The Mountains Before Me (Part II)

My first stop was Omaha, Nebraska. Google Maps, my navigator and GPS for my journey, said that this leg of my journey would be seven hours. I was fresh and excited and confident, ready for whatever the road threw at me.

My first stop was a gas station followed immediately by Starbucks. I ordered a Venti Iced Vanilla Coffee and hit the road. The first five hours of my trip was going to be somewhat familiar; our Conference Championship meet for the swim team I coached for was held in Grinnell, Iowa every February. My route would take me right passed the town.

For the majority of the ride, it was straight and flat. The sky was a watery blue. I passed towns and cities that grew ever farther apart as I drove away from Chicago and towards Iowa. I was able to put my car in cruise control and keep a steady speed throughout the majority of the drive.

Coming from Philadelphia, I’d driven through Ohio and parts of Indiana before. The flatness there actually beats out the flatness of Iowa. There are some hills in Iowa, small, rolling ones but it’s enough to give some depth to the land. One of my favorite sites as I drove was the huge wind turbines that stood impossibly tall in the planes. The wind farms actually kind of freaked me out; I’d only ever seen them on TV, and the turbines were much bigger than I imagined. Despite being afraid of heights, I couldn’t help be picture myself on top of the structures, which only freaked me out a bit more.

One thing I didn’t want to do on my trip was burn myself on the first few days so I made sure to take a few rest stops, even when I didn’t feel like I needed them. My first was just at a gas station when I crossed over the border of Illinois into Iowa. I stopped again a few hours later when I passed Grinnell. It was fun to be in the tiny little city without the swim team and giant Coach bus that usually chauffeured the team around. I knew where all the places to eat were; I went to Jimmy John’s and then walked around a little bit, but it was cool to spend time in a place I usually only saw in the most peripheral of ways. With the swim team, we always just drove through the town, shuttling back and forth between the pool and our hotel.

It was when I returned to the highway and sped away from the farthest point west I’d come by car until this point, that the weight and reality of what I was doing really set in. When I first left the Chicago area, I cried, just like I did when I moved out of the dorms for the last time after college. Leaving the city, speeding away from a place I learned to call home was heartbreaking. It was something I wanted and was excited to do, but now, after passing Grinnell, I knew that nothing from here to Salt Lake City would be familiar to me, and then again from Salt Lake City to Los Angeles.

That loss of familiarity was strange and scary, and as happens when people are fearful, I began to doubt. What the hell am I doing? Why am I here in the middle of Iowa? Why am I doing this? The questions rolled around and circled through my head on an endless loop. I kept telling myself that I could turn around whenever I wanted to, that it was OK to go back. But I never did. Whenever I stopped for gas or to use the bathroom, I never, ever hesitated about what direction I should get back on the highway. Onwards, ever forward.

I knew I was getting closer to Omaha when the traffic picked up and exits became more frequent. Google Maps took me right to the hotel, which was tucked in by a casino; it was technically across the river from Omaha in Iowa City. I checked in, took a shower and changed, and then drove over to the city to see what it was like.

I had dinner at a brewery in Omaha and walked around the surprisingly cute downtown. I hadn’t expected that Omaha would be such a darling little city. The brick buildings and cobblestone streets and eclectic shops stole my heart a bit. Omaha was never on my list of places to see; I’d always written it off as a nothing town. Walking through the streets, I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was such an adorable city.

As the sun set, I returned my hotel in Iowa City, right across the river. I was exhausted from the long drive and fell asleep easily.

At 3 in the morning, I was startled awake by a crack of thunder. The sky flashed up with lightning. Winds blasted the hotel; rain pounded on the window. Thunder rumbled close and frequent.

One particularly bright streak of lightning filled my room with light; the responding thunder was immediate. And then the fire alarms went off. My heart stopped; I put my shoes on, grabbed my backpack, and room key and ran to the hotel lobby. Many other sleepy-eyed guests were there. The night manager assured us there was no fire; it was just the lightning. The alarm was shut off after a few minutes, and we all returned to our rooms. I met eyes with some other guests, and we smiled wryly at each other and shook our heads.

My hands were shaking a bit as I returned to my room. I dropped my keycard before I was able to open my door. I went to my window to see the storm, and there was a spot on the sidewalk, about thirty feet from my bedroom, smoking. That’s how close that lightning had struck. I watched the storm for a few minutes; it was a light show unlike any I’d seen before. I prayed there’d be no tornado that night and that my car, filled with all of my earthly possessions would be OK.

After about a half hour, I drifted to sleep again. The morning dawned bright and clear. There was no sign that anything terrifying had occurred the night before. Once I had some breakfast from the hotel’s buffet, I gathered my things, checked out, and got back in the car. My next designation: Colorado Springs, CO.