The Experience

Well it didn’t storm last night but I also don’t think the temp dropped much either. It was an early wake up this morning. We planned to head out early and by the sounds at camp this morning, everyone else did too. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen bathroom lines at 4:30 am!!  The cool crisp mornings were gone and this morning it was about as humid as you could get. I’ve never been completely drenched in sweat packing up my tent before. But I will say there was a good omen leaving camp. A woman from Iowa Falls was walking around camp with apples and bananas and wishing us all well. Every time someone said thank you, she follow with a “you betcha”. Such an Iowa thing!!

We left camp at 5:59!  And it was very apparent that everyone else was leaving early too. It was by far the most crowded day leaving town. Everyone was trying to beat the heat. Ackley was the first town we went to today and they may take the prize so far for the beat welcome into town. They had a Moootown theme with lots of cows. They had a very organized and decorated town. They also had some women hola hooping in some sequenced tops!  It was a happening place!  We decided on the all you can eat pancakes at the fire station!  We got to catch the cakes as they flipped them off the griddle to you!  Chris may have dropped a pancake and picked it up off the ground and ate it! But I will warn all the readers…do not ever ask Emily to catch a pancake!!

We got our picture with one of the cow statues as we headed out of town!  I don’t want to jinx it but it was overcast this morning so it wasn’t too bad. The humidity was still ridiculous and it was 79 degrees at 7:30 am. After pancakes we had some nice tailwind and cruised to Applington. Well we didn’t actually cruise. We bounced our way into Applington because the roads were so rough. So many people were groaning and wincing at every bump. Butler County gets the worst roads so far. I thought Hamilton County roads were bad yesterday but they seemed like airport runways compared to today. As we left Applington the road got a bit better, and everyone…not just our group cheered and clapped. We were so happy to have a little bit better pavement.  

Parkersburg was the meeting town and they did a great job hosting us as well. They had a “world’s greatest” theme. I was lucky enough to use the worlds greatest porta-john. And we saw the worlds greatest lamp post several times!  
They also had two cool bike sculptures. One was made of tornado trash as they had a large EF5 tornado go through and devastate the town in 2009. The other was a huge bicycle!  They win the award so far for best artwork in towns!  I got some very tasty strawberry rhubarb pie here!  They had run out of Gooseberry…you have to be the first person in Town to score that pie!!  They also had a RAGBRAI band here. Basically just a piano, drums, guitar, and mic for anyone to play. As we went through there was a woman on piano, guy on drums, and a guy volunteered to sing. They had the whole crowd singing sweet Caroline!  It was a fun RAGBRAI moment. We picked up Gary here and the 4 of us finished the day a big bad biker gang!  Lol. 

As we left Parkersburg there were some kids selling lemonade about halfway up a steep hill. I made a stop and petted their cat and had some lemonade.  They said they were donating the money they made to their church so how could you pass that up?!?

After Parkersburg we had some really good tail wind and we were hauling!!  We hit up Backpocket for another brat. And that’s when we got the devastating news there won’t be anymore brats after today. They were going to run out of them today!  They weren’t just popular with us…but with everyone!!  What will we do tomorrow???  The skies were still over cast and we only had about 25 miles to go. Would we make it to Waterloo without sun?

After we left there we headed towards New Hartford. I will give the people who live along the route a lot of props!  So many people were out cheering us on, had hoses set up, we’re giving out water of freeze pops. They were ready to support us in the heat and it was much appreciated. We made a stop at one farm house for a free popsicle and Macy was a work horse. She ran from the road to the house for popsicles every time someone stopped.  This was a god 75 yards or so one way. She was only 5 or 6 but she was hustling!  The popsicle hit the spot. 

There was a Boy Scout group out with very powerful water cannon. There were squirting people. Well the kid was a great shot but the dad/scout leader nailed me right in the face and ear!  It hurt but felt amazing as well!  It seemed like most of the sprinkler action was on the left hand side today. The right side road families need to give the right side of our body some love too!!  When we got to Janesville the crew got Thelma’s but I’m saving that for tomorrow. This town was also super prepared for use with misters set up all over town, but these crossed over the road so you could easily eat pie under a nice cool mist. It was still overcast so we were lucking out!  They also had a huge tarp slip and slide with misters. Chris and I took a trip and got drenched but it was worth it. We couldn’t convince Emily and Gary to join us though.

After Janesville we only had 16 miles to go. We had a headwind and it was starting to warm up. While the morning was enjoyable this afternoon was not as much!  But it wasn’t terrible. As we pulled into Waterloo there were lots of groups handing out big electrolyte  freeze pops and bottles of water. I even gave one lady a tip on how to properly hand out a water bottle to someone riding by. She was having trouble dropping them and not making the transfer. She now is ready to work a triathlon bike aid stations for Ironman!!  They were definitely prepared for us. We got to camp and out campsite was pretty big with lots of space to spread out. Definitely not Death Valley like last night. There were some trees but most of them had people crammed under them for shade. The sun had come out and the hottest part of the day was coming. I decided to walk around and see if I could find any crooks and crannies of shade and I did!!!  A ragbrai miracle! I got us a great spot in between two trees and close to the showers. A total win!!  

So all in all the riding of the day was not all that hot. It was beyond humid but we only had about 45 min of riding in the sun. Way better than we were expecting!  It definitely made today more enjoyable!

But we hadn’t escaped the heat for good. Have you ever tried to wrestle a bear covered in grease?  That’s what it’s like trying to put on a sports bra after taking a shower in a shower truck that really has no airflow. I know my female triathlon friends understand!!  You’re sweating and completely incapable of getting dressed because you’re in a hot wet confined spot. After our showers was by far the hottest from when we got to camp and I started to wonder if I really should have showered at all. Since we’re in a bigger town all the events are far from camp so you have to take a shuttle. Well this is when the peak of being completely hot and uncomfortable came. We ended up on a shuttle with no air and 30+ people crammed in with no windows. Imagine puting a tent in the Sahara desert and climbing in, inviting 10 of your not so closest friends, and zipping it up tight. That is what this shuttle ride was like. I sweat more in the shuttle than on the bike today. 

We decided to eat at Doughy Joey’s tonight because it had air conditioning. We got a table pretty fast and right after we ordered they said, “ can this guy join you?”  Sure…Jeff from Houston Texas come on down!!!  So Jeff said he maybe should have done a bit more research about RAGBRAI as he’d ridden about 300 flat miles in preparation for the ride!  We had a great dinner talking and learning about Jeff. He use to work in the oil industry but retired from that just before COVID hit. He is very intrigued with all the wind farms. As he said he spent several years in an industry that maybe wasn’t doing the best things for the environment and he found wind farms inspiring. As we talked is became very clear that Jeff is a ride through guy. He just puts his head down and rides and doesn’t take in the experience of RAGBRAI. For instance he left about 30-45 minutes after us today and got in about 3 hours before us. Jeff is not stopping for Thelmas, or lemonade, or popsicles. And he certainly didn’t do goat yoga!! So we had a little chat about him paying money to do RAGBRAI. If he just wanted to put his head down and ride in the heat he could do that in TX for free. So we challenged him to take in more of the experience. As he said when we all parted ways, “ I’m not going to say have a good ride tomorrow, it’s enjoy the experience!”  So I think we made an impression!  I hope Jeff really takes those words to heart and really embraces the RAGBRAI experience. You miss so much when you look at this as just a bike ride. Jeff was a very funny guy and I hope we can run into him again. Chris is in charge of texting him as he finds pecan pie along the route! 

After dinner we did some axe throwing!  You know it’s about the experience!!  Chris and Emily went head to head and then I played the winner. Chris beat Emily and then I beat Chris. None of us had the top score of the day, but it was fun regardless. 

The shuttle back to camp wasn’t much better than the way there. It wasn’t quite as hot but Emily and I both had sweat dropped on us from a guy standing in the aisle. He couldn’t help it, but dang….that’s just gross. 

Overall today was a great day. We could not have asked for better outcome!  The overcast skies were such a blessing and everyone knew it. People were afraid to even talk about it all morning because we didn’t want to jinx it!  But we got super lucky. Because we got luck with the overcast skies we were able to take more time and make more stops. We spent more time together today and we had a great experience!!  Today we rode 64.43 miles and had 15558 ft of gain. 

Rain is now predicted for tonight, so we’ll see what happens. Tomorrow should be a bit cooler but it’s a long day of riding!  Excuse me…it’s a great day for an experience!!