anti-social.

We left Saturday morning painfully bright and early, and I slept most of the drive there. Without my awesome influence I can't imagine anything interesting happened.

We spent the majority of two days at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. The first was like a low key racing themed mini carnival. There were plenty of people but not overwhelming at all. This is such a big deal that town it is located in is called Speedway, Indiana.

We started off early with some margaritas and bloody marys.

The Speedway's control tower was housed in this cool Pagoda building. This is like a cool spacey version of the old school pagodas I saw in Japan. There was a panel of what I think were old race announcers/sports reporters or something. They were talking about the glory days, and we listened while having some bbq sandwiches in the shade nearby. Eventually they moved on to questions from the audience, and of course some person had to ask them a question about crashes. At least one of the panel members was moved to tears talking about some racing friend of theirs torn to bits on the track. Classy, audience, very classy.

We toured the area where the teams apparently stayed. The biggest RVs I've ever seen were all in a line, each with their own sealed tents. These were pretty much individual moon bases.

Across from the team moon bases were what looked to be the car garages. I thought it was really cool that we were allowed to see all the secret stuff behind the scenes.

These cars are surprisingly difficult to get in and out of. I wouldn't want to have to try to escape one on fire.

The final thing on our agenda was Indianapolis Motor Speedway Hall of Fame Museum. We were playing the "guess how much it costs" game while waiting in line outside. I thought maybe $14. I was pleasantly surprised when we reached the ticket window and the price was $5, but it was quickly apparent that you get what you pay for. The museum was full of people and uncomfortably warm. My first impression was, this isn't a museum, it's a collection. It's pretty much a room full of cars and signs and people. I couldn't help but compare this place to the time I went to the Kentucky Derby Museum. Kentucky was way, way better.

After the cars, all of the funky awards given to the winners were really interesting. Release the hounds!

The only bit of multimedia was a 20 minute long movie in a tiny little theater. The projector had one of those big green spots in the center of the picture.

We agreed that I should have one of these filled with rum at our apartment.

After a long day of racing related learning we were ready to just take it easy. Steph and Amy had never been to my favorite ice cream place ever, so we drove south to Columbus to visit Zaharakos Ice Cream Parlor. It's a magical place. The girls didn't seem as hugely impressed with the place as I am, but I think they enjoyed themselves.