Posted by: Arin
I woke up in the morning to pouring rain. It seemed like we were bound to stay in Omaha another day or two. I got downstairs and Pam was already starting to make breakfast. Homemade waffles and a big baked egg and vegetable kind of thing. Road food doesn't even compare to that. The rain let up around 10am, and Brad and I started packing up our things (slowly). I had to switch out my tubes too, since I still had the ones with the short valves. After saying our goodbyes, we got on the road around 2:30. Thank you Layne, Pam, and Scott for showing us an awesome time!
As we left the house, the air was hot and wet. Breathing was tough, and I felt like my wheels were rolling through grass. I don't know what it was, but I just didn't feel good. I had a weird pain in my ribs and knee too. Needless to say, Brad was waiting for me at the top of every hill (and the first ten miles were all hills!). Around 5-5:30, we were reaching the town of Blair. We started to see a lot of lightning in the distance, and we made our way over the Missouri River into Iowa. The weather was looking a little more problematic, so we decided to take cover under the bridge that we rode over.
As you can see in the second picture, the weather continued to get worse and worse. There was a period of time when you couldn't even hear any gaps between the thunder, and a lightning bolt struck within 100 feet of us! I had never heard such a crash before. The wind started to pick up, and even behind a wall we were getting soaked. Water was coming from all directions. An ease in the rain allowed us to get out from under the bridge and ride back over it into Blair. The only thing was we had ridden down a dirt road to get there and we had to ride through mud to get out. We made it back over the bridge and found shelter in front of some business. We were going to wait out the night there and see what the next day had in store.
I took the opportunity to do a little writing, and as I'm doing that, I get a call from Layne. "How are you guys doing?" We told him our situation and he offered to have Scott swing by and pick us up. I guess the weather had hit them pretty hard. A big conifer tree in their yard fell over, along with a bunch of other trees in the neighborhood. Their neighbor's roof even got smashed up. After declining the offer, we sat around thinking for maybe 5 minutes before calling back and asking for a ride. It was supposed to rain the whole next day and we were only about 20 miles away.
About 45 minutes later (10:30pm), Scott rolls up in his Honda Element. The back seats were out and we were able to load both our bikes in without taking anything off. On the way back, a power substation was out and the road was blocked, so we had to take some dirt roads back. On the way we saw some gnarly knocked-over trees!
We got back to his parents' and they weren't kidding. Trees were broken and knocked over, but luckily none of their property was damaged. Scott and I played a few more games of ping pong (I lost all of them) before we went to bed. Another late night.
Seriously though, I can't thank Layne, Pam, and Scott for thinking of us and rescuing us from what could have been a pretty terrible night.
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