Before we left St. Louis a couple mandatory stops were required. Busch Stadium, Anheiser Busch Inc (we’ll keep it to the REAL name) and Gateway Arch. Busch Stadium made me think of the historic Red Sox sweep of the St Louis Cardinals in the 2004 World Series. Of course the place was empty when we drove by, but I was trying to imagine the scene there when they took the title for the first time in 86 years. Here is Busch Stadium http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDtMD1m7UhM. Anheiser Busch was next and that was impressive. We went into the gift shop and they covered everything from company history, to beer brand history, to commercials (spuds mckenzie, bud bowls, Budweiser lizards, etc), to Clydesdales and more. Next was Gateway Arch. Here is a short clip http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wdwRAhHh2E. It is an impressive piece of engineering and a grand symbol of our countries “Gateway” to east and west. We made our way through Kansas City (no sign of Matt Cassel) and started what seemed like a very long trek to Omaha Nebraska, our next stop. We traveled through the rest of Missouri, into Iowa and arrived in Omaha around 7pm. It is worthy to note that my car (97 Audi with a 155k pre-trip miles on it) hit a pothole in Iowa the size of a small planet and still made it through it. Thank god. So at this point Colm and I have discussed many things. To mention just a few is difficult when you spend so many hours with one person in a car. We talked about normal things (family, friends, work, girls) and random things (agriculture in the US, social differences from state to state in the US, the fact that Nebraska has no major pro sports team and therefore their college football team is life there). The random topics are what make trips memorable. The normal things are nothing new, but you do elaborate quite a bit more. And that we did. With family, we both consider ourselves good sons. We are both the youngest so that makes it easy! Colm’s father (Bob Kennedy) has recently passed and that is difficult. We did not talk about it that much, but I know it is there….a lot. Just to show my respect for this, at the start of the trip, I took a cut out of his father’s obituary that I had kept from the newspaper. I placed it in the car, clipped by a travel angel to ensure that our journeys were being watched over and protected. We also talked at length about girls. I’m sure sharing would be great for all of you and the blog, but you know I can’t elaborate on this one! Let’s just say that Colm and I have had similar paths (sort of) and our futures will be sorted out by time.
Omaha is not a big city in terms of tall buildings, but it is spread out. We showed up at Colm’s friends (Megan) home and true to form we had a beer in hand within 2 minutes of arrival. Megan laid down the law and gave us ten minutes to get ready for dinner at a Japanese steakhouse with her great group of friends Marissa, Brandi and Dennis. I think this video can sum up the dinner…it’s a little dark, but you can make out the fun http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lALoRbwXnOo. BTW what you just saw was shrimp being tossed in air from chef to customers’ mouths. Please note the two girls before Colm and me. First was Marissa. She caught the first one, celebrated, and then did not realize the second shrimp was on its way. It hits her in the face. Second was Megan. She caught the first one as well and then the second one may have gotten lost it the lights. Like a baseball. It ended up nearly travelling down the front of her shirt! Watch it again. It was hilarious and everyone played well! P.S. I did catch four out of five, but who was counting? We then bar hopped and Megan’s friend Jody joined us for the fun. Nice to meet all her friends and hopefully I spelled their names correctly. Although I do not care to mention this part, I will. Basically the night ended up in a bar in Omaha with me falling asleep standing up. I would like to think it was because driving so far was catching up to me, but I will also say that I watched the Omaha bar tenders mix the vodka sodas I was consuming. I think they were either trying to get rid of vodka inventory or they just simply mix a strong drink in the Midwest! Either way they get the overkill award for the trip. Good work Omaha!
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