Last night was a great night for sleeping outside. I took the rain fly off of my tent and enjoyed the cool breeze. Mike and Sean took a different approach.
Since we ended yesterday early, we had to start 10 miles away from the official route today. The roads from our host house had relatively low traffic and were two lane blacktop high ways, ninety percent of which being the last few miles of yesterday's route into Algona.
As we rolled through the remnants of yesterday's festivities, I came to one of many realizations of the rolling party that is RAGBRAI. It leaves a huge footprint along its route through Iowa. In every town not only is the sheer volume of trash from food vendors and partiers unfathomable. There is probably an equal amount of roadside posters, beads, and empty food containers between each town. I was pleasantly amazed at how the town's people were up early taking town posters and signs and returning what was just hours earlier, a massive 10,000 person party, to the quaint towns they call home. Judging by the relatively good condition of the town, I can also assume that they were up into the wee hours of the morning cleaning up.
So far, it seems to me that each town has been really on top keeping thing clean. Sure there's a bunch of litter in the ditches, but I'm sure that it won't be there for long. The Kybos (port-o-potties) haven't been terrible, and trash cans are all over and never overflowing. It is absolutely evident that the people that live along the route take pride in their communities and the land that live on.
We passed through Algona around 9:00 with around what seemed to be the tail end of the large pack of riders. It was obvious that traffic would be pretty light until we hit the stop towns. Once we were on the official route, our group spilt up and I didn't see many of them until I arrived at Clear Lake. I met up with Julio and 'Boca' Mike at most of the stop towns (Mike got the nickname 'Boca' because he is the only vegetarian on the trip and there are two Mikes). We all traveled at different paces but would usually end up at each town within the same 15 minute window.
In the meeting town of Garner, I met up with Emily and Adam at the team Homunculus bus. They drove Adam's team van to the meet town this morning and planed to ride from there to the end. Adam built himself a tall bike made from an old huffy welded to an old dirt jump frame. His theme for the day was "tall bike, short shorts".
We relaxed in the shade at Adam's van for a while then left for a pretty slow going final 22 miles. You see, one of the main issues with tall bikes is that in order to link the top bike's pedals and crank to the bottom bike’s drive train, the top bike must be rigged with a left side crank. Unfortunately, this setup caused Adam's bottom bracket to unscrew on the right side and become tight on the left side. The constant chance of a major mechanical failure loomed heavy as we battled 12 or so miles of stiff head and cross winds. All the same, the company was good and sprits (and Adam's bike) were high.
I parted ways with my riding buddies on the outskirts of Clear Lake and road to tonight’s host house. Located on the opposite side of the lake as the town and craziness. Even though I would like to see the Spin Doctors tonight, I think I'll just enjoy a calm and relaxing evening beside the lake and avoid the party.
Clint found a lightning bug in his drink. Even the insects like to party on RAGBRAI.
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