"I'm sure something interesting will happen; it usually does in the least interesting places." - Brian, a loyal SLAA reader

And he was right. It turns out that my hotel for the first night of this trip ("Ameristar") turned out to be part of a Riverboat Casino and Hotel complex.

I've played in Atlantic City and Las Vegas but never on a Midwestern riverboat.

So, my "boring" night in Council Bluffs Iowa turned into an adventure, a feast for the eyes and a night of degenerate gambling.

After meetings this morning we drove from Omaha, NE to Kansas City, MO.

Some people think driving for three hours with nothing but farms on either side of the road is boring. I don't see it that way. I saw the past, the present and the future in the fallow fields, handsome farmhouse, rich soil, broken down barns and red irrigation machines.

I saw 200 years of toil, sweat, individualism and struggle. I saw a nation and world fed. I saw the takeover of corporate farms, the shrinking of the rural population from 80% to 10%. I saw that these farms will never completely go away, or maybe, with unknown methods of creating the food of the future, maybe they will.

Disclaimer: No blue-haired slot players or farmers were harmed in the making of this post.