Adventures Behind Bars: RAGBRAI Day 4 (Shotgun Wednesday)

Last night we got hit by an early morning thunder storm. I loved it. My new Marmot tent kept me and my gear dry and the sound of rain on my tent and random claps of thunder was pretty soothing. Unfortunately, Cody didn't have as much luck. His tent leaked and dripped on him in his sleep, and his phone was ruined when it was left outside on the front porch. It’s never a good thing when your team’s trip coordinator is without his phone. Good thing Beth has hers.

This morning we decided that we'd try to see how fast we could ride the route. As a team, we rolled like a two wide freight train from Clear Lake into Swaledale, the first town. Sean dropped his chain along the way so we decided wait up for him and also look out for Ben and Cody since they got a later start than the rest of us. We waited for about an hour and nobody showed up so we started texting to see if everyone was ok. Apparently, Sean, Ben and Cody had missed us in Swaledale and were in Rockwell, the next town.

We met up with Sean in Rockwell and decided that instead of riding as fast as we could, like we had originally planned, we'd shotgun a beer in every town. As a rule, I don't like to drink in the mornings but when you plan on making a day of it, you've gotta start early. After an 8:45am, 16 ounce bud light shotgun, we had a second beer to make up for the one missed in Swaledale then made our way to Cartersville.

In Cartersville, we came across the best attraction to date on the route. On the property of a farm house, they had constructed a swimming hole equipped with an island and a monstrosity of a trapeze swing. We had to stop.
We each paid our $5 and waited in line for our turns, each with a drink in hand (when riding all day it is of the utmost importance to hydrate). While waiting we observed and critiqued each trapezer’s from. I knew in the back of my mind, that I would either drop unimpressively into the water or land awkwardly and be in pain for a while. My attempt was pretty weak and I just dropped into the water like the most everyone else, no flips, and no awkward landings. The $5 admission fee was good for all the trapezeing you want but the line was long and We were on a mission, so we dried off and got back on the road. Rumor has it that the state patrol shut the place down for excusive nudity shortly after we left.

We rolled on to Rockford and met up with the rest of the group for lunch. Beth and Eric (who was sagging for the day) had a pretty good spread set up on front yard of a friendly town member. We had sandwiches and chips and were treated to a five gallon cooler of summer brew punch. After napping in the shade for a while, we all slowly made our ways out of town and on to Charles City.

In Charles City, we were for the first time since Sioux City, slumming it. When we rolled up to camp, Beth and Eric had all ready set up our camp site including all of our tents (except mine because it was with me on the bike). 'Boca' Mike, Julio and I were the first to arrive at camp. I quickly pitched my tent and changed cloths. The others filtered in soon thereafter.

After chocking down terribly salty chicken cordon-bleu (catered by Hy-Vee) a few of us went out in search of a bar to watch the MLS all-star game. After striking out at the first bar we found, we ended up sitting at the bar in the local bowling alley. There, we met some of the locals. The two old ladies across the bar were especially friendly and when they heard that Mike and Sean were med students, they tried to set the guys up with their grand daughters.

After the game we headed back downtown for to find the others but to no avail. I walked around the expo for a while and enjoyed a gyro and a fire juggling show before heading back to the camp for bed.