We had 10 miles to the first town and it was crazy getting out of Siguorney as they did not have very good traffic control! As there was not much in the first town we decided to ride the 5 miles to the next town for breakfast. Some breakfast burritos and a cinnamon roll to get the body going today! There was some amateur wrestling going on and a brass band playing that have probably been playing together for a long time!
As we were leaving Keota I saw a sign that said Snedigar on it. Sure enough it was the mom of a college friend Sami Allen! It was so good to see Sami’s Mom and catch up a bit.
We got to Wellman and it was crowded going through town. Like bump into each all the time busy. But I was able to make my way over for some delicious peach pie today. It was a piece of pie and a bottle of water for $4...what a steal. We ran into Glen here and talked to him for a bit.
This was the scene mid way through the walk in Wellman. You can’t tell how big the hill of people was. As we were leaving Wellman we had a little tailwind and Stacey picked up a stage 5 clinger! He was on her like a fat kid chasing the ice cream truck. Now the best thing is that he looked like he was about 13! I think he was attracted to Stacey’s teenage mutant ninja turtle socks! Well this clinger hung with us all the way to the next town. About 7 miles and we tried to drop him but he hung on going 21-22 mph! When we stopped we gave him kudos and talked to him a bit. Matthew is from Florida and this is his 7th RAGBRAI. He’s 17 and the kid can ride!!
When we got to Kalona we had to get the famous Kalona homemade ice cream bar! It was AMAZING!!We ran into the boys and they all had one too. Kalona has a big Mennonite and Amish population so the food was on point. Lots of homemade with love items!! The town had a great feel and the music was good so we hung out there for awhile!
We made it to Riverside and there was a human foosball game so stacey, Vince and I played a game. We played awesome defense! Let’s just call ourselves the Steel Curtain! The people on the other team were mad that they weren’t getting the ball! That may be why they started kicking at Stacey when she fell on the ground!! No worries she was fine!As we were leaving Riverside I got a message from my parents that they were in the next town. We spotted them and talked to them awhile. But that was after we got our tails kicked by some good wind and hills. How fitting that we had hills as we rode into the town Hills! We talked to my parents for awhile and Vince and Ray stopped to say hi as well. Stacey had a little unclipping incident but she made some new friends as she tried to get herself untangle herself from her bike.
As we rode into the final town we had some good headwinds to fight and of course a few hills. As we were rolling along in a decent pace line a kid about 11 years old just crashed in the middle of the road on his bike. The kid was super tough and quickly got himself and off of the road. We stopped to make sure he was ok and in true cycling fashion he asked his dad if his bike was ok...well it wasn’t in the best shape but fixable. Thankfully he felt ok and we keep on going. As we came into Iowa City we had quite the ride to our campground. As we were coming around the corner a lady on a recumbent bike stopped and was blocking the road and Dorice had to do some fancy bike handling not to crash into her! (This was after the near death by porta pottie I had earlier. This guy bee lined his bike right to the row of them but didn’t look to see that I was coming behind him. Our shoulders touched but I was able to avoid collision. My RAGBRAI almost ended by being bike checked into a row of stinky porta potties. What a way to go out!!) We finally made it to the campsite and met up with the boys who were getting settled. We slowly settled in to camp and my parents showed up. They got to educate the boys in farming!! That all took awhile and since we were miles from the nearest shower and we were all hungry we made tonight no shower Friday. #teamdirty. Wet wipes for the win!
We then headed downtown for dinner and some buying of RAGBRAI items...the boys said we couldn’t call it shopping. We decided to do one last family dinner #teamdirty together. Dinner brought us many laughs and some free items such as cooling towels and sunglasses. After dinner we were all beat and decided to catch the shuttle back to the campsite. Now to get back to camp we actually needed to switch shuttles to get there. We went on the first shuttle only to have Ray and Ed not be able to get on so the rest of us stayed on and they took the next shuttle. Well we were on the general campus shuttle that does a campus route before bringing us to our drop off point for our shuttle transfer. We get off of our shuttle after our campus tour only to find Ray and Ed across the street getting off the transfer shuttle that took them to the wrong place twice. With no other shuttles in site we decided to walk back to our campsite. At first there was a lot of tension due to the shuttle mishap which we then turned into jokes and laughs by the time we got back to camp. What is another 3/4 of a mile walking after the all the biking we have been doing! So the night ended on a good note with us all safely tucked away in our tents hoping to not be freezing tonight and rolling out early tomorrow for the final miles! We plan to stick together as a group tomorrow so we can do the tire dip together and see each other off at the end of the ride.
Mullet update...we have added another one! I think that brings us up to 6 for the week. Majestic is camping near us tonight so that’s always a win!
Vince’s quest for a pig to kiss was accomplished today. He said after he kissed it, it kind of nuzzled up to him! I’m pretty sure Vince loves that pig!
Ray met a goat named Lucy and Pauly met some nice sheep so I’d say today was a win for animals!
Today was also college jersey day! We had Vince representing the Marine Corps, Ray representing Villanova, Ed was wearing Drexel, Jamie had Minnesota and I of course was representing the Central College Dutch!! I think I saw 8 other Central jerseys and I talked to several other alum that didn’t have a jersey. I also saw one Ball State jersey and we had to educate her on Chirp Chirp! I guess they didn’t do that back in the 70s when she was in school!! Since Ray and I took a college day picture together last year we had to recreate it this year.
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