from the middle of nowhere, all the way to sioux city!

after a long night in a casino parking lot, i set off on the road again today. i saw just as i was leaving the lot that i slept right on the border of nebraska and south dakota, so when i kept saying i didnt know where i was or in the video i took i couldnt determine if i was looking at dakota or nebraska, it was all just. there was no way to know when i was right on the border.

i got up early, i dont know precisely when, because all of my clocks said a different time. moving between the time zones, especially being right near the divide makes it hard to determine just what the real time is. my phone, i am pretty sure, updates automatically. it better, it sends me a text message when i leave the country, it should also update the time when i cross a zone.

so i started the day in nebraska. and nebraska is very boring. i drove all day and only stopped twice. my first stop was in the morning sometime when i was interested in finding some place to breakfast, i found a tiny town and they had a post office. i have been trying to visit a post office for at least the last week because i wanted to buy some postcard stamps. my attempts were laugh reel worthy. one i stopped at had just closed, like one minute before i got there. one had just gone on lunch break about 10 minutes before i arrived, it was hilarious, but i just wanted to buy some stamps.

so this morning i was able to buy some and i sent off a postcard. the problem is that i just dont have that many addresses to send to, so if you read this and want one, email me your address.

right now i am just trying to fill some lines with empty words becasue for hundreds of miles i drove through empty lands. there was nothing, every now and again i would pass through a 200 population or less city which barely consisted of a general store/gas station and post office. it was depressing, so i tried to put on some uplifting music to counter the mood. unfortunately my music is starting to get stale, i wish i could burn cd's. see this is more filling space.

i drove most of the way on highway 20, a highway i had been on before i turned north to rushmore. and it was barren. there was nothing, i wanted there to be something. mostly because i hadnt eaten anything, but also because i wanted the monotony to be broken up, i wanted to see some billboards for fast food restaurants and a walmart. i am addicted to western civilization, i dont want to be but there isnt a way around it right now. it makes me feel a bit safer to see these things. i do not frequent them, but them being there gives me some sort of sick comfort.

plainview

then i came to plainview. i think the sign said over 1000 people but i still blew through the town. but something caught my eye and i was forced to turn around. see, in the morning i made my course to sioux city, iowa. i had never been there and it was about 200 miles from where i started, maybe a little more. in my mind i had just had sioux city in my head and everything else was a blip, not only from my mind, but from reality. but what made me turn around in plainview was something spectacular, a gem in the self declared "middle-of-nowhere," the plainview klowndoll museum.

i pulled up and started taking pictures, it was the most hilarious thing i had seen. the banner out front announced that it was nebraska's #1 attraction for towns under 1100! how funny. i was taking pictures of the klown outside when an elderly gentleman opened the door and beckoned me inside. i told him to hold his horses, i would come in, but i wanted to take in outside first. when i went in the guy accosted me again. he was 85 years old and named darold. i have never ever heard the name darold before and i liked this guy immediately.

the best!

he was very attentive, i wasnt the only person there, but he was doting heavily on me. he offered me the guided tour! of course, the guided tour was just a walkman with a cassette in it and i would hold it and listen to the person tell me about the things i was seeing. i was so amazingly quaint, i wanted to cry. he handed me the walkman and pushed play, but nothing happened, it took him awhile to figure out that the tape needed to be rewound. it was very cute, he was trying so hard.

darold was drafted into world war II, i didnt really know there had been a draft, but this is what he said. he grew up in south dakota and after the war was stationed in port angeles wa. he connected with me becasue i was from portland. he moved back to the midwest becasue he didnt like being so far from the east coast, he felt that being in the middle gave him the best opportunity. he showed me his

darold

personal collection of klowns while we were on the "tour." after asking my story he told me of the trip his wife and him took a couple of years ago driving route 20 all the way to portland and then 101 south to ulysses, ca. then east to lake havasu where they wintered. it was a nice story and he was so happy, it made me so happy.

i finished the tour, which wasnt the greatest, but very cute, and then tried to leave. darold kept talking to me about the next klown or some other tidbit of his past, he showed me the ledger pointing out all the different people that had come in. he especially wanted me to see some cyclists that had come from philly, on their way to portland. eventually i was able to parlay and get out. i had a gift bag a bottle of water and a memory.

i was leaving there and deadset on getting to sioux city. it wasnt very far, but i still hadnt eaten this day and was starting to get hungry, none of the tiny towns i passed through gave me any indication of fine dining, so i kept pushing on. as a not i am now in sioux city and still havent eaten. i am sitting at a bar, drinking beer and eating popcorn...i am hungry for a real meal.

sioux city has to be the oddest town i have ever visited. it is large on the map, but the towns ten miles away are still population 200. there is nothing and then a city. the city isnt very large, only slightly larger than cheyenne, but on the map it looks huge. i rolled into the city and it was empty. i quickly noticed a plethora of sky bridges. i am partial to sky bridges. but as i noticed them i also noticed that the streets were empty of people, but the traffic was moderate. the city seemed to not have any life in it whatsoever. downtown was all commercial with very little open and no restaurants. except subway. and i didnt want to eat there.

so i drove and drove, eventually i decided to stop. i saw the convention center and all the doors were open, it was worth a shot. i walked in, all the doors were open because they were painting inside. i went to to the info desk, but no one was there. what was there was a map, the sky walk map. all of the skybridges i had been seeing were connected to each other, and most of downtown was connected via skymall. i was, i dont know how to describe the feelings that were coursing through me. i was ecstatic. i love skybridges and enclosures over cities, now i could walk throughout most of downtown sioux city via sky bridge.

skymall

and it was eerie up in there. the bridge went through office buildings, parking lots, hotels, the library, the museum, all kinds of things, and i was just walking as if i belonged there. i tried every door that didnt show me a person behind it. i didnt find much. many of the offices were vacant, for rent, and there was a dead feeling in the sky bridges. i walked and walked, through every part of the sky bridge, i only saw a few other people using it. at one point an old lady using a walker was coming out of an apartment building and walking behind me making a creaking i'm-following-you noise and i didnt like it. i walked fast to get away from her and ducked into the library for awhile.

when i got done i was ready to find something to do. there werent any "things" on the sky bridge, just places. i looked over the various maps i had collected and found the 4th street historic district, it looked like there would be things there. so i walked on over and saw a street that might boast life. except it was too early. nothing really opened until 4:30pm and it was only 3:pm. i walked to the end and then up to 5th and then i saw a bar called the firehouse. it beckoned me. the sign boasted 25 ozs of beer for $2.50. i went in.

there were a few other guys in there and i sat at the bar. i got my big beer and enjoyed it for a moment. then i just sat there. then i got out my computer. then i wrote this. then i stopped.