Omaha... Where Coffee is an Errand, not an Outing

We have a great gym at our Club. It's all of 90 seconds from my house (up at the pool) and recently, there have even been a few more people there than just me. Remember, this is Omaha, and people like to stay home, so having people come out to the gym is big.

Anyway, I was on the treadmill the other day talking to a women from my golf league (wow, a friendly acquaintance!) when the assistant manager of the Club walked in. I told him it would be great if the Club had coffee and bagels and maybe a New York Times, Chicago Trib, etc on Saturday or Sunday mornings and people could come up and hang out. My friendly acquaintance said that she'd never go because she doesn't eat bagels and doesn't like their coffee and her husband likes to make breakfast so they stay home. Typical Omaha. How do you meet anyone if everyone stays home?!?!?!

I had to laugh.... in Boston, coffee was an outing. Here, if you go out for coffee at all, it's an errand. In Boston you knew you'd run into a half dozen people en route to pick up coffee and you'd chat and shoot the breeze. It was a nice sense of community. Here no one wants to go out for coffee, or anything for that matter... they just stay home... in their 5,000 square foot house.... alone. Yawn.

We have wonderful friends from Boston, the Spencers, and our two families literally met at a coffee shop when we both started coming on Sunday mornings before our respective church services. We got to know each other and soon we made a point of coming a bit earlier to have breakfast together. How I miss those days, and the opportunity to meet receptive people like that. The really funny thing is that they moved from Boston shortly after we did and miss the urban, pedestrian lifestyle just as much as I do. Hopefully we'll all find our way back to the comfort of the urban jungle, and the neighborhood coffee shop again!