In the previous edition of this mini-series, Elizabeth and I made the trip from Norman to Lincoln, Nebraska over the course of 24 hours. That gave us time to stay with friends in Wichita, scratch off a Kansas NPS unit, and then get into some concerning car trouble right as we got into Nebraska. The story left off with us stranded at our hotel in Lincoln on Friday night, trying to rally the mood after a real buzzkill of an afternoon.
In the end, I had to agree with Elizabeth. The show must go on! We were going to have a great weekend and damn the torpedoes. So let’s pick back up as an Uber dropped us off in downtown Lincoln for date night:
A Pizza Train
All of my research on the best place to go in downtown Lincoln led me to the Railyard area. It’s an entertainment district squished between the university on the east and the UP tracks on the west. I have to commend Husker fans, because they showed up in absolute full force on a Friday night. I think the next day was their homecoming game against Maryland (wedding and a football game in the same town at the same time – oh no!) and there was some sort of meet and greet with the men’s basketball team. Still, it was stunning to see every single damn person in The Railyard wearing their Big Red apparel. I turned to Elizabeth and whispered “is their game tonight?”
After a few minutes of getting our bearings straight, Elizabeth found something really promising: a pizza truck that was actually a converted train locomotive. It was on the site of a brewery and you could take your pizza and beer back and forth between the indoor and outdoor section as needed (Kinkaider Brewing & Pizza Train, as the joint is aptly known). Those who know me know that I love beer, and I love trains, and honestly, a “Smokestack birria” pizza is going to be enough to make me discard my usual disdain for pizzas.
Elizabeth and I had a nice time sitting outside in the early-fall chill, listening to the energy and chatter and getting way-too-invested in an early-season Friday night game between Pitt and Virginia Tech. There have been many, many worse nights in my life.
Beer Choir
But to get from “pretty good night” to “legendary” you need something out of the ordinary to occur. We were wandering through the downtown part of Lincoln, looking for somewhere to get some ice cream or something to nightcap the day. Lo and behold, did we stumble upon a nightcap: Bierhaus Maisschäler in the Haymarket district.
You may be thinking: Wow, Nolan, you found a German beerhouse. That’s so mundane. But no, what really made this legendary was what happened when Elizabeth and I walked in: an entire corner of the bar was devoted to a band that was playing. Unusually, the audience didn’t just seem to be listening or not paying attention to this band. They seemed to be listening along?
After Elizabeth and I got our beers (thank you, Bierhaus Maisschäler, for selling me a full liter like a real German would do), we moved over in that direction to see what was going on. At the end of the song, the whole crowd assembled raised their beers and yelled out “BEER CHOIR”.
What was this magical place?
Someone at one of the nearby tables saw us staring and invited us to sit down. She explained that this was in fact, Beer Choir, and we could sing right along. Here was the hymnal! I’m not joking. There was a hymn book of German beer songs. There was a guy banging away on the cowbell. After I showed some enthusiasm for Beer Choir, I was promptly handed a tamborine.
I really can’t emphasize this enough: this place and these people rocked.
Elizabeth and I stayed and listened and sang along with Beer Choir (raising our steins at the end of each song) for the final 45 minutes of their set, ending with a moving rendition of Auld Lang Syne. After that, we moved outside because the college students were encroaching on all of the indoor space, and because Elizabeth wanted a cookie skillet from the bar before we went back to the hotel. When she’s buzzed, she gets what she wants.
Night number two of our little weekend getaway ended in a rousing recovery for our spirits after the crushing car troubles a few hours ago. Nothing to cure the soul quite like…
BEER CHOIR.
Return of the Sam
An undercurrent to this weekend trip that Elizabeth and I were both excited about: seeing Sam again. You might think that was a little dramatic considering it had just been a little over a week since we’d last seen him, but I disagree. You see, after a decade of living in Oklahoma, Elizabeth and I were just now getting used to life in Oklahoma without Samuel Emmerson. He had finished up his PhD in September, moved to Boston, and started a new job with MIT. Elizabeth said that his departure didn’t feel real at first because we knew we’d be seeing him again shortly at the wedding. But I’ll tell you what – damn if it wasn’t good to see him again at the hotel breakfast the next morning.
Wedding Day Golf Round
Why did Elizabeth and I see Sam so early? Why, to golf with him, of course! If you’re going to go on a trip somewhere, you may as well pack your golf clubs in the backseat and get some work in at the links.
The backseat… of course, if your car is at Honda of Lincoln, that can cause an issue with the whole “getting your clubs thing”. Fortunately, Dave at the dealership was a real class act. He told us to come on by and let him know when we were there so we could rescue my (and Elizabeth’s) bag of clubs for our use. As it was, he actually called me right as the three of us were rolling up in Sam’s rental car. The verdict: a frayed brake pad that was letting metal grind on metal. No permanent damage and they could fix up the car with relative ease before noon. That is the good news I was hoping for.
So now the cheerful vibe of the weekend was fully back on. It was a beautiful, crisp fall morning with absolutely no wind. The recent rains had made for some… shall we say… receptive fairways at Mahoney Golf Course. Our tee time was early enough that the course was still relatively empty. The guys at the front counter made it clear that Lincoln doesn’t take their munis quite as seriously as OKC or Norman do, which isn’t a bad thing. The fairways and roughs were a lush green that I had long since given up on seeing in drought-stricken Oklahoma:
The biggest issue was sharing a bag of clubs with Sam, particularly when one of us went on an adventure that was far from the other. Fortunately, no one was pressing up behind us. Elizabeth was an excellent caddie, too, driving up and down the course to deliver us the club we needed.
The course was pretty easy and I racked up some decent holes early on, then it was suddenly really difficult and I blew up on several in a row, and then (coincidentally, right after Elizabeth left to take an Uber back to the dealership to pick up my car), we both caught a little bit of fire on a pretty easy back 9. Mostly I just wanted to soak it in. Who knows when the two of us were going to get to play another round? The rest of course woke up later in the morning. The sun rose to make it a beautiful day. And we played some golf.
A Brief Interlude About Runza
Apparently Elizabeth and Sam had no idea what a Runza actually was. For those unaware, Runza is the inexplicably beloved fast food chain across the state of Nebraska. Their most famous food item is the eponymous Runza, which is sort of like a Hot Pocket if the insides were essentially hamburger filling instead of pizza filling. It’s greasy, it’s not particularly good, and the people of the Cornhusker State go wild for it.
I guess Sam and Elizabeth were both under the impression that it was closer to a Midwest Subway. They apparently had never had it before this trip, whereas I have experience in the Church of Runza from previous field work in the state. Elizabeth was already back at the hotel when Sam and I finished our round, so Sam got his spiritual awakening on this day. We ordered it at the drive-thru and brought it back to Elizabeth and my hotel room, to be consumed on the bed while watching college football on the little hotel room TV.
Sam was disappointed to learn that Runza is not, in fact, good.
The Wedding
The main event of the trip for Kevin and Maddy’s wedding was, well, Kevin and Maddy’s wedding. They had the ceremony at the First Presbyterian Church of Lincoln, Maddy’s childhood church, in midafternoon. My fears about the Husker game traffic were unfounded as the stadium was several blocks away and everyone was in their seats by that point.
Elizabeth, Sam, Stephen and I arrived early enough to get prime seats in one of the pews. Several other grad student friends of mine were already there, and then it was a sea of people I didn’t know. I won’t lie and say there wasn’t a part of me that feared the wedding service would take well over an hour (give me a break, I was in a Catholic wedding just last year!), but the service was short, sweet, and poignant. My buddy Mike read the scripture, the minister gave a brief but thought-provoking sermon on the power of sincerity and enthusiasm in marriage and the modern world, and then my friends said their vows. Maddy’s father cried. Elizabeth is a sucker for parents crying, so she cried herself. I didn’t cry, but I felt strong emotions somewhere in the deep recesses of my heart, and that counts too. I also stayed awake. That doesn’t sound like an accomplishment, but the church was so warm that it was impossible not to get a little sleepy.
The most important takeaway from the entire wedding, in my opinion, was that there two organs inside the First Presbyterian Church. There was one up by the pulpit; the organist played it with skill and also at an appropriate sound level. Then there was one behind the pews in the back of the church. And let me tell you: that is the single loudest church organ I have EVER heard.
The Reception
The best part of any wedding is the reception. When that reception is at a winery out on the edge of civilization in Seward, Nebraska, you can’t help but feel high hopes for the course of the day.
Those high hopes were justified. The bride and groom did a phenomenal job setting up their party. The winery’s reception hall was canted on a beautiful hillside. As the sun set over the grapevines, and of course the endless cornfields to the west, it threw rays of red-orange light into the courtyard that just begged for you to get pictures with your significant other during golden hour.
The courtyard had games, too. Sam and I tried our luck at pitching plastic golf balls into the target with the world’s worst plastic golf clubs from 25 feet with no luck. Later in the night, when the sun had gone down, Elizabeth and I drew a hell of a crowd during our intense game of Jenga on the porch. There was a cute little walking path with string lights above it. Late in the evening, Elizabeth and I took a stroll down it. We could sit on a bench, stare up at the sky, and see the Milky Way painted with thousands of stars. To our suburban eyes, this is a rare treat.
Inside the event space, the DJ kept up a lively stream of tunes. I am sad to note that my requested Sabrina Carpenter song either did not come on or came on when I was elsewhere, but I’m sure Maddy and Kevin did not tell the DJ not to play my request. They told the DJ not to play Sam’s request, but somehow, by the end of the night, he got her to play The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. Sometimes on your wedding day you just have to smile, nod, and acknowledge that someone got the better of your best-laid plans.
The speeches from the best man, maid of honor, and the first dances were all touching in their own right. I felt like I got to learn more about what wonderful people my friends are through it. Plus (and this is most important), there were at least five different types of wine open at the bar. It was a wine-and-beer-only affair, but the winery had one special hard seltzer that Mike and I went after pretty heftily. If you work hard enough, you can get a healthy buzz even at a wine-and-beer-only reception, and I’ve never been afraid to work hard.
When the night came to an end and the only ones left on the dance floor were some young relatives doing Tik Tok dances to every song on my Spotify playlist, Elizabeth/Sam/Stephen/myself ordered an Uber out to this remote corner of the world and got a ride back to the hotel. We were safe and snuggled in bed by midnight or so.
It was a good day.
A Note to the Newlyweds
Thanks to my friends Kevin and Maddy for inviting us to be a tiny part of their special day. It’s a cheesy thing to say, but who doesn’t love love? Without this event, the entire weekend surrounding it wouldn’t have happened and Elizabeth and I would be lacking in some great lifelong memories. So to all of those years that I’ve annoyed Kevin in fantasy football, or made Maddy go to Braum’s after rock climbing for a milkshake, or insulted their favorite college football teams: thanks for putting up with Elizabeth and me, and we both wish you a lifetime of happiness together.
Stay tuned for a much shorter part 3 – Elizabeth and I head home, stop at a Nebraska NPS unit, and she finally gets to try her first Runza.
