Friday in Omaha…

[Friday July 19, 2013]
rich had arrived the previous night, and given that the day was likely to be on the warmish side, if not really hot, we decided to bike to breakfast early. The place I’d decided on was a place called Wheatfield’s in Omaha’s Old Market District.
The food was excellent and plentiful. That’s really something you don’t see in Hawaii that often. I had a Kielbasa sausage with eggs. I miss sausage from the midwest. I used to get great ones in Milwaukee and that’s probably what inspired this breakfast for me.
We biked around the Old Market a bit and figured out what to do with ourselves for the rest of the day. This included another trip to the bike shop, a smoothie at a great coffee shop, Blueline Coffee. I would end up at this coffee shop more than once. It’s a keeper – they even have watermelon Italian soda (really just syrup with soda but who has watermelon? – very refreshing).
We also bike around near the river and saw great things like Ameritrade Park where the College World Series is held:

The Bob Kerrey Pedestrian Bridge – that’s me dipping my tire in the Missouri River:

There are a lot of trails around the river in this area and it’s really quite lovely. The tire dipping above actually happened on the Council Bluffs side of the river and not the Omaha side but is more or less part of the same system.
Omaha has a long history of organized labor and has a whole park that seems to be dedicated to it with much statuary:

Then it was time for a nap.
Our next mission was to scout out the camping site for Pork Belly Ventures where we’d going the next day. It was in Council Bluffs at the site of the one of the big casinos there…pretty urban really, but that’s okay, we weren’t actually going to be camping. Just switching motels.
This trip to Council Bluffs was done in Erich’s rental car as we really just wanted it over with.
We also hit up the local Walmart for a few odds and ends and my gosh, it was more or less the biggest I’ve seen (not, mind you, that I make a big habit of Walmarts).
After all the errands we had dinner at one of my two favorite Omaha restaurants: Ahmad’s Persian. I ate here the first time I was in Omaha and the owner came out and chatted and, best of the all, the food was excellent. Erich has never had Persian food before (and was willing to try as long as it didn’t contain curry – it doesn’t).

After that we had an ice cream and called it quits for the day. We wanted to get an early start on the fun the next day and had to pack up and move, attend the expo, meet up with our buddy Mary Ann and generally cause havoc. It would be a mission accomplished but that’s a story for another post.