RAGBRAI 2009 - Day 3

Today started out looking like it was going to be a real character-building day. After raining on-and-off all night, the 'on' finally won out around 7am and we started pedalling under a steady drizzle. Once we got our blood pumping the chill wore off and the rain gear began to function more as a sweat-containment than a rain-repellant system. Here we are at our first town stop of the morning:

Another 10 miles or so brought us to the next town (the names mostly run together at this point), where some enterprising town group had invented a game called 'skillet toss'. For a buck you could throw two cast iron frying pans at some dummies and try to knock their basketball heads off. No idea where the idea for the game came from, but it must have netted them a fair amount of dough, because the line to throw the skillets was huge.

This guy really wound up and put his heart into it. Every once in a while someone would make a truly errant throw and a skillet would fly out of the enclosure, but in the 10 minutes we were there I didn't see anyone get injured.

Here's another photo to try and make the entire experience relevant for my nephew - dad and grandad with a big green tractor. I know blue is your favorite Charlie, but so far all the tractors have been either red or green - we'll keep looking, buddy.

Around this time the rain let up but the wind started blowing a little bit. Barney and I were feeling pretty strong so we put our heads down and started clicking off the miles. Every once in a while we would have a couple people join us or would catch a few riders moving at the same pace and I got to experience peleton riding for the first time. It's amazing how much of a difference it makes to get a long line of riders staying close and drafting each other. Here's a shot of what most of my afternoon looked like:

One more eventful stop - we rolled into St. Mary's, which is allegedly the halfway point of the ride across the state. They had the largest selection of pie I've ever seen there, and Bill got his long-awaited slice of banana cream pie.

Another cool sight in St. Mary's was the combination American Legion and Knights of Columbus hall. If you look really closely you can see that each sign has its own light above it, so that they can turn on whichever one corresponds to the meeting happening at the time. Seeing as how the town only has 150 residents according to the nice old lady I talked to while taking this picture, I imagine there must be a lot of overlap in the memberships. I love the mental image of thirty old men sitting in here drinking beer and then periodically flipping the light switches and changing hats to convene the different meetings.

From there it was an uneventful grind to the finish line in Indianola - here's Barney rolling into town:

I had Bill snap a shot of me under the same banner:

Debbie and Tina met us in Indianola with some great snacks and beer - it was enough to bring a tear to a tired biker's eye. There was a solid half hour of following Bill's lead before we got up and moved on with our day:

We spent another 30 minutes walking around the town square looking at the sights. I got my picture made with my bike right on top of the 'no bikes' sign on the sidewalk to show The Man what I think of him and his rules, then it was naptime for this rebel.

Bill, Dave, Tina, and Debbie left for the hotel and Barney and I set up our tent in a little corner of the side yard of Simpson College's Delta Delta Delta sorority. It seemed like a nice quiet spot until we discovered (after the tent was up) that once every 30 minutes or so the air-handling machinery behind us fires up with a series of explosions and then a noise like a jet engine spooling up. This did little to deter my napping though and after 2 hours of dreaming about air raids I woke up to a sight you don't often see; hot air balloons visible through the roof of your tent.

I went outside and the things were everywhere - it was a little surreal.

Barney had to do some work while I was napping, but once I was up we ate a quick dinner and then showered at the college's gym. Barney fell asleep an hour ago and this party animal is about to follow suit.

Today's numbers:

Total miles - 78

Average moving speed - 15.9

Servings of ice cream consumed today - 1 (hey, I was wet and cold for most of the day)

Butt soreness, scale of 1(using a bidet that squirts buttermilk instead of water) to 10 (squatting in a field of stinging nettle) - 5

Good night from America's heartland.