Taco de Oro

Just for hoots, I Googled "translate taco de oro". The result? "Gold heels". Hee hee.

I’m continuing on my tour of Mexican restaurants in town. Next up at bat: Taco de Oro.

Taco de Oro is a sit-down, fast-food restaurant where you place your order and listen for your number so you can pick up your meal at the counter.

Luckily, I went with a friend who could tell me that the “T.D.O.” prominently featured on the menu board is a taco salad. Other than the salad, the menu choices were primarily enchiladas, tacos, and burritos.

You have a choice of having your meal smothered or not.

Smothered? Um . . . well . . . I don’t want to be eating live food, I guess, but smothering is an awful way to die.

I jest. “Smothered” means topped with pork chili. Which brings to mind this 1980s PSA.

I got the enchilada meal: two flour-tortilla cheese enchiladas with beans and rice. Not smothered.

For beverages, you can choose between Coke and Pepsi products (another non-sellout!), a margarita, or beer. The only Mexican beer is Corona; the rest are American brands.

Another diner at the restaurant, upon hearing that I’d not eaten there before, commented “There’s crack or something in the food. It’s addictive.”

Yes, indeed. The appeal of Taco de Oro lies primarily in its addictive combo of fat, salt, and carbohydrates. Other than the iceberg lettuce of the T.D.O. and the refried beans, the only trace of vegetable matter I saw was the reddish tinge to the enchilada sauce and the rice.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

If you need a fast-food hit, T.D.O.’s the way to go.

Text copyright 2010 by Katie Bradshaw. “Gold heel” photo credit to Jenny Rollo at sxc.hu. T.D.O. image from nebraskathegoodlife.com

Goodnight, Platte River

I was on the Monument Valley Pathway beside the North Platte River at dusk yesterday. The daytime high of sixty degrees was settling into the chill twenties. The air carried odors of damp grass and wet earth. Ducks floating in slow current muttered bedtime pleasantries to each other, and Vs of geese calling overhead made their nightly trip somewhere just south.

*Sigh*

How lovely.

The water flowing past me here came from snowmelt in the Park Range in Colorado and the Medicine Bow and Laramie Mountains in Wyoming, dry areas where residents do not readily relinquish their water, and continues through arid western Nebraska, where it was once a companion of travelers on the Oregon and Mormon Trails, and merges into the Platte River, which parallels I-80 for a hundred and fifty miles between North Platte and Grand Island and permits trees to grow that soothe the eye weary of endless plains, and joins with the Missouri River at the Iowa border, where the Lewis and Clark party stood in July 1804, and notches Kansas and then slices Missouri in half as it travels to meet the Mighty Mississippi at St. Louis, which conjures images of Mark Twain and steamboats, and surges southward, passing Illinois and Kentucky and Tennessee and Arkansas and Mississippi, before it rolls into Baton Rouge and empties into New Orleans, thick with the runoff of thousands of miles of farmland and city watersheds.

I like rivers. They tell a story with a beginning, a middle, and an end. They connect us to our past and our future. I especially like rivers that remain somewhat untamed, unconstrained by concrete retaining walls and levees and dams, because you never know which way the story will go.

Copyright 2010 by Katie Bradshaw

The railroad split and a multisyllabic, hyphenated name solution

The railroad: a source of community division in the pioneer days. (Note: yes, I realize there are palm trees in the background of this photo. It is for illustrative purposes only, you detail-oriented railfans. Sheesh.)

I moved to my current city of Scottsbluff, Nebraska, from Champaign, Illinois, and there are some interesting similarities between the communities.

Champaign is an upstart, founded in 1861 after the railroad bypassed 1833-founded Urbana by two miles. Urbana clung fiercely to the Champaign County seat. The two cities, the twin cities, seem to have forever after cooperated grudgingly, the sibling rivalry always present in the background. And there’s a contiguous 1950s add-on village that never really gets mentioned: Savoy.

Scottsbluff is an upstart, founded in 1900 after the first railroad, on the north side of the river, bypassed 1887-founded Gering, on the south side of the river. Gering clung fiercely to the Scotts Bluff County seat. The two cities, the twin cities, seem to have forever after cooperated grudgingly, the sibling rivalry always present in the background. And there’s a contiguous 1950s add-on village that never really gets mentioned: Terrytown.

The aforementioned Illinois and Nebraska twin cities have their own governments and their own identities, but for many practical purposes, the two (well, three) communities are one. Champaign-Urbana (or Urbana-Champaign, if you prefer) is a conglomeration; so is Scottsbluff-Gering (or Gering-Scottsbluff).

But multisyllabic hyphenated names are a pain to write and say, when they are written and spoken frequently.

The lazy tongues of the Illinois twin cities solved this problem by compressing the name: Chambana.

Chambana. Rolls off the tongue nicely, doesn’t it? (Thank goodness they didn’t shorten it to Urpaign; that sounds like a Tolkienesque battle injury or a severe case of stomach cramps.)

OK, Gering-Scottsbluff / Scottsbluff-Gering.

What about Gerbluff?

Mmmm . . . nah. Sounds too much like a sneeze.

Bluffing?

That’s just plain silly.

Gerscott? Scottger? Ingbluff? Scottsing?

Hmmm . . .  Scottsing. I rather like that one. Sibilant, with a note of glee club.

What say you?

Text copyright 2010 by Katie Bradshaw. Image credit to stevekrh19 at sxc.hu.

Oh give me a home, where my cell phone don’t roam

I’d heard of cell phone tower installers getting creative in the face of nimbyism, but I hadn’t noticed a “sculptural” cell phone tower until I went to California in 2007.

Two species of California cell-palm.

This past weekend, driving north on I-25 in Wyoming (I think it was Wyoming at that point, but it may have still been in Colorado), I spotted a silhouette on a hilltop.

Uh . . . that looks kinda buffalo-ish. But there aren’t any buffalo here anymore, unless someone’s ranching them. And I don’t think buffalo stand solitary on a hilltop like that. And it looks a little big, actually.

Oh! It’s a giant, metal silhouette of a buffalo that some quirky landowner put up there to fool the tourists! How droll. Ha ha. But wait a minute . . .

That “buffalo silhouette” has a bunch of projections coming out of it (which are a little hard to see in the photo). That buffalo is a cell phone tower!

Gotta love that Western ingenuity.

Scottsbluff Serengeti?

A museum diorama at the Agate Fossil Beds National Monument describes the ancient grassland from which the fossils were extracted as “Nebraska’s Serengeti Plain”.

I’ve been fortunate enough to have visited the African Serengeti. Here is a picture:

Here is a picture I took two weeks ago, from the road between Scottsbluff and Morrill:

And there are antelope here.

And I hear there was a lion killed in the area last week.

Nebraska: more exciting than you thought. Anyone up for a safari?

Copyright 2010 by Katie Bradshaw

Why I’m not watching the Olympics

The closing ceremony of the Winter 2010 Olympics in Vancouver is this weekend, and I won’t be watching.

OK, so I’ve not been the hugest fan of the Olympics. The last time I remember actively watching the Games was summer 2006. I was in Australia at the time, and all the Australians kept throwing good-natured Olympics trash talk at me when they found out I was an American. I had to watch so I could effectively trash-talk back!

But I really do want to watch the winter 2010 Olympics, mainly thanks to Facebook. I’ve got friends from all over the country posting tidbits  . . . about biathlon, figure skating, slalom, hockey, curling (and the Norwegian team’s pants) . . . and I can’t really participate in the conversation. A New York Times blog post discusses this recent phenomenon of the Internet driving television traffic.

But I can’t go there.

I’m too cheap to pay for cable or satellite TV (and I don’t need the extra distraction anyway), so I rely on over-the-air TV broadcasts.

I could get Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve on ABC, and the Superbowl on CBS, but no NBC, so no Olympics.

Here in western Nebraska, I can watch ABC out of Rapid City, South Dakota.

And CBS out of Cheyenne, Wyoming.

And that’s it.

No PBS (though according to the FCC, I should be able to get this channel.)

And no NBC, which means no Olympics.

Rival ABC suggests some ways to enjoy the Olympics without a TV. One of the suggestions is to look online for streaming video clips. I tried checking out NBC’s Olympics website, but the site is really cluttered, and they want me to install another viewer program on my browser. My computer’s slow enough as it is; I don’t need another program to bog things down further. And, if I’m not watching the same things at the same time as my friends, it kinda defeats the point. Oh well.

I got to watch Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve on South Dakota ABC. I could watch the Superbowl on Wyoming CBS. Yes, I’m missing the Olympics. But most of the time, I turn on the TV, realize there’s nothing but junk on, turn off the TV, and go on to other things. Which really isn’t so bad.

Scotty’s

Yep. Time to post another use of the coupon basket.

I ♥ Scotty's midcentury UFO sign

This time, I went to eat at Scotty’s Drive-In, a sit-down fast-food restaurant with a drive-thru window and parking in the former drive-in stalls. I’ve been wanting to eat there, simply because of their sign. So cool!

Scotty’s menu is stacked with several types of burgers, some of which are named for local interests: Bluff Burger, Big Red Burger. There are no descriptions of what the various burgers are, so I asked, and the differences seemed mostly to be in the size and number of patties. Another customer overheard that I’d not been to Scotty’s before, and she repeated what I’d heard before: that the fries are the best in town. She also recommended ordering cheese sauce along with the fries.

The burger that I got was nothing special. Typical fast-food burger on a par with McD’s. The fries were very consistent in thickness, color, and crispness, so I guess they could be in the running for “best in town”.

One thing I really like about Scotty’s, other than the sign, is the beverage menu. Scotty’s hasn’t sold out to any particular cola king. If you order a diet soda, you have a choice of Pepsi, Coke, or Dr. Pepper. And they have shakes and malts on the menu. I saw a shake mixer behind the counter, so it looks like the shakes are hand done and not dispensed from a nozzle. Sometime, when I get a craving for junk food, I’ll go back for fries-dipped-in-chocolate-malt.

I had a moment of disappointment when writing this post, though. I Googled “Scotty’s Hamburgers”, and found that, alas, Scotty’s is not as unique as I thought. I found links to Scotty’s Drive-In restaurants with the same midcentury font on their signs in Idaho Falls, Idaho, Aberdeen, South Dakota, and Bismarck, North Dakota. The Bismarck location’s menu features differently-named burgers: Rebel, Outlaw. I found a Scottie’s Drive-In located in Forest Grove, Oregon. There’s also online evidence of Scotty’s of years past in Ann Arbor, Michigan and Sunny Isles, Florida.

I learned from a Bismarck information website:

“Scotty’s was once a regional restaurant chain, with locations in at least six states, however the Bismarck location is now one of only three known survivors, all of which have no connection to each other. There were four operating locations up until 2009, when the location in Aberdeen, SD switched names and formats.”

The comment that the restaurant “switched names and formats” doesn’t quite do justice to what happened at the Aberdeen location. As I read on another blog, they destroyed the Scotty’s sign! Tore down the über-cool midcentury modern UFO sign!

The Scottsbluff Scotty’s Drive-In is a remnant of midcentury Americana that’s becoming more and more rare. I, for one, will do my part to help it stay a part of the Scottsbluff streetscape. I hereby vow that whenever I get a grease craving, I’ll quench it at Scotty’s.

UPDATE #1:

Interesting. The link I included for the Abderdeen, South Dakota, site was to a tourism wesbite. The restaurant had been remodeled beyond all recognition in October ‘09, but it was still listed on the tourism website as of yesterday morning. I tried to show the link to someone, and THE PHOTO’S BEEN TAKEN OFF THE SITE. Does that mean that someone other than my mom and three friends is reading this??

UPDATE #2

Hold the phone! The Aberdeen Scotty’s UFO sign wasn’t destroyed . . . just modified:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/30185357@N03/4119454620/

Copyright 2010 by Katie Bradshaw

The ailing citizenry of Scottsbluff

Back when I was investigating Scottsbluff as a place to live, I of course Googled it and found its Wikipedia entry. The page contained the following none-too-flattering factoid, courtesy of qualityhealth.com:

WalMart shoppers?

Geez. Given that having fat friends can make you fat, too, did I really want to move to Scottsbluff?

When I visited Scottsbluff, the populace didn’t appear to be any more tubby than anywhere else I’ve lived.

I’ve mentioned the disconnect between the article and my observations to a few Scottsbluff residents, and the general response seems to be “Yeah, but did you go to WalMart? That’s where all the fat people are.”

Ahem . . . interesting implications, given that the speakers would have to have been in the WalMart to have made the observation.

With the great opportunities for running in the Scottsbluff area and the interesting places to hike, like Wildcat Hills and Agate Fossil Beds National Monument, I figured that the obesity data was some kind of statistical fluke.

Then, all over the news recently, were the county health rankings released in a University of Wisconsin and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation report. Scotts Bluff County ranked in the bottom 10 counties in the state, healthwise.

I actually hollered at the newscaster on TV. “What? Are you kidding? With all the outdoor activities there are here?”

But then I got to thinking about what I’ve learned about the Scottsbluff area since I’ve moved here. “It’s got to be related to poverty. Poverty and obesity are linked.”

I just checked the data. According to 2006 U.S. Census estimates, Scotts Bluff County has the fifth highest percentage of people living in poverty in Nebraska, at 17.8%. Guess it makes sense to go looking for the obese at a low-cost retail establishment.

Television news provides maddeningly little substance to its headlines, so I had to turn to the Internet to really parse out what the Scotts Bluff County health ranking was based on. Here’s a screen shot from the report available on the Nebraska county health rankings site:

And here were Scotts Bluff County’s rankings in those areas, out of 75 counties studied:

• Mortality: 71
• Morbidity: 73
• Health behaviors: 61
• Clinical care: 2 (A bright spot. We even beat Lincoln’s Lancaster County on this one. Three cheers for Regional West!)
• Socioeconomic factors: 72
• Physical environment: 31

In summary, Scotts Bluff County residents are more likely than other residents of the state to die younger, be sicker, live unhealthier lives, and live in poverty. Yikes. That’s a big challenge. The county health rankings website provides some suggestions about how to take action.

This got me to thinking about my earlier assumption that outdoor opportunities should correlate to health. Other than the obvious problems of having to work three jobs to make ends meet and having no time, or not having a vehicle to access the outdoor recreation sites, there’s this fact: public lands may belong to the public, but access ain’t free.

To wander in Wildcat Hills, you need to pay $4 per day, or $20 for an annual pass (which has to be “permanently affixed” to one, and only one, vehicle). To visit Scotts Bluff National Monument or Agate Fossil Beds, you need to pay $3 per person or $5 per car for a week’s use (Whaat? Two bicyclists or hikers must pay more than a carful of people??), or $15 for a local annual pass.

Can’t say that if I were struggling to make ends meet I would choose to spend my last dollar on access to a state or federal park.

The local YMCA offers discounted or waived fees for people with limited incomes. I can’t find any links indicating that low-income people can catch a break on admission fees to publicly-owned lands, with two exceptions for the federal lands pass, which is reduced from $80 to $10 for seniors (regardless of income) and is free for disabled individuals.

Interesting . . .

Text copyright 2010 by Katie. Image credit to geo_c at sxc.hu.

Happy trails to me

Later in life than many people, I became a runner. More of a hobby runner, really. I’m not very fast, but I like to think I’m persistent. And I love, love, love the running environment of Scottsbluff.

The slightly thinner atmosphere at 3,800 feet took some adjustment, but I consider it a bonus, a competitive advantage. It makes me feel scrappier to know that I can now run with 10% less oxygen. If I were more aggressive, I might trash-talk my Iowa running buddies, maybe with the BolderBOULDER Colorado race motto: sea level is for sissies.

I love that the sun often warms the temps into the 40s on winter afternoons, and I’m really looking forward to running in the summer, in the dry coolness of morning, without all the sticky, humid, exhalations of corn fields that I’m used to.

There are oodles of delicious, low-traffic, joint-friendly gravel roads here, most of them flat, with an occasional gentle hill for spice. Sometimes when I’m out running, I get the Cole Porter song going through my head: Don’t Fence Me In.

Oh, give me land, lots of land under starry skies above,
Don’t fence me in.
Let me ride through the wide open country that I love,
Don’t fence me in.
Let me be by myself in the evenin’ breeze,
And listen to the murmur of the cottonwood trees,
Send me off forever but I ask you please,
Don’t fence me in.

The gravel road: a lovely spot for a run, provided the wind's not kicking.

This past Saturday morning, I met some members of the nascent local running group to chug out a few miles on the roads just north of town. Despite the recent snowfall, the road was in great condition. Most of the snow had been cleared. Maybe an inch of fresh snow was covering the gravel — just enough to reveal the scratchings of ground birds and the tracks of some wee beasties who, for reasons unknown, crossed the dangerous, wide road sometime near dawn.

We runners only saw one vehicle on this road — a pickup truck. We waved to the driver as he passed, as per common country courtesy, and he waved back, cigarette in hand.

“Geez, a smoker. I don’t understand why people do that.”

“Geez, out running at eight o’clock on a twenty-degree Saturday morning in the snow. I don’t understand why people do that.”

If the gravel roads get too muddy in the spring, a nice, flat path runs for about 1.7 miles along the North Platte River: the Monument Valley Pathway. I’ve not had a chance to run this route yet. Supposedly, links are being developed between this path and the U Street Pathway in Gering, which connects to a bike path leading up to Scotts Bluff National Monument, for a total of about 6 miles.

And speaking of the monument, the Saddle Rock Trail is the ultimate in hill training. The 1.6-mile trail climbs about 480 feet from the Visitors Center, according to the Google-maps-based USA Track & Field route mapper (the Parks Service gives an elevation gain of 433 feet). Scotts Bluff has become my personal challenge.

Some day! [Shakes fist.] Some day I will be able to jog all the way to the top without stopping to walk!

View from the tunnel on Saddle Rock Trail, about a mile from the start of the path at the Visitors Center, which is hidden just behind the monument in this photo. 280 vertical feet traveled, 200 to go.

Copyright 2010 by Katie Bradshaw

Dear students: get outta town

Travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living. -Miriam Beard

Exiting the Pucará de Tilcara, Argentina. This journey helped me see the light.

Back in 2006, I had a life-changing experience: husband and I wandered for a couple of weeks through Argentina. While I’d been abroad before, this was my first time traveling without an agenda in a non-English-speaking country. I can’t even begin to describe the subtle effects this experience had on the way I view the world and my life. (It’s what has helped me to “see” Scottsbluff and to write this blog.) I returned home with a drive to help others grow through travel, and I left a solid lab technician job for a one-year appointment in a study abroad office.

When I was preparing to move to Scottsbluff, I searched the website of Western Nebraska Community College to find out whether there was a study abroad program that I might be able to glom onto. Alas, the only links I found were for a generic clearinghouse and information for international students studying here. I assumed there was no program.

Surprise, surprise — last week I saw advertisements for a fundraiser to support WNCC students traveling to Spain this summer. I still can’t find information about study abroad opportunities on the WNCC website (other than a rather negative-sounding student handbook), but at least now I know the college supports it. WNCC’s 2010 self study includes the statement that “WNCC
supports study-abroad opportunities” and mentions that 60 (!) students have studied abroad through WNCC in the last decade.

I know that one of the perceived barriers to studying abroad is the cost, particularly for community college students, so a fundraiser is a great idea. I had to check it out!

The culinary staff at the Gering Civic Center pulled together a menu of Midwestern-palate-friendly tapas. (Note: enunciate carefully when you speak of spending an evening in a tapas bar.)

Tapas olives á la Gering: marinated with citrus rind and cumin seed.

Two pros from Fort Collins and two students entertained the audience with their dancing. (I love watching Spanish dancers, both those with and without vertebrae).

The dancers' flouncy skirts are fun.

Generous businesses and individuals from around the community contributed items for a silent auction.

This student-made piñata was my favorite item. I lost the bid, unfortunately.

The event had a great turnout. The ballroom was full, and many of the silent auction sheets had bidding wars going. The scale of this fundraising event and the support from the community impressed the heck out of me.

I’ve heard it mentioned a few times that people in this area have a hard time thinking outside the box. If that’s true, perhaps it’s due to the homogeneity of the region, which rarely confronts people with new ideas. It’s been shown that studying abroad improves creativity and problem-solving ability. This summer, several students will return from Spain to western Nebraska with new skills that may enable them to see the potential of the panhandle in a new light. This region, this country, could use more creative thinkers like them.

Copyright 2010 by Katie Bradshaw