Omaha, Nebraska

Omaha is full of interesting things. Home of the minor-league world series. Birthplace of Gerald Ford. I got to see the "Mutual of Omaha" building I remembered from years of watching Marlin Perkins.

I checked into a hotel, dropped off my stuff, and traveled downtown to see what things were like. There's a nice little entertainment district in Omaha, but as I walked around, people didn't seem to be in a mood to be entertained. Lots of folks were streaming into the bars and gathering around TV sets. I passed a radio station where the entire staff had donned headphones and were staring intensely at the dude at the mike, who appeared to be talking about something really dramatic.

I couldn't find anyone in a talking mood, so I stopped into a mostly empty cafe and started writing...

I thought about where I had been in life one year before. I was still married to the woman I loved more than anything. I was still living in a house that I owned with her. I had this incredible group of friends who were working with me toward a shared purpose that we all cared about. I was embarking on a new part of my career that I had very high hopes for.

One year later, all of that stuff was gone, and I was sitting in Omaha at the beginning of this mostly aimless trip around the center of the States, trying to figure out what I had left to find.

Well, as Richard Gere had been telling me all day, here and now was a good place to start looking.

Things still weren't hopping downtown, so I went back to the hotel, flipped on the TV, and found what all of the intensity I had seen downtown was all about. Every channel on the dial was showing a picture of a White Bronco...

I rose early the next morning and continued my trek west. I drove 13 hours the first day, and was excited enough to do it again. I thought I'd be able to make it much farther into Colorado than I originally planned, so I set off in the morning with the goal of spending that night in Boulder.

It was a cloudy day with the temperature in the 60s; a perfect day to tool along at 85 mph with the sun roof open. By early afternoon, I had made it to the Colorado state line. I pushed ahead through some nasty weather until I reached my intended destination.