Our first priority of the day was by far the lamest. After 11 glorious days, my lovely Bernadette's time with us had drawn to a close. We drove her to the Omaha International Airport, which was far less complicated an endeavor than picking her up in Chicago. But it really hurt to see her go - so much that I didn't even have the strength to snap a goodbye photo. Man, do I miss her.
Things didn't really get better from there. Remember that laptop charger I bought from that shady guy back in Miami, maybe a month before? Well surprise, surprise, it broke in about three different places all at the same time. Grumbling, I directed us toward an Office Depot and shelled out another $120 for a new charger. And once again, I left my camera out of it, because nobody needed to see the shame in my face.
Having accomplished that, it was getting on time for a meal. Moreover, we'd just spent the last week completely slacking off on our little "blog" here - mainly because of the lack of an internet connection at the festival and the Badlands. So we did a Google search for free Wifi in Omaha, and landed on Fuddrucker's, less than a mile away.
It was happy hour, and we were pretty thirsty, which worked out for everyone. I chuckled to myself about where we were exactly - my only experience with Fuddrucker's on the East Coast was with the movie Idiocracy, in which Luke Wilson's character gets frozen in an army experiment for 500 years, and wakes up to a world overtaken by giant, clumsy corporations. Among them was Fuddrucker's, though the name had morphed into something slightly funnier that goes against our no-foul-language rule here on the blog. I was shocked to discover that this place existed in real life, so it was appropriate that we stopped at one at some point.
We were there at the slowest time of the day, arriving around 3:00 and staying for a couple of hours - we got a lot of work done that day. With regard to the food, they push their burgers more than anything, and we were happy to indulge. Opposite the food counter was a long condiment bar, with tomatoes, onions, pickles, relish, peppers, cheese sauce and anything else you could think of to dress a burger. The food was considerably better than I expected it to be, and with the happy hour and free Wifi, it all added up to a much better experience than I was expecting.
That was it. No running around the city, no seeing museums, no going out for drinks or anything like that. Omaha was a strange place, this strange mirage in the middle of practically nowhere - where, as I discovered, the grocery store sells your beer, wine and even liquor. Quite a far cry from back in Pa., where beer is sold at licensed beer distributors, and wine and liquor at state-operated spirit stores. After we found a hotel for the night, I dropped by a supermarket and bought all three, and we proceeded to mourn the absence of my wonderful lady friend for the remainder of the night. A more eventful, uplifting post is up next from Sarah, coming very soon.
-Tom
-Tom
