End of the Road, For Now

Can’t tell you how many times I was moved to tears in the past week, and not because of the harsh winds or the sun-baked prairies of Nebraska. Nebraskans were among kindest we’ve ever encountered, and while it’s dangerous to romanticize small town life, you can’t help but wonder if something has been lost along the way.

We arrived in each town slathered in sunscreen and decked out with enough pricey “performance” gear to fund a small militia. But the residents embraced us, offered us more assistance than we’d ever imagined. We felt embarrassed by our wealth of time, and in some ways anxious to return to our own jobs to prove that we could match the Nebraska work ethic.

Camping in city parks was a novelty for us but certainly carried great rewards. In Stuart we set up camp, hit the sack by 9pm, only to be woken later by the glow of stadium lights from the nearby baseball field. From our tent we listened to the sound of bats cracking and the ball hitting soft leather gloves. It was dreamlike, and we thanked the snow in the Rockies for pushing us eastward into America’s heartland.

In Ewing, we broke from tenting and splurged on a night at the 2 Rivers Inn, where the owner offered us tiny chocolate bars for the long day ahead. She interrupted my sentence so that she could call me “beautiful”, a compliment so heartfelt that I’ll cherish it for the rest of my life. In the South Fork bar we talked with the bartender, a cattle trader, and a trucker, each eager to give us advice on roads with a good, safe shoulder. He had seen us along the road and thought we were Mennonites, with our white linen shirts and sunhats. “If there’s anything else you need” – would be a great Nebraska motto, we heard it so often.

In Tildon, a man left a note on our bicycles while we shopped inside the market for frosty cans of diet Orange Crush: “Welcome to Tildon”, it read, “from the man staring at you across the street”. In other towns, this would be downright creepy. But as we approached the overall-decked man, working his full service gas station – Stan was his name - we realized this was nothing short of ordinary. "Never thought it possible to feel like a tourist in my own country", Casey would later say to me.

In Inman (population just over 100), we met a 93 year old woman who “retired” 30 years ago and opened the only market in town. We bought whatever we could carry off the dusty shelves. Everywhere we cycled, we met new people, from the Boy Scout troop fresh off a canoe trip down the Niobrara River, to the Fire Chief of Meadow Grove, who pointed to the ground nearby our tent, where the town’s last school once stood. This is America's breadbasket, but most definitely its heart, though it's slowly vanishing as the Great Plains empties out as young people flock to the cities. All in the wake of better jobs, and Big Agriculture.