stripethree

Last weekend was another trip to the midwest for a wedding in Manhattan, Kansas, and a visit to the Severin farm in Nebraska. Thanks to Frontier airlines, there was also some extreme shopping for formal wear, since our luggage with missing in action when we arrived in Kansas City with no indicators of where it was and when it would arrive. This is also after probably the worst flight I’ve been on, Summer and I both nearly got sick on the Tucson to Denver leg. I did not take any pictures of the wedding, and only a few at the reception; the camera was mostly put to use on the few days spend in The Good Life State.

As I said, we flew into Kansas City and stayed the night there. Summer’s mom and younger sister drove down to join us and ended up running us around to a department store to find something to wear. The next morning we drove to Manhattan for the wedding, and stayed the night there. The next morning we drove to Lincoln where we stayed up flying out of Omaha Wednesday.

Bridesmaids making nice with the Kansas State mascot

The farm looked quite a bit different than last November. Corn!

This is Rocky, who adopted the farm and family, and Monkey’s evil twin.

We visited the zoo where Summer used to work.

The botanical gardens adjacent to the zoo.

We went fishing in a lake near the farm, and didn’t catch much of anything. Summer’s dad caught two small catfish not worth keeping and also snagged some weird kind of turtle.

We also visited the capital building, which is the second tallest in the United States.

All the pics are here.

This time last week was probably about the time that Summer and I were trying to figure out how to get to Omaha. See, we got to Dallas after waking up at 3:30am to catch a flight out of Tucson only to be greeted by the cancellation of our connecting flight to Omaha. The first person we talked to wasn’t all that helpful and we walked away on standby for a 3:30pm-ish flight and booked on a 9:40pm flight. Speaking with another American Airlines person, we found that there was literally zero chance we’d get on the earlier flight. There was enough room for our bags, but not us. We ended up getting on a plane to Chicago (where it was snowing as we landed) and then running through O’Hare to make the connecting flight to Omaha. We got there and our bags did to, just an hour and half later and mine missing a wheel. Then off to Summer’s parent’s house south of Lincoln.

I always through Summer was exaggerating when she said their nearest neighbor was a mile away. She wasn’t, as her parents live on farm land that has been in her family for over 100 years. Her Dad still works the land and because of weather the last few months, he was still out there on a daily basis the first few days after we arrived. Summer, being the Maid of Honor in the wedding we were going to, had to tend to all sorts of things before the wedding, so much of the first two days I hung out with her Mom, her older sister Betsy (both of whom I met when they visited Tucson), and her younger sister Melanie who is currently at UNL. We had lunch, they showed me around Lincoln, we did some stuff around the house to prepare for the Thanksgiving and Christmas we were going to hold, and we traded stories about our families and the very different parts of the country we were from.

Friday night was the rehearsal dinner and I got to meet some of Summer’s old friends including the bride and groom. Saturday was the wedding and reception, the third we have been to in three months, and we stayed in downtown Lincoln overnight. Sunday I met some more of Summer’s family as we did an early Thanksgiving followed by an early Christmas. It was very nice, and actually very new to me, since I’m usually on the other side of things in this respect. I’ve brought guests to my family’s Thanksgiving and Christmas before, but never the other way around until this trip. Her family was very generous and it was a lot of fun, and a LOT of food. We spent a good deal of the night playing bowling on the Nintendo Wii Summer’s parents got us for Christmas.

On Monday, our last full day on the trip, I got a good tour of the Severin farm. Her Dad showed us the last Volkswagen Rabbit he has right now as well as his ’78 Cadillac Eldorado, which is absolutely huge, sitting in a barn. He talked about how old some of the equipment and what he still uses – two tractors pushing 50 years old and still running! I also got to see somethings from Summer’s childhood like the horse tank they used to use as a swimming pool and the ‘Cabin Cruiser’, which was basically a pickup truck bed turned into a homemade RV that can sleep 5. They used to take road trips as a family and tow it behind the Cadillac, I wish I had a picture of that!

After the farm tour we went into Lincoln and Summer showed me around to the places she’d talked about that she worked at or spent a lot of time at. We strolled through the UNL campus and over to the football stadium where the flag line and band would march into games. We went by her old job at Paint Yourself Silly and got ice cream at Avana Cone.

I forgot to mention the food on this trip and it was a pretty important part, Summer was insistent on getting me to Runza, Valentino’s Pizza, and Amigo’s Tacos as well as the Indian Oven on this trip, and we manged to take care of all of them. We went to lunch on campus with her sisters on Monday and had dinner with friends Monday night and Tuesday afternoon in Omaha before we headed back to the desert.

It was a fun trip and we’ll probably be back next year after a wedding in Manhattan, Kansas which is only a few hours drive away. I’d never seen anything close to that part of the country so it was a bit of a surprise for me.

The Maryland trip went by in a blur of party, wedding, bbq, eat, drink, be merry, etc. The wedding was great, as was the after party. What did you learn? Eastern Europe means business when it comes to vodka. It was great to see family again, even if it was only briefly, and I’m glad they all got to meet Summer. The first month of the new job has gone well also; I’m in the loop for the most part, am keeping busy, and am enjoying pretty much every aspect of the work thus far.

The last quarter of oh eight will probably be pretty busy. There is another wedding next month here in Tucson, and one more in Nebraska in November, when I also will meet Summer’s family and friends. I’m definitely looking forward to it. If all goes according to plan, meaning I’m not lazy, I plan to hit seven more autocross events between now and the end of the year. If I do, that will be twenty this year – no wonder I needed tires. I also want to get cracking on a number of the small car projects that have been sitting around for ages.