Day 31 -- Lincoln, NE

After a relaxing two days in the suites of the Holiday Inn, we pushed on to the city of Lincoln in one of the last 100 mile days of the summer. The ride was flat with no headwinds, so we finished rather quickly. Along the way, we passed the town of Atlanta, NE. This is the site for the American World War II German prison camps. I find it interesting that they sent prisoners to the middle of Nowhere, America. Perhaps it was a means of preventing escape. Apparently, many prisoners ended up staying in Nebraska after the war because they liked it so much here. I’ve never quite understood the German.

After the ride, we were welcomed into the Beta Theta Pi fraternity’s house on the University of Nebraska campus. Not only did they have a beautiful house, but the brothers were kind and welcoming. They let us use their washing machines and computer lab as well as the entirety of their basement and first floor for lodging, not to mention hot showers. A lot of us did not expect another fraternity to welcome our team and embrace our mission, so it was a nice change of tone. At Cornell, the Betas are actually are next door neighbors and seemingly bitter and antagonist vis-à-vis our house.

We stopped at a local smoothie store, the Juice Stop, and got half-off drinks in the afternoon before leaving for a dinner at the park provided by the Sertoma service organization and the Nu chapter of Pi Kappa Phi at the U of Nebraska. They are a budding chapter as the just recently recolonized and they were proud to see the national service events of their future fraternity at work. We had great conversation and exchanged a lot of stories about our chapters from across the country.

The friendship visit at the Arc of Lincoln was a blast (Arc is a national organization committed to the welfare of people with mental retardation)! We had a huge dance and everyone got really into it. It was a great finish to a great day.