Day 13 Sept. 15, 2008 Monday

I have made it back to the sunshine, and stopped in North Platte, Ne. I got out of the rain somewhere around Lincoln, Nebraska, and pretty much dried out during the ride for the rest on the day. I came up Hwy 29 from Mound City, across Hwy 2 into Nebraska, and picked up Interstate 80 at Lincoln. Interstates are only good for one purpose - going fast, 75mph in most places, and 80mph if you want to keep up with traffic. Apparently, this applys to everything: triple tractor-trailer rigs, motorhomes pulling cars or boats, and any other motorized transportation capable of going that fast. It is a little disconcerting to be hummin' along at 75, in the "slow" lane, and see a big Peterbuilt swerve out to pass, so I had to kick it up a notch. Or two. At a gas stop, I dug out the map and saw that Hwy 30 runs parallel to Hwy 80 all the way to North Platte, so I crossed over to the slow side. For the next 200 miles, I am on the other side of the railroad track, poking along at 55, in sunshine, and enjoying the ride for the first time in several days. The fun is back. Am I just a fair weather rider? Yur durn tootin'. Kerney, Ne. has a big Cabelas store on Hwy 30. It was a good place to get waterproof boot spray. I shoulda done that before I left. In this flat part of Nebraska, the trains are very long. They hall mostly coal; most trains had 30 to 60 carloads of it. I was told most of it comes out of Utah and Wyoming. When I was a kid, we burned coal to heat the house, anthracite and bituminous, hard coal and soft coal. The hard coal often contained fossil impressions of ferns. The coal miners used to go on strike in the middle of Winter, and coal prices jumped drastically. Dad got tired of this, and we switched over to an oil burning stove. I no longer had to clean out the clinkers. For those of you who don't know what a clinker is - it don't matter.