RAGBRAI Day 1

We woke up and hit the road at about 8 am, which is much later than most people start. I quickly realized why other people start early; the temperature is absolutely perfect for riding at that time. On the other hand, starting later gives you more time to sleep off last night's hangover, and that's good too. Plus, I also learned that our team stops for an hour or two in every town to hit the beer gardens, so it's going to take us all day no matter what time we start.




The road is fairly crowded, although there is usually plenty of room to pass. This is a picture near the beginning of the day when I stopped at a water stand. I actually fell off my bike when I stopped because I'm not used to having my feet cleated into the pedals, so I just gradually fell over sideways without being able to unhook my foot to stop my fall. No damage done though, so I got my water and kept on riding.

The first 30 miles were pretty nice. We stopped at Kingsley and had some gyros. I gotta say it, the vendors need to get their act together. There's a line of people 50 deep, and they've got a big griddle to cook on, but when I got close enough to see what they were doing, they were cooking the gyro meat ONE SANDWICH AT A TIME. They only make one items - gyros. It's no mystery that they're going to need to make a lot of them.




Somewhere up at the front of this line is a grinning idiot cooking gyros one at a time, as they are ordered.

After Kingsley, we rode 14 miles to Washta. This was also a fairly nice ride, although the non-stop hills were starting to get a little old. Washta was a fun town with a much better selection of vendors and shorter lines.




This is what 12,000 bikers passing through a small Iowa town look like. There was a steady stream like this all day long.




The team bus met us in Washta with snacks and drinks, so Team Butt Ice pauses for a much needed beer break. This is after their previous beer break, which was five minutes ago in the Washta fire station, which had been converted to a beer garden. After finishing, we got on our bikes and rode 5.5 miles (about 20 minutes) to Quimby, where we stopped for a desperately needed beer break. I have to grudgingly respect the fact that these people can ride 74 miles up and down hills while completely intoxicated.

After Quimby, we had a 23 mile ride up hill to our overnight destination, Storm Lake. This is when the ride started to suck. My butt was hurting, it was hot, and the hills seemed never ending. After one particularly tough hill (thereafter universally referred to as 'that one hill' by all riders), I was completely spent and pulled over to Tender Tom's Turkey stand, where I had some very good turkey sandwiches and enjoyed a nice conversation with a woman from Seattle who was waiting for her friend to catch up. The good news is that I had actually passed most of the Butt Ice team, and when they passed by the turkey stand, I hopped back on the bike and caught up with them for the last 9 miles into Storm Lake (total miles today:74).

That night, we set up our tent at our host house (thanks Stephanie!) and headed into downtown Storm Lake for some dinner.




We opted to skip the ass-fed beef. After everything I've read about factory farming, I could almost believe that there is such a thing. The town was actually really fun, and they put on a great festival that was big enough that it didn't feel totally mobbed by ragbrai riders. I saw a girl doing a show dancing with flaming hula hoops, which was pretty cool, and then we got on the shuttle bus and walked back to our tents.




On the way back we saw another beautiful moonrise. The moon was completely full tonight, and rising over Storm Lake wreathed in clouds it was quite a sight.

Tomorrow is longer than today (80 miles I think), but it's supposed to be fairly flat. If I learned anything today, it's that hills count for much more than distance, so 80 flat miles sounds just fine to me.


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