We got to Iowa yesterday and were able to get Gabby settled into farm camp! She loves camp and got to check cows with her Camp Directors shortly after arrival.
The skies were getting dark as you can see in this picture and shortly after we went inside the skies opened up. Deluge of rain, wind, and lightning. We all commented that being in a tent or on our bike next week during that would be terrible. Here’s hoping Mother Nature got it out of her system so next week is smooth sailing! I think we got about 1.5 inches in less than 30 minutes.
Unfortunately other parts of Iowa were not so lucky. There were several tornados in Bondurant, Pella, and Marshalltown. I went to college in Pella and have several friends in all of those areas. Thankfully no major injuries occurred but the destruction is remarkable. We will be riding less than 20 miles from where some of the tornados happened next week, so it puts everything in perspective. We’ve been fortunate in the past that we haven’t had major issues and we pray that continues next week.
The Philly boys are riding RAGBRAI again this year, but Carlos will not be returning. He decided to celebrate his anniversary with his wife this year!! They are driving in today so hopefully we will see them later when we check in our bikes.
Luckily my cousin Sarah and her husband Kenny were in Iowa for her class reunion so we were able to catch up over breakfast today. We don’t see each other often but there are lots of laughs when we do get together! I think we may have convinced Kenny to do RAGBRAI in the future. He doesn’t like riding bikes, but he does love pie so that just may sway him!
After breakfast most of the rest of the afternoon before dropping our bikes off was spent getting last minute work stuff in order. On the way to drop off our bikes we did one of the most important pre RAGBRAI tasks; BUS SNACKS! If you are a faithful blog reader you’ll recall that we didn’t know about the need for bus snacks our first time around and almost had to sneak attack some sleeping people! But what we also learned that day was the bus makes a food pit stop, we were saved!!! But more importantly while getting our bus snacks today we encountered a not so happy tiera wearing child. While we could hear an unhappy little one, we did not expect to find a child sitting on the floor, full pouting mode, with a tiera on in front of the freezer section. As the kid is pouting the mom is checking out and yelling that it’s time to go and we are just laughing. It was fantastic! 
As we rolled into bike drop off and packet pocket we saw the boys! Although Carlos is not here this year (we miss you Carlos) we got to see Ray and Vince and meet the 3 newest Philly boys to join the fun...so let me leave this here..the boys did RAGBRAI one time, don’t blog about it and they get 3 friends to join the fun..we are embarking on RAGBRAI #4, write an amazing blog and have lots of fun friends who have bikes and we’ve gotten no one to join us....can 2019 be the year that, that finally changes?!? TBD....
Since we chatted with the boys for some time we had to wait in a rather long line to drop off our bikes but while waiting in line we got to see one of the most magnificent mullets we have witnessed in our lives! Now it wasn’t your typical business in the front and party in the back mullet it was a party all over messy hair don’t care type of mullet kinda magical like a unicorn 🦄. So while many who ride a bike wear a helmet to protect their head, this guy must wear a helmet to protect his mullet! I’m sure the majestic mullet will make a blog return this week!
On the way to dinner after bike drop off we had our celebration cannolis that Ray got for us! Now if you haven’t had a real deal cannoli in your life what the heck are you waiting for?!? It does a soul good! We got to celebrate promotion and tenure for Dorice and Stacey’s engagement-Thanks Ray!
We had dinner with Carol and Lou and just like last year we had a period of some pretty good rain now last year was a lot worse but I’m starting to notice a trend here so let’s hope the rain is out of the forecast for the rest of the week (I haven’t checked the weather since I feel the unknown is safer). After dinner it time to head back to the house and do some last minute prep (like pack our bus snacks in our bag)! Tomorrow is an early morning as we will head out to the bus around 5AM and then hunker down for the long bus ride to the starting point...where you will hear plenty of adults ask “are we there yet?”
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