RAGBRAI 2009 - Day 2

Today's ride started early, as Bill needed to finish by 2:30 for a conference call. We met in the parking lot of the HyVee in Red Oak and started rolling east through the small towns. We've found that as soon as you hit a town you basically have to dismount and walk through because the frenzy of people ditching their bikes and making a mad scramble to the cinammon roll tent makes riding hazardous.This is the first one we came to, which must have been settled by immigrants from Holland, as they had a stage set up and were doing some kind of Dutch dancing (holla, Sebastian).

From there we rode for a couple hours on steady up and downs - today was the day with the most vertical feet of climb, somewhere north of 5,000 feet. It was never long climbs, just a whole lot of rolling hills, which makes for frequent transitions from terrifying downhill speeds to painfully slow uphills. My gear-shifting hand got a workout.

The next event of note was coming upon Mr. Pork Chop, whose pink bus is apparently a RAGBRAI landmark.
We each got a grilled pork chop which was about twice as thick as the ones I had growing up, but of course not quite as tasty as when Mom made them. Just as I was finishing mine a woman came up and asked how my appetite was. I don't know if she witnessed how quickly I had inhaled mine or if I just looked pitiful, but the upshot was that she gave me a pork chop that she had taken about two bites out of. My second one tasted even better because it was free.

Here's another one of the "sea of bikes" pictures taken at the top of one of the rolling hills. There were helicopters and planes flying around all day - this must be a pretty unusual sight from the air.

We didn't really have an official lunch stop today, but just labored along, stopping every 10 or 15 miles to regroup and partake in whatever kind of tasty treat we could find. The most interesting bike I saw today was a recumbent thing with three wheels that the guy had rigged up with a wind-surfing sail. There wasn't much wind today so he was basically just pedalling along a lot of extra hardware, but maybe it will pay off for him one of these days.

Here's a shot of Dave helping me with my daily accounting of ice creams consumed. I wish I had thought to accurately weigh myself before this trip so that I could compute an Average Daily Gain score like the pigs get at the county fair.

After 74 miles and about 6 hours we rolled into Greenfield under darkening skies and light drizzle to end the day's ride. Debbie and Tina were waiting for us so we loaded up the bikes for them to take with them and Barney and I got our camping stuff from them. We had done some scouting and Barney found a funeral home with a great little covered stoop over the rear entrance where I'm guessing they take "deliveries".
We tried banging on all the doors but couldn't raise anyone so we became squatters. We have the tent with us but are hoping that by not having to set it up we won't have to deal with soaked gear tomorrow. After a 3-hour nap, a shower at the local pool, and then a trip to the town square for fair-food style dinner we're back on our stoop about to turn in for the night. It's starting to rain harder as I type this, so the stooping plan is looking pretty smart right about now.

One more picture: me sporting all the Dartmouth cycling gear that my brother Joe was kind enough to lend me. If you look real close you can see that I even have socks with the green 'D' on them. I feel like kind of a poser wearing it, since my only involvment with the Dartmouth cycling team was drinking beer on the porch of my fraternity and watching them ride by during their crit races, but it feels good to rep the Big Green.

I'm an engineer, so you'll have to excuse me if I geek out on numbers for a bit:

Miles today - 74.4

Average rolling speed - 15.1mph

Max speed so far - 40.6mph (terrifying)

Butt soreness, scale of 1(sitting on a lightly-refrigerated cloud) to 10 (electrified barb-wire thong) - 4

That's it for now - tomorrow is I think the longest day, somewhere around 77 miles, but not as much climb as today was. It's looking like it could be wet though, which will be a new experience for me.

Good night from the Steen Funeral Home's back porch in Greenfield, Iowa.