7.24.2009

RAGBRAI XXXVII - A Long, But Good Day

Once again, I didn't have chance to compose Thursday's blog posting yesterday, so I am taking care of it today.

To begin, I need to wrap up the events of Wednesday evening. Wednesday night, my sister, Jen, and Matt went to downtown Chariton to see Hariball, an '80s rock cover band, perform. They were fantastic! I think they were the best performance I have seen so far all week. Despite that, I didn't stay for the entire performance. I left when the band took its break since I had a long ride on Thursday.

Around 4:00 Thursday morning, there were some thunderstorms in Chariton, but fortunately they cleared up around 5:30, allowing us to leave in dry weather, although my tent was soaking wet when I packed it up.

Our first stop on Thursday was for Chris Cakes pancakes in Millerton. It was as good as usual, but I ate a couple too many pancakes. Fortunately that did not affect my ride.

Our ride was very nice on Thursday. There was a tailwind for the northward portions of our ride, and the hills were really not all that bad. In fact, we had more downhill than uphill today.
We made some brief stops in Confidence and Iconium where we grabbed little bites to eat. We did have a bit of lunch at the Honey Creek Resort, which is operated by the Iowa Department of Natural Resources. I had a brat and a beer there. They were selling some beers that are brewed in Des Moines. So for the second day in a row, I had a beer before noon. Unfortunately, it was quite muddy from the morning rain, and as a consequence, we had to spend some time cleaning our shoes before departing from there.

We made short stops during the rest of the day Thursday, but we didn't really stop anywhere else for too long. As we were approaching Ottumwa, we saw some dark clouds in the distance. Just as we were entering the town, it started to sprinkle. By the time I found out where my campground was, it began pouring down rain. I was drenched by the time I found my campsite. Fortunately the sun soon came back out and everything dried up.

I didn't do much in the evening as we were far from most of the activities, and I was tired, so I went to bed a bit early.

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