So that one big hill that we told you about last night well we made it up many hills but never found this long flat stretch that we were told of...really just a preview of the hills that we would face ALL DAY LONG! Ride started off well with some cloud cover & nice temps, we stopped in the first town for a morning snack we had kolaches (a Norwegian pastry) they were a solid choice & super fresh & only a buck! We then peddled onto Springville where we had breakfast again a RAGBRAI favorite PANCAKES & sausage at the American Legion...these men know their way around a griddle! We then headed down the street to the church to get Dorice pie slice #4....homemade cherry...not pie filling out of a can cherry! 
We hung around here for awhile as Dorice's parents were going to meet us in the next town & since we were cruising along today (as true beasts do) the only way to slow us down was to keep us from moving.
When we got into Mt. Vernon is was PACKED! The town itself is super hilly so it's hard to navigate 15,000 cyclists through the narrow streets. Today was college jersey day, so I was wearing my Central College jersey with pride. I had a guy stop me because he was taking pictures of all the jerseys and he didn't have a Central one! You're welcome random guy!! My parents met us here and we found them relatively quickly despite the chaos! We talked to them for awhile and then headed into the chaos a bit more. I had arranged to meet up at a family friends house about a mile south of town off the route so Stacey and I rode there and my parents met us there. We got to Bill & Donna's right as it started sprinkling....perfect timing!! They have a large community share garden so they showed us around and we escaped the rain for a bit. It wasn't raining real hard so that was good. After talking with them and getting some zip loc bags to reinforce our cell phones we decided to head out since it didn't look like the rain was stopping any time soon. Yes folks...we had another Friday on RAGBRAI in the rain. It wasn't as cold as last year and it wasn't torrential downpour like last year...yay! However, we did not have our rain gear like last year because there was no chance of rain when we left in the morning....BOOOOOO....our rain jackets were in the truck...bummer!
Now the rain wasn't horrible, but the wind was straight up headwind and it was pelting the rain into our faces. At one point we wondered if it was hail because it hurt so bad. We had committed to eating Mr. Porkchop today so we knew we just had to make it to him which should only be about 5 miles or so. We had some decent inclines into this wind and then there is was a glorious steep downhill. This is a hill where I should have been going about 30 mph, but with the glorious headwind I was pedaling and struggling. I looked at my speedometer and saw 21...then 20...then 19 mph while pedaling downhill....this wind was no joke. And it was keeping us from Mr. Porkchop! And then we saw it....the smoke rolling from the next hill...he was in sight!!! Hallelujah! Of course then we also saw a huge lighting bolt in the distance...perfect timing!!!
Mr. Porkchop did not disappoint, we enjoyed our porkchop in one of the sheds on the property that Mr. Porkchop was located at. 
Well since the wind was brutal & the hills were not playing nice we decided to have a Thelma ice cream sandwich now these things are awesome..fresh baked cookies with great ice cream so many fantastic flavor combinations it's a struggle to choose. After we had ice cream sandwiches we decided to hit the road again. It was not really raining anymore at this point but man that freaking headwind was killer. We continued pushing along. We didn't have many great photo ops today or fun activities to do besides ride our bikes of course but we did take a picture with the hawkeye dogs (we'll post that picture at a later time) after this town it was just about 20 miles out from camp but we had a lot of fun in those last 20 miles!
Did I mention that we had a lot of hills today?!? The last 20 miles had a few hills that I think there were more people walking their bikes up then riding. For our triathlon training buddies...these hills were cousins to the Madison three sisters....not kidding! They were tough!!! Our first stop on the final 20 mile "tour" was the craft beer tent where we ran into our buddies Roger & Larry, there was a band playing & it was just a great spot to enjoy. At this point the sun was out and it was a great view on top of the hill. There was a band playing and the female singer was awesome! All the guys Around us were thinking she was about 35+ years old, but we knew she was in mid to late twenties. The guys wanted to bet, so we all get a dollar on her age. Roger being the gentleman that he's is marched right up to her and asked her how old she was...and she wasn't too pleased but we did finally find out she was 28. Winner winner Dorice won the bet in guessing 28!!! Sorry boys! We all decided that we needed to head for camp, so we took off and decided that the girls would try to beat the boys to camp. Well that's all fine and good but Stacey had a little issue. I took off and heard her say she was on the road, but about a half mile down I can't find her. She finally comes and says..." I cant clip in to my pedals...either one". Now Stacey bought cleat covers for when we had to walk around, so I said do you still have the covers on? Well yes folks...she did...HILLARIOUS! We busted out laughing because only Stacey would try to keep clipping in with her covers on!!! We stopped at the perfect point though as they were handing out free ice pops...we took our ice pops and rode on.
Our next stop on the 20 miles of fun tour lead us to meet Dan Gable & take a picture we him..he was super nice & you can tell that he is just a badass...if you don't know who he is you need to learn about him #respect! 
We then continued to get hammered by hills to only then come upon the dam it was at this point that we supposedly had about 5 miles to the end town...5 never equals 5 in RAGBRAI miles. We stopped took a few pictures & then peddled on to put another day of riding into the books. 
As we rolled into town we were greeted by a red carpet the bad thing about this is that we were still some miles away from our campsite. We back tracked a little bit to find the signs to our campsite which seemed like it took forever to find today. We rolled into camp after completing 70 miles at our latest time ever not because we rode slow (it was actually some of our hardest and fastest riding ever on RAGBRAI) but because we had many fun stops especially towards the end. 
So our shower tonight consisted of swimming in a pool, going down a water slide(with a lot of speed), and doing a cannon ball off of the diving board. We washed our face & threw some conditioner in our hair post "shower swim" in the outside shower but that was about the extent of that & we are perfectly fine with it. The showers in the pool had super long lines and it was about a billion degrees inside...not worth it! So it's at the pool where the blog title comes from...as we were moving from the shallow end to the deep end I asked Dorice how deep the water was..her response "boob deep" my next question " how tall are your boobs?" We had a good laugh on that one....for the record Stacey can stand in "boob deep" water!!
We then headed downtown to grab some dinner but before getting on the shuttle Dorice had to grab pie #5. Apple pie from the Masons. 
Dinner was nothing special we grabbed a burger at the Backpocket Brewery then came back to camp. We got off the shuttle and grabbed another one of the awesome Thelma cookie ice cream sandwiches before calling it a night! 
One more day of riding to go...bittersweet for sure but today kick our tails a little bit! Until tomorrow...over and out!
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