We quickly reached the town of Wesley, where we had our first taste of the legendary home-baked Iowa pies. I had a delicious slice of blackberry pie, with just the right ratio of blackberry filling-to-crust. They had a live band playing, and we saw at least one person up and dancing. Notice the supportive onlooker/spouse on the right side. Don't ever tell me to dance like nobody's watching!
One downside of the big crowds was more accidents. As we left Wesley, we made a right turn and heard calls of "rider down". Somebody had fallen off of his bike, and looked really hurt - he was trying to crawl off to the right side of the road, but was having a hard time moving. There were already a mob of people stopping to help, so we kept riding, but we made sure to leave plenty of distance around us after that.
My butt is doing much better today than yesterday, I'm happy to announce. I've learned to raise up on my feet to take pressure off the seat every few minutes, allowing blood to flow. It's a little bit painful every time I do this - imagine that you screwed your finger inside a vise grip. At first, it's just numbness, but the real pain hits when you unscrew it and the blood flows. However, doing this raise off the seat every few minutes kept the average pain level at a manageable level.
According to my bike computer, the temperature hit 86 degrees after Wesley, which was warm but still comfortable. Our next town was Britt. I really liked Britt, because there was a strong presence of local townspeople (as opposed to the professional RAGBRAI vendors that move from town to town with the bikers). The locals are always friendlier, and their booths are better staffed with hordes of volunteers that make the food lines go much faster. They had 'bike valets' to park your bike for you (which can be quite a trick when you have thousands of bikes going down the only street in town), and little kids walking up and down the sidewalk passing out free disposable ice wraps. They are also the home of the annual Hobo conference, now in its 110th consecutive year. As Ralph pointed out, you probably can't find a less profitable conference demographic, but that is their claim to fame. They set up a hobo museum where you could go in and learn about the historical origin of the hobo, the etymology of the word and the differences between a hobo (travels and works), a tramp (travels but doesn't work), and a bum (no travel, just drinks). It's really worth stopping to take a look when these little towns have something to differentiate themselves from just the standard post office, seed store, and hardware store.
Leaving Britt was 95 degrees. Not too much happened in the 13.5 miles to Garner except for the temperature continuing to climb. We stopped in Garner for water/gatorade, pork sandwiches (very yummy), and a repair shop to fix a reflector that was falling off my bike. Leaving Garner it was 102 degrees. To tell you the truth, it started to blur together after that. The good news is that we had a strong wind blowing, which made the heat less crappy. The bad news is that the wind was in our face, slowing us to a crawl as we inched along in the heat. By this time, all conversation had stopped and we just kept our heads down and slowly ground out the miles.
We found a shady spot where some other bikers were resting, and decided to pull over to stop. Turns out that the shady spot was downwind of a chicken coop. This means a constant noxious stench that the locals affectionately refer to as "the smell of money." We were too exhausted to care, so we plopped down and stared at the sky for a while. As we were just getting up to leave, some guy in a group next to us farted loudly. His wife/girlfriend gave him a look, and then looked over at us and made some sort of apology for him. Keep in mind that every breath from the chicken coop smelled liked being suffocated with a slab of rotting, maggot-infested meat. The absurdity of worrying about his fart in this stench storm knocked me down laughing, and when I managed to pull myself together enough to explain why, we all had a good laugh.
Fortunately, we turned north not too much farther after that, which put the wind diagonally at our back. Also, it was late enough in the day that the temperatures were back down to 96 degrees. Apparently, this upset the delicate karmic balance of the biker gods, so we were punished with the worst stretch of road that we've seen so far on the trip. The already bumpy road had shallow potholes, loose bits of gravel, and deep, un-patched cracks that crossed the road every 20 feet. There was no way that my butt was going to stand up to the pounding, so I wound up standing in the pedals and not even touching the seat for this 10 mile stretch.
Lest you think that the day was entirely miserable, we now come to the climax of the story where our heroes triumph and balance is restored to The Force. As we made the turn east toward our final destination, Clear Lake, the wind shifted to come from the south (no headwind, yay!), the road suddenly switched to become smooth as glass, and we rode about 6 miles on a long, shallow descent into town. By now the temperature was a relatively cool 88 degrees. As we started getting near the town, we were greeted by a group of townspeople and their spokesperson, a little blonde-headed 4 year old girl screaming helpfully at the top of her lungs: "Free delicious lemonade!" Ralph and I pulled over for some lemonade and help with directions to our camp site. I wish I had taken a picture of them, they were certainly a sight for sore eyes.
Our route took us directly along the lake shore. The town had a hand-painted arch over Main street as you ride in, with people waving, clapping, and cheering as we rode underneath. The enthusiasm of the welcoming committee was especially impressive when you realize that at our slow pace, there had been people passing under that arch for the last 5 hours. I felt like a hero returning from an adventure instead of an idiot riding my bike in the blazing heat for no particular reason.
After Ralph and I got to the campsite and set up our tent, we headed straight to the beach at the lake. The feeling of jumping into the water was indescribable.
The entertainment was pretty impressive - while we swam in the lake, they had a team of acrobatic jet skiers doing tricks and jumps. They also had a ski boat with a hydrofoil skier - this is where you sit in a chair on a 5 foot post with a blade on the bottom. The skiers did crazy tricks with mid-air barrel rolls, back flips (sometimes two back flips in a row), and a barrel roll-forward flip combination. After that, they had the Spin Doctors playing. The town has a beautiful park set up along the lake shore with an acoustic band shell.
Ralph and I got barbecue ribs and sweet corn, laid on the grass, and enjoyed the show. After that they had a fireworks show, and we hit the sack.
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