nebraska and other adventures

the new year has been busy.  shortly after the new year three of us flew to nebraska to essentially load a bakery into several tractor trailers for a customer.  getting there was a bit of an adventure in itself.  aaron, fred and i were tapped to go.  we had to leave from dulles.  fred isn't the biggest fan of flying, and hadn't been on a plane since 1996.  to ease all of our nerves we visited a cozy little bar before our flight.  i had a sizeable margarita and fred had a double shot of jack daniels.  silliness ensued.

-the concierge started detailing boarding priorities before we got on to the plane starting with those whose tickets had 'A' and moving through the alphabet.  when they got to our letter, fred stood up and yelled 'bingo!'

we had a brief layover in chicago.  after a greasy dinner, some more alcohol and a rendezvous with jake and ellwood blues, we got on another plane to omaha.

the first thing you should know about nebraska is that it is extremely cold and very windy.  the sunrise in january isn't till almost 8am.  the second thing you should know about nebraska is that they have kickass beef.  for the three days we were there i ate almost exclusively red meat.  if i lived there i might have a cholesterol problem.

the main reason we were there was to disassemble a 3.5 ton bread oven that cooked 100 loaves an hour.  it was the size of my entire kitchen.

this took about two days.  as we took it apart we had to label everything for when we put it back together, which will be somewhere in DC later this year.  cue photo montage...

aaron is the brains of the operation

there were around a thousand screws taken out

removing the unions which held the front on

fred yelled at me for taking pictures and not helping so here's where we end up.  almost there.

boy i'm dirty

time to load up.  this is where cheryl comes in.

a few well-earned libations...

and a shot of the gang

this job was actually a lot of fun.  it was hard, and the pictures don't show all the other things in there- a half ton floor mixer, loads of refrigeration, furniture, gigantic sinks.  the trip back was not fun.  they closed the chicago-midway airport due to snow and ice.  they diverted us to indianapolis int'l.  of the seven hours we were there, they let us off the plane for about 45 minutes.  indiana looked like this:

they de-iced the plane and flew us back to chicago as soon as it re-opened.  everyone was grumpy and pissed, until we got on the plane back to DC.  soul plane!

so there it is.  it's a small operation we have and there's always a lot going on.  more to come!