BoulderDash - Ignighter Road Trip Part 2
When we left off on Part 1, Dan and I were heading west from Chicago into corn country, Iowa. Upon entering the state I boldly predicted that there would “most likely be little stands on the side of the highway selling fresh corn on the cob to weary passerbys.” This would prove to be incredibly wrong. Not only were there no stands selling corn on the side of the highway, but there was no corn to be seen anywhere! In movies, Iowa’s highways are lined with endless stalks of golden maize. But in reality, it’s just a lot of dirt.
The highlight of Day 2 came when we actually stumbled upon the University of Iowa (our Big Ten rivals!) for lunch. We found a great little restaurant, The Summit, with views of the campus where we ate delicious blackened chicken calzones (see Dan’s pinkie finger for perspective).
After lunch we took a quick tour around the elegant campus, passed out some Ignighter flyers, and explored an intriguing street nearby.
I’m not sure if there was something in the calzone or maybe just too much time spent in the car, but after we left the University heading toward Omaha, we really started to lose our sanity.
Dan, having recently watched Transformers for the first time was convinced that there were Decepticons on our tail. And as crazy as it sounds in retrospect, at the time I was in complete agreement. Below are a couple of the Decepticons we eluded along the way. The second one was amphibious.
When we weren’t outrunning villainous robots we were chasing storms to occupy the time. Fortunately there were so many storms that we were able to just go straight on Rte. 80 the whole time and still claim to be chasing storms. However after sashaying around the U of Iowa together, and witnessing first hand what real men from the heart of the country actually look and sound like, we knew that if were going to attempt to chase storms (or even if we were going to attempt to say were chasing storms), then we’d have to assume alter-egos.
The new identities were basically just manly names draped over our nebbishy personas. We chose names that we felt evoked hardened cowboys, real men, the kind of guy who instinctually knows where the power box is when the electricity goes out. I became Jerry Rig and Dan was Alan Wrench.
That may look and sound like Dan, but it’s actually just Wrench (real men, we learned in Iowa, don’t use first names).
Wrench and I arrived in Omaha, Nebraska in the early evening. Although the hotel had an exotic name, it didn’t exactly feel like Cabo when we got inside.
We explored Omaha a little bit and then hit the hay early.
Check back in for the shocking final installation of the road trip, coming very soon. A dead car, an incident at a fast food joint, and so much more.
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