Omaha Reports

Two tired brazilians arrived at the Omaha Train station around midnight. Ed picked us up there and drove us to his house in his red sports car. We chatted a little bit but everybody was tired and we went to sleep. Jen (Ed's sister) has kindly let us stay in her bedroom - according to Ed, the best in the house. The other inhabitant, Kevin, was playing somewhere in town and arrived when we were already sleeping.

Next day we enjoyed an Omaha tour. We went to Ed's workplace, CIM, where we met his co-workers. We had lunch at a greek restaurant, and then visited a really cool mystical store I can't remember the name now. Ivana bought two tarot decks and I bought geodes with to-be-revealed crystals inside. We also went to a record store and later had ice cream. We stopped by Ed's parents' house and met Ed's dad. Donna and Caitlyn weren't there, unfortunately. We then went to CIM yo read our e-mails and Ivana found a love letter from an anonymous Omaha admirer in her mailbox. :)

Back to Ed's house, there was a little party going on, and we could meet some very nice Omahans. It was a great night, we chatted, eated snacks, listened to some brazilian music CDs I've brought, saw some Sito 96 hours footage, and had lots of fun. We were supposed to take a bus at 8:00AM and then wait for 12 hours in Kansas City. Instead, we managed to find a Greyhound bus leaving Omaha at 7:25PM, so we got to stay for another day in the city. Since Ed has to work, he designed his friends Barry, Kevin, Andy and Christene to "babysit" us. We woke up late and had lunch with the arduos workers (Ed, Scott, Jamie...) at Zio's Pizzaria. We then decided to spend the afternoon in the Zoo. The day was wonderful, a beautiful, warm sunny day. I love sunny days, and you can see my happy face in the pictures :) :) :) We walked thru the zoo paths, and saw the giraffes, llamas, elephants and the terribly cute polar bears, among many other animals. They have a big aquarium there with those cool tunnels where you can pass under the tanks. The penguins were delightful. There's a dome in the tank where you can get into and the penguins will come and play with you. After the aquaria we went to the "jungle". It was cleverly designed so we could sneak inside tunnels, paths, pending bridges, waterfalls and such. I enjoyed the afternoon very much, the zoo was beutiful and our companions were so nice. I hope we meet again.
We then went to take our bus at the station, Ed arrived there later and we said goodbye to everybody. Our stay in Omaha was great. Nice town and very nice people too!

Once in the bus, we could comprove all the stories we heard about buses :) There are indeed weird people inside them, and the attendant said things like: "no alchool or drugs inside the bus. If you disobey my rules I'll drop you at the road in the dark, it's cold and you'll get sick, I hope it rains on you. If you have any questions, don't bother to ask". Despite that, we manged to arrive safe in Kansas and took our train to Flagstaff. It's called the "SouthWest Chief". The other train was the "California Zaphyr". All trains have cool names like those. I remember taking the "Silver Meteor" last year from NY to Miami. So, here I am, at the sightseeing car writing this and looking to the mountain scenery. The laptop is working again (see the parenthesys for full explanation). Arrival in Flagstaff is expected at 9:13PM.

(parenthesys - the laptop daeth and resurrection)
Just a quick note: after writing the last report, I was playing with the PC's control panels and tought it would be good to set up a password for the laptop. When i shut it down and started it up later, it wouldn't recognize the damn password!! Ivana couldn't write her reports :( and we hoped there was a way to disable the BIOS password. After some research we tought we would have to open it up and remove the circuit battery - definitely not something I was willing to do myself. I can open and disassemble Macs but I don't know anything about PeeCees. And it was my dad's computer after all... Ed asked his friends Andy and Barret to help us. After some fiddling around, Andy managed to break an useless little piece of the laptop. :) After this first unsuccesfull try, we tought it would be better to bring it to an authorised repair shop. But, to my surprise, Barret was able to resurrect it the next morning in an amazing way. He said that sometimes the password control panel would not recognize the last letter of the password, so he tried it and IT WORKED! I couldn't believe, it would never have occurred to me, I'm accostumed to trust my Mac :) PC hell apart, it is now working again and I hope it stays like this until the end of the trip. Nossa Senhora do Postscript, ajudai-me! :)

Omaha Pictures

Arriving at the train station

Ed's car. (can you see the three of us?)

Funny stuff arrives by e-mail

Eating greek food

The mystical store

Ice cream stop

At Ed's house

Zio's pizzaria. Don't ask me what I was showing, I don't remember.

At the Zoo. Christene, Lenara, Andy and Barret

Help! The aligator wants to have me for lunch! :)

We fed the fishes.

Ta-daa! The polar bear. He was sleeping.