72.8 miles cycling, 2805′ of climbing (2652.8) – to read from the beginning, click here.
Got up, had some coffee & oatmeal/granola, then headed out for Omaha. We had a pleasant ride on the State highway up until mile 40. Then the Omaha hills started. Lots of hills. We had no idea. A lot of the early hills were on a bike path, so the very busy traffic was only noisy not troubling. The closer we got, however, the trail turned to a very bike unfriendly sidewalk.
At that point, we rerouted to get away from Blondo Blvd. The first new obstacle was an elementary school letting out and the cars blocking the road waiting for their charges. Next was getting through major reconstruction on Farnham Rd, our choice for a “straight shot” into The Old Market (TOM). We finally got around all the construction and parked our bikes in TOM and walked around to find something interesting. Hollywood Candy was one of those places with a wide assortment of penny candy and a lot of memorabilia from different eras in the country.
TOM was at about 60 miles into our trip from Scribner and we still had 10+ miles to get to our hosts for the night. Dana found Pat & Mike through her DC friend Robert MacDonald (Mac) who had met Pat through a mutual friend of theirs. So, this couple twice removed from us were going to have us for the night. Neither of us knew what to expect — Pat talked to Dana and was happy to find out that we were not in our 20s, but much closer to their ages.
Ten more miles of hills topped off with an 18% climb up the bluff to Pat’s & Mike’s house. And it was worth every hill and climb and footstep while walking the bike up the steep hills. We hit it off with Pat & Mike immediately, and they treated us to a seafood dinner at Shucks. Our waitress was hilarious and also very efficient. We left with our hunger and our palettes satiated.
Back at the house we chatted some more and then had a wonderful sleep to top off the night. Tomorrow: Iowa!
