And I'm supposed to do what now?

I've been putting off yard work because it's so hot out. Today I have time. Hmmph.



In other news,

The Lichen + Screen Ink + MLGI

The Hyphae Series - Screen Ink. from the lichen on Vimeo.

Best Portrait

This photo sums me up in so many ways. Thanks to the nice stranger who was there to step in as I tried self-portraiture after riding 100 miles.

As found in Nebraska...

Felice sent me this grocery list:

i found the following grocery list in FoodPride on A St.:

3- 8oz pkg cream cheese

1 Envelope Ranch dressing

Lime jello sm

mini marsh - multi

1 No2 can crushed pine

Mayo

1 c Nuts

1 Cool whip

0% Chance of Rain

With a perfect weather forecast unbelievable for the middle of July, Felice and I loaded up Baxter and camping gear after work yesterday for a night at Indian Cave State Park.


As soon as we'd staked out a good camping spot, we hit the trails for some lovely magic hour views of the Missouri River.


After hiking, it was time for some cooking and fire-sitting. It was one nice fire, and we discovered a naturally perfect division of labor -- Felice likes building, and I like tending.


This morning, it was maté & oatmeal on the Primus. We were chilly -- again, unbelievable for July 18th -- so the warm tea hit the spot.


We went for a morning hike as our tents got a chance to dry off their dewiness. Best friends are the best.

Wednesday Roca Rollers Ride

I headed out after work today after several days of excuses not to ride. Other than scoping out a bit of the triathlon course, I didn't have a route in mind. I hopped on Hwy 2, and thought about heading to Syracuse, thanks to a little BRAN-induced nostalgia. I got fed up with the traffic on the highway, though, and wouldn't have had any Rumbletimers with whom to share an adult beverage. I turned at Bennet instead, and headed for the Roca Rollers.

This is my version of a 6 o'clock shadow.

Heading west on Roca Road. The exposure here doesn't show it, but the road stretches straight into the distance for miles and miles, rolling over the Bohemian Alps. All in all, including waiting at lights in town, I rode 40 miles in 2 hours and 15 minutes.

On Landscape, Corn, and Cather

As we were driving back from the Niobrara yesterday, my mother and I were discussing the changing landscape as we passed from Sandhills to flat plains to the rolling hills of the southeastern corner of the state. Near Bassett, my father said he loved driving through the Sandhills -- which are looking particularly verdant right now -- but could never live there. Later, my mother described the landscape in eastern Wyoming as just unbearable to her -- barren and dry. I, meanwhile, contended that to me, it was the endless row crops of the flat plains along Interstate 80 that were unbearable, the scar on the earth that is the industrialization of the land, the identical topography, the tips of the cornsilks evening the plain to a point where if nuance is imperceptible, the field is good.

And then there are the sad fields, a few short, pale-green cornstalks on the end, the occasional errant milo (exceedingly rare, this lovely drought-resistant grain), the center-pivots nowhere to be seen. Is this what it will look like?

I came home to read further in My Ántonia; and came to this passage, published in 1920:

July came on with that breathless, brilliant heat which makes the plains of Kansas and Nebraska the best corn country in the world. It seemed as if we could hear the corn growing in the night; under the stars one caught a faint crackling in the dewy, heavy-odored cornfields where the feathered stalks stood so juicy and green. If all the great plain from the Missouri to the Rocky Mountains had been under glass, and the heat regulated by a thermometer, it could not have been better for the yellow tassels that were ripening and fertilizing the silk day by day. The cornfields were far apart in those times, with miles of wild grazing land between. It took a clear, meditative eye like my grandfather's to foresee that they would enlarge and multiply until they would be, not the Shimerdas' cornfields, or Mr. Bushy's, but the world's cornfields; that their yield would be one of the great economic facts, like the wheat crop of Russia, which underlie all the activities of men, in peace or war.

Little did Cather know how far this prophesy would come nearly 100 years later. Enlarge and multiply they did, swallowing up so many farmhouses now left empty and weathered, drinking down the aquifer, stripping away the topsoil, and poisoning the groundwater in the process. Yes, give me the dry and barren (or the mountainous, or the naturally verdant, &c.) over the irrigated and industrialized. In Israel, one plant has it figured out.

Niobrara Trip

Annals of Caution: Ice

The Feeling of the Place

After being in Red Cloud (Willa Cather's hometown) while on BRAN, I decided I needed to re-read My Ántonia.*


In just the introduction, I'm compelled to stop reading in order to transpose a few choice sentences.


As Cather & Jim are on the train, as adults, returning to "Black Hawk":

We were talking about what it is like to spend one's childhood in little towns like these, buried in wheat and corn, under stimulation extremes of climate: burning summers when the world lies green and billowy beneath a brilliant sky, when one is fairly stifled in vegetation, in the color and smell of strong weeds and heavy harvests; blustery winters with little snow, when the whole country is stripped bare and gray as sheet-iron. We agreed that no one who had not grown up in a little prairie town could know anything about it.

Jim, the novel's narrator, describes his arrival in Nebraska:

There was nothing but land: not a country at all, but the material out of which countries are made. No, there was nothing but land -- slightly undulating, I knew, because often our wheels ground against the brake as we went down into a hollow and lurched up again on the other side. I had the feeling that the world was left behind, that we had got over the edge of it, and were outside man's jurisdiction. I had never before looked up at the sky when there was not a familiar mountain ridge against it. But this was the complete dome of heaven, all there was of it.
...
If we never arrived anywhere, it did not matter. Between that earth and that sky, I felt erased, blotted out.

It's a good thing I'm re-reading this. I didn't appreciate it as much before as I do now. That ground definitely undulated; twas evident on a bicycle. There were some tough climbs going into Red Cloud, with a relentless headwind to boot.

A house from one of the families in My Ántonia.

*Oh, go get the paper-printed version. That way, you can take it with you.

Downpour

Fast-moving thunderstorms are not uncommon in Nebraska. I thought I could beat the one that blew through this morning. I packed my toast & peanut butter breakfast, left my coffee unfinished, and headed out the door as the weirdly-golden sky changed to sprinkles.

Then utter downpour, with 50 mph wind gusts and pea-sized hail to boot. The streets were washed out, I saw a few branches fall, but I kept on going, fearing worse -- possibly larger hail.

Arriving at the NSOB

Helmets are good for more than protection from falls. The worst hailstone hit was in the pit of my elbow. That stung.


It's not so easy to see, but I poured a nice lake out of my shoes. I also wrung my pants out of their dripping wetness. Good thing my trusty Re-Load kept my change of clothes (and I brought a change of everything, mind you) and my camera high & dry.

By the time I'd changed, the sun was out again.

Now, at 8:30 PM, it's still 88 degrees, and the heat index has finally dropped from 103 an hour ago to 99. Allegedly, we're rocking a dew point second only to Miami.

Rumbletime on the Platte

Good work, team.

Freestyle 50

Check out the Freestyle 50 tonight at Screen Ink (press coverage here). After tonight's First Friday, I'm heading out on the road for 7 days of Bicycle Riding Across Nebraska. Peace, be safe, and get out and enjoy the weather.

A Keith Jacobshagen Kind of Evening

The entirety of Reinkordts went up to Omaha last night to celebrate the birthday of the youngest. On the way home, Old Low to the Ground noted that it was a real Keith Jacobshagen kind of evening. Sadly, a camera is unable to capture this while driving down the interstate.

Memorial Day Swedish Pilgrimage

My mother's father grew up in Malmo, Nebraska. Every Memorial Day, she and my aunt drive up to decorate the graves of the Bredenberg family at Bethesda Cemetary. It's full of Swedes.



My grandfather's parents. Evalina ran away from Sweden to Nebraska when she was 17. She worked for the lawyer who defended Chief Standing Bear in Omaha. Simon came from Säfsnäs, Dalarna, Sweden.


This is my mom's favorite gravestone. Nora Alebana Bredenberg was born on the ship on the way to America.


After decorating the graves, it is customary to take a spin through Malmo. Peering into the Bank.


This is the Swedish Evangelical Mission Church, which my grandfather's family attended.

Sandhill Cranes

When I was out in Wood River Wednesday, I had a few minutes to spare to take some photos -- and take in the sound -- of the Sandhill Cranes. Beautiful.




Even without a telephoto, I got some croppable images. I'm especially fond of that last one, where the cranes appear to mirror one another. Listen to some audio here.

Slow Food Brunch 2009

Woke up to howling winds this morning, and I really had to work to crawl out from under the duvet. We missed the worst of the blizzard (allegedly, there are 5 foot drifts in central Nebraska), but the wind was gusting over 40mph, so I put on my trusty winter bike pants and headed into the wind and sleet down to Chez Hay.


The turn-out for this year's Slow Food Nebraska Eggstravaganza was great, despite the weather! Things I ate: spring greens, French toast, lots of cheeses, apple-cinnamon muffins, garlic scones, yogurt & granola, a mimosa, two different individually brewed cups of Cultiva coffee, including the exquisite Sidamo. Heaven in a cup.

It was hard to find a time when there was a gap in the line to get a shot of the spread.

Maggie & Pat rocking the made-to-order omelet bar. The line for this was always long.

Molly's about to dig in to a beautiful plate of food, accompanied by handmade coffee from Cultiva.

Triggertown did a lovely job of playing music. Nice to have such multitalented farmer/musicians in town!

Often Overlooked

I haven't made a political post in a while (mostly just shared bits from the ever-excellent New Nebraska Network), but it's almost time for the Lincoln/Lancaster Primary, so here's the Democratic slate card....reminder to follow...


I've personally worked for Kathy Danek & Barb Baier, and Don Mayhew's was the first campaign -- as a senior in high school -- that I really invested serious work into. Great folks all around.

What A Game

Yesterday, I broke a long-held record to contribute to yet another long-held record. Thanks to Emily, back in town for Thanksgiving, I went to the Nebraska-Colorado football game. I had never -- despite having lived in Lincoln all but 4 years of my life -- been to a Husker football game (that's Record #1); the stadium had yet another sell-out crowd of 85, 319, a streak that's been going since 1962. And what a game it was. Go read some analysis.

The weather was beautiful -- a crisp, fall day.

The game started out pretty terribly for Nebraska, and I began to think I'd made a mistake in reversing my record. Such is the life of the superstitious sports fan. But then Nebraska tied it up, and the crowd released balloons after the first touchdown.

As the sun went down, the stadium left some nice lighting on the East Stadium.

What a kick. This was the moment in which I became truly aware of the reason Husker fans are so terribly excited about being in Memorial Stadium for games. That was incredible to witness, and the roar of the crowd was insane.

Right after Alex Henery's 57-yard field goal.

Emily & I are happier.

n.b. I owe great thanks to J-Vass, my old roomie, for teaching me almost everything I know about football.

Purple State

cafe press gear