At something like 5 PM I finally left for Plattsmouth, NE on the Iowa border, most of the way to Glenwood. The late start wasn't entirely due to laziness. A major heat wave had been making this entire week difficult, with the humidity pushing the heat index over 120 F on some days even though the absolute temperature hardly broke 100. I had been told that many of the farm roads out this direction were paved, so riding at night didn't seem like such a bad idea.
The first portion of my route was another crushed limestone rail-trail. I don't mind dirt, and dedicated bike trails tend to be a lot more shady and less trafficked than the alternatives. Along the way, I stopped in a small town named Eagle to refill my water. I saw a man out watering his garden and tried to say hi, but he ignored me for maybe a full minute before realizing that I just wanted water. He immediately apologized, explaining that he thought I was "a Jehovah's Witness or something". When he learned that I was biking across the country, it just about blew his mind that I had ended up in front of his house in Eagle, Nebraska. He invited me inside, introduced me to his wife, reheated a burger patty for me, and gave me a ham sandwich and some chips for the road. I didn't spend too long there because I was a little nervous about my late start, but now I kind of regret taking off as soon as I did.
The rail-trail deteriorated as I got farther from Lincoln, eventually leading to a complete washout with no way around. I took some unpaved farm roads to circumvent the washout and eventually made it to a nice, smooth section that had been paved about one week before I got there. Down the road a ways, I met an old man out for his evening walk and asked if he knew where I could refill my water. He said I could follow him to his place, so I walked with him for about fifteen minutes, answering all the usual questions along the way.
It was pretty dark once I left there, but that's what lights are for. I quickly discovered that my headlamp had turned itself on and died in my bag, but the largely flat terrain meant that I wasn't going too fast for my front light to handle. As it got darker, I realized that the near-full moon did a better job of illuminating the street than my light, so I went dark save for a rear blinker. This made the night much more magical. I didn't like the humidity, but the bugs did, and this meant lots of bites around sunset. It also meant that the fireflies were out in full force, and I had just been too focused on the little spot of light directly in front of me to notice. The cloud of phosphorescent green specks floating gently over miles of gently-rolling farmland made for a spectacular view, but attempts to take a picture resulted in nothing but ruined night vision. A tripod and a DSLR would've made a great long exposure shot.
I got to Plattsmouth after midnight and couldn't find a suitable hiding place to sleep. A family was out playing Pokemon Go together, so I bothered them to ask about my options. The father knew a free campground about an hour north, but didn't know the name. It was farther than I wanted to go, so I kept looking. I found the one bar that was still open, but didn't go inside. It was loud, I wasn't feeling super extroverted, and everyone seemed far too drunk to be interesting. They did have unsecured WiFi, though, so I found directions to the free campground and set off again.
In short, I think Google tried to get me captured and sent to a corporate black site, then tried to get me killed when I chickened out. Or I've just played too much Shadowrun. Either way, here's what happened.
First, Google took me down a long road, deserted besides a couple on a Harley that passed me part way down. Deserted roads were expected, given that it was about 2 AM in middle-of-nowhere, Nebraska. The road then started to get cracked and overgrown, eventually skirting a dilapidated industrial area. The Harley couple passed me again, heading back to the freeway. This was explained when the road ran into a reinforced concrete barrier a bit later, with an impressive array skid marks stopping just short of, and sometimes at, the concrete. "That's fine," I thought. "No road is closed to bikes. Google knows best." I heaved my bike over the barrier and kept going.
The road hit another barrier, this time painted yellow and black and braced with metal supports like it was made to repel a vehicular assault. "It's probably fine," I thought. "That Air Force base I saw on the map is way north of here, and this place is obviously abandoned." I again hefted 71 lbs of bike and gear over the barrier. Next, Google instructed me to turn and scale a 10-foot fence with curls of barbed wire on top. "It probably meant the next street, not this one," I hedged. "Plus, that looks like the kind of thing someone might electrify." The next street had a similar fence, but with a motorized gate and guardhouse built into it. This was cool. Maybe it was unlocked?
In my defense, there was no obvious way around this place without getting on a major highway at night. I also figure that stealth ops rarely wear safety-yellow retroreflective vests the way I was.
I tossed a piece of rebar at the gate and saw no sparks. I propped it up carefully against the gate, thinking maybe it needed to be grounded. No sparks. I still didn't trust that electrified fences worked the way they do in movies, so I prodded the gate with my bike tire. It didn't budge. I went back to try the previous fence. Also no luck, and with multiple large padlocks on it. I examined the map and tried to find a better option.
Around this time, I noticed that the obviously-abandoned guard house now had a light on inside. This significantly shortened my planning horizon and I bolted back to the freeway. The map indicated a nearby street that led to a railyard, and on the other side of that railyard was a street that picked up Google's instructions from the other side of cement-barrier-and-barbed-wire-land. So I headed that way. This street led to a small trailer park with an angry dog to trailer ratio of about 3, so my presence must have woken up the entire community. The roads were also dirt, so I couldn't get anywhere fast. I got off to walk, then drew my bear spray and removed the safety. I didn't encounter any dogs that were motivated enough to jump their fences, unlike previous encounters.
The road ended in bushes and grass about as tall as my bike. I plowed through it and emerged in the railyard. With dogs still barking behind me and the near-certainty that somebody was loading their gun in response, I didn't bother checking for ticks before working my way over sharp rocks, about six sets of tracks, and bunch more tall grass on the opposite side. I emerged on a small road and followed it to another road which, Google informed me, should have crossed back over the railyard and rejoined my planned route. Instead, it ran into a concrete barrier and stopped. This time, though, I could clearly see the barriers on the opposite side of the tracks, and what looked like a clear shot beyond that. So I went ahead and crossed again.
Once across, some shipping containers revealed themselves to be temporary housing units, situated like another guardhouse but meant to not appear as such from the outside. There was a truck out front. I was in, though, so I kept going. I got rid of the reflective vest, figuring it best to not invite confrontation. It seemed like this had to be a public road, anyway.
Google and the Pokemon-playing father had both promised me that there was a bike path ahead. The Pokemon player said he'd even done this ride before. It would be a right turn just past a bridge, and sure enough, I found a dirt path turning right along a levi immediately after a bridge. The path hit a locked gate, but there appeared to be a paved path a little ways below, going under the bridge. I started trying to roll my bike down the steep hill toward it. Turns out the steep cliff turned into a vertical wall at the bottom. It appeared to be maybe 2 feet tall, so I tried to drop my back wheel down it. It was closer to 5 feet, and the weight of my bike dragged me off the wall with it. I tossed the bike aside, landed with a roll (thanks Judo), and felt badass despite the fact that I just fell off a wall. I made sure nothing was wrong with the bike, took off down the trail, and promptly felt much less badass when I noticed a perfectly nice paved trail that I could have used to join this trail gracefully.
The nicely-paved bike trail was much more pleasant than anything I had experienced that day. I was still riding a bit of an adrenaline high, the temperature had finally cooled off to something reasonable, and a few fireflies were still out, making the last few miles feel exceptionally free and invigorating. I made it to the free campground I had been told about, but couldn't find the actual tent-camping area. Instead, I found a registration booth with a single computer set up inside for campers to register. I tried to register, but found that the computer had no internet connection. I wasn't looking forward to dealing with the heat inside my bivy sack or the bugs outside of it, and the registration booth was air-conditioned, had outlets to charge my lights, and probably would be deserted until tomorrow afternoon when new campers arrived. So, I opened notepad, typed "Wake me up if I need to leave - Dave" in size 36 font, and went to sleep in the corner.
Not many pictures today, just a funny sign and the building that became my campsite. The sign is about a street named A, so it looks like someone made a sign to say "Stop, a street!" If that's not funny, it's because you had to be there.
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