Squint your eyes and you can see it.

I wasn't able to blog all day today. I drove a friend to a Doctor's appointment that required him to be mildly sedated and, therefore, unable to drive himself home. He lives in Gretna and works in Bellevue. His appointment was right smack in midtown Omaha. He hadn't been into the 'big city' for quite a while, so I took the scenic route: all the way down Dodge Street. Gretna is out at about 204th Street; we ended up going as far east as 24th, 180 blocks. That is a lot of Dodge Street, since it is always under construction.

The photo above shows Dodge Street at 118th as it looked today. Can you see the unfinished highway flying out to who knows where? Dodge is actually underneath all this. The idea is to make some sort of elevated skyway out of this notoriously congested part of town. My guess is that it is just another boondoggle. Whoever is selling cement to Nebraska must have quite a lobby in Lincoln.

I don't hate Omaha. It is a fair place to do business, a good place to shop, and some folks even like living there. But it is the "wannabe more than the place really is" mentality that grates. It is like a fancy nightclub; dim lighting, a couple drinks and the cheesy decor starts looking good. Light the place up with bright flourescents and reality becomes visible. The magic of Omaha works best if you squint your eyes. The skyway is there! Squint your eyes and you can see it!

The trip essentially took the whole day, the high point being lunch at the 11Worth Cafe (aka Leavenworth Cafe) at 24th and Leavenworth. Mountains of hash-browns!

Photo from Channel 6's CityCam. As you might guess, I like the Channel 6, WOWT news. And linking to the Omaha World Herald is no good because they make you pay to look at their articles after 21 days. You can use Google's cache, but that is a pain.