After driving almost all day on Sunday to get from Racine to Ames (via Carol Stream, Bettendorf, and Sully), the last thing I wanted to do on Monday morning was get up and go for a swim. It’s a really good thing Roehr was there, or I would not have got it done. We did a 30-ish minute swim at Peterson Pits, then headed back for a quick shower before Roehr’s mom came to drive us to find the team. As we were driving in Arcadia looking for the team, we saw the first accident of the ride: the Team Bad Monkey bus backed their big purple and orange bus into a car.
Monday: Ida Grove to Aududon
We met up with Team Satisfied in the meet town of Arcadia. Sparkle had just finished about 40 miles, most of it into a brutal headwind. Roehr wanted to get a ride in, and I just wanted to experience the more social aspects of RAGBRAI: I wanted a beer. Quickly, we initiated Roehr into Team Satisfied by giving her an “official” RAGBRAI name: Screamer. After the rest of us got dressed into cycling clothes, we headed off in different directions. Screamer headed out on the road towards Audubon and the rest of the team headed the 0.67 miles back into Arcadia to find the beer garden.
I was just happy to be on RAGBRAI; it didn’t matter to me if I was riding or not. And, truth be told, I was also pretty darn happy to be drinking a beer! I saw lots of old friends, both from previous years’ rides as well as from school and work. But, there was one group I hadn’t seen yet – the Atlanta Old White Rugby Football Club. I met them early in the week last year, and everywhere I went they were either there already or got there soon after me. I ended up having lots of laughs with them last year, so I was anxious to see them again.
After 2 beer gardens and about 3 hours, we finally spotted one of the Atlanta Rugby members which led us to the rest of the group. Now I felt like RAGBRAI XXXIV had finally begun!
Just as we found them, the State Patrol came through to shut down the party and urge everyone to get back on their way to Audubon. We rode back to the truck at the co-op (another 0.67 miles, bringing my grand total mileage for Monday up to 1.34 miles on the bike), got into the truck, headed to Carroll for groceries and ice, and drove to our host home for the evening to set up camp.
After we got everything set up and ate some dinner, we all donned our team shirts – tonight’s version was a red tank for the ladies and a red ringer T for Sid. The message was simple but eloquent: “I enjoy drinking beer.” Last year we discovered that it was a great idea to all dress the same when we went out at night. It makes us all much easier to find in the crowds. And, it makes for much better photos!
There were more friends to catch up with at Cliff's Bar, and we all did a little dancing and a lot of laughing. The rugby team - named Team Emerson for the ride - showed up late, but ready to have some fun, so Sunshine and I stuck around for a while longer, while the rest of the team headed back to camp. As the night wore on, the fatigue of the weekend began to wear on me, so around 1am, Sunshine and I began our long walk back to 711 Brayton Street. Somewhere along the line, we decided that it was too far for us to walk, so Sunny asked a nice police officer if we could have a ride. Normally, you'd think that this story would somehow end with us both being tossed in jail or some other horrible thing, but to our amazement, he said, "Sure!"
The only problem then was that he was driving a single seat 4-wheel ATV. Sunny jumps on one side in a relatively stable position, wrapping her one arm around the officer, and I just barely get one "cheek" on the other fender facing the wrong way when this guy hits the gas! Sunny quickly grabs me with her other arm - saving my life because I am in the least stable position you can imagine. I screamed the entire way back to our host home, with tears streaming down my face from both sheer terror and uncontrolable laughter!! Really the only thought that went through my mind was not if I fell off, but when I fell off, how I was going to fall in order to sustain the least harmful amount of injury. This fine peace officer drove his loud ATV all the way into the backyard and dropped us off inches from our sleeping teammates.
Tuesday: Audubon to Waukee
As is the custom with Team Satisfied, we awoke much later than we would have liked and got a much later start on the ride than we anticipated. The omelet and pancake breakfast prepared by our host hit the spot, and then Sparkle, Screamer, and I hit the road.
This being the 4th hilliest RAGBRAI ever, we got a good taste of the hills early on in the day. Our first stop was in Guthrie Center after 28 miles of hills, to pick up Sunshine, who had chosen to sag part of the day with Sid to avoid said hills. We found some yummy, yummy pizza and some shade. They were making the pizza from scratch (i.e. kneading the dough right there), and it was good! We would actually eat their pizza at least 3 more times by Thursday night.
We'd heard of a short-cut and an off-route party, and if there is one thing that Team Satisfied is about, it's short-cuts and parties! And, if the short-cut means no more hills for the rest of the day, well, sign us up!
In Panora, we stopped at a happening little bar (the name of which escapes me), with a ton of other cyclists. Sunshine thought she had spotted the love of her life in the form of a tall blonde drink of water. He sat down in the booth behind her, and we began the first round of the "over-the-booth sticker war." It all began with Sunny's placement of a Team Satisfied sticker on the back of his head, to which he countered with a sticker from his own team (the name of which is not appropriate to publish here) on her shoulder. She returned with a couple business cards down his shirt collar, which garnered 2 more stickers, this time one on Sparkle and one on Sunshine. This went back and forth for quite a while with no real conversation between Sunny and the LOHL, although communication did come in the form of inflatables and other "fun" items.
The rest of the ride into Waukee was flat, because we found a converted rails-to-trails path to take for at least 20 miles. We made our way into Waukee and struggled to get to our host house because of unforeseen road construction and a slight lack of communication. It was a good thing we got there when we did, because when we were LITERALLY 2 feet from their driveway, a huge bolt of lightning struck very close by, and within seconds, the skys opened and it poured as we made our way into their dry garage! God was certainly looking out for us at that moment. I think He had it timed perfectly.
Sunny's parents were in Waukee, so she went out with them. Screamer and Sparkle wanted a nice away from the beer garden, and I went out for a real dinner with a friend. It was still raining when we all met back up, so the tent campers headed inside for the night, while Sparkle and I headed back to the Hilton (aka the trailer). The thunder and lightning and rain continued all night, and at about 1am, we had deja vu from Sheldon last year. In the distance we could again hear the warning coming over the loudspeaker telling everyone to seek immediate shelter inside because a big storm with very strong winds was coming. Great for us, we know the drill of how to secure the trailer half-asleep, in the pouring rain, and we ran into the house, just like last year. Not so great for the thousands of tent campers who have to do the same, but then crowd into a gymnasium or church for the remainder of the evening. It turned out to be a long, loud night, but we were dry and safe.
Wednesday: Waukee to Newton
Our sag driver stayed out a bit too late on Tuesday night and wanted to sleep a lot more than he wanted to drive, so Sparkle took a turn at the controls of the truck. Sunshine continued her week-long commitment to ride only in the afternoon, so Screamer and I were the only two to head out on Wednesday morning. Of course, the day started out with more and more hills to Granger. Our first goal of the day was a beverage at the Landmark in Polk City, a local watering hole frequented by cyclists and motorcyclists due to its proximity to Saylorville Lake. To get there, we all rode across the Mile Long Bridge over Saylorville. There were a lot of boats parked by the bridge just hollaring as we all rode past. We rolled into Polk City around 10:30am to the sounds of a great Irish band playing covers of everything. We squeezed our way into the Landmark, followed by 5 Elvi (the plural of Elvis), I made sure to get our sticker on the banner on the wall, Screamer secured 2 (vodka) lemonades, and then, without any prompting, leaned across the bar to slap another sticker onto the bartender! I think that was the moment I knew Screamer was into the full spirit of RAGBRAI.
We sat in the park and ate oatmeal (Screamer) and fresh egg rolls (me), talked to the people, and drank a refreshing lemonade. It was one of those great moments when you realize it's Wednesday at 11am and everyone else in the "real world" is at work and you are sitting out in the sun, drinking, and having the time of your life. It's also one of those times when you want to pick up the cell phone and call all those "real world" people to rub it in! But, we didn't, and we realized that we'd better get back on the road because we were only 22 miles into a 70 mile day.
After 11.5 more miles and the crossing of I-35 (universally known among RAGBRAI riders as the unofficial halfway point of the ride), we headed east into Elkhart to meet up with the team. As was becoming our custom, we found the team trailer behind the co-op, but no team members. As founding members of the NGSA (National Genius Society of America), we knew right where to find them. And, it wasn't hard to believe that Team Emerson was right there with them! We all had one (please keep in mind that we are drinking water at at least twice the rate we are drinking any other beverages...) at the bar, then, in a first for Team Satisfied, we invited the entire membership of Team Emerson back to the trailer for a cold one out of the cooler. I think the funniest part of that event was that they all unanimously chose Keystone Light above Miller Lite. Now, that is our kind of team!
Sid was looking a bit better, but not yet anywhere near 100%, so Sparkle stayed with Sid to help navigate to Newton while Sunny saddled up and hit the road with Screamer and me. And Team Emerson. Little did we know what we had gotten ourselves into...
Little did we know that Team Emerson basically rides in a pace line from town to town, decreasing the time spent on the road and increasing the time spent in town. We jumped into the pace line and soon we were cruising up around 24-26 mph. If you've not spent a bunch of time on a bike, you'll not recognize just how fast that really is. But trust me, it's fast! Then suddenly, from the front of the line came a "Slowing!!" As it turns out, there was a sweet corn stand ahead, and let me assure you, Team Emerson does NOT pass up sweet corn in Iowa. I think they were a bit confused by the fact that Screamer, Sunny, and I didn't have any, but they didn't realize that it's not quite the novelty to us... But, we did learn more than we could have ever wanted to know about model airplanes. Just ask Sunshine.
After the sweet corn stop, we continued on to Mitchellville, Iowa, home of the Iowa Women's Correctional Facility. It's always fun to see what kind of "damage" 10,000 extra people can do to a really small town, but Mitchellville had one strike against it already. The storms from the night before had damaged the water tower, allowing all the water in the tower to leak out. Now, not only was the town over-run with people, but it also has NO running water what-so-ever. Rather than contributing to the water shortage, we headed to the bar for some alternative drinks. At Dick's Place, Sunshine made friends with a potential prison escapee who danced barefoot in the street for her. We shared a lot of laughs with Team Emerson there, but as the day wore on, the temperatures creeped higher and higher, so we hit the road for some more lung burning pace rides with T.E. Screamer entertained the Emersons with both her pulling ability as well as her hollering (hence her name) to slower folks ahead to get the heck out of the way!
Thankfully, 7 miles later we arrived in Colfax. There was a fabulous beer garden there. On the way to the beer garden, the Team Satisfied girls were drawn away from Team Emerson by the same fabulous pizza vendor we'd found in Guthrie Center. We had big slices of pizza and large Gatorades under a big shade tree. Soon the draw of the beer garden could no longer be ignored. Turns out that the beer garden was the best place to be on that hot, hot day. The fire department had the fire hose hooked up (thankfully, the town of Colfax had LOTS of running water) and they would just drench the entire crowd every 5 minutes. Annoying, yes, but very necessary. We'd all be cooked carcasses on the cement without the periodic drenching from the hose. Colfax was also the site of Screamer's first RAGBRAI tattoo, installed ceremoniously by the members of the Donner Party. There are pictures of this big event, but it is unclear if Screamer will release these for public viewing.
Then in the cruelest of all planning, we got on our bikes and came around the first corner, and what did we see?? The biggest, longest, steepest hill of the week. It's one thing to have big hills on the route, but it is jsut plain cruel to have a huge hill at a point where you have no momentum AND a condition we've coined "Beer Legs." We tried to hang with the Emersons for a while, but finally they lost us on one of the final hills coming into Lambs Grove, right outside of Newton. We headed to our host home to shower and eat, then sat down in front of the TV to watch Lance Armstrong's "speech" on stage in downtown Newton.
Our night out in Newton was pretty uneventful. The bigger the town, the less fun it is, so we didn't stay out late. We did meet up with Team Emerson and had quite a nice chat with the group. It was a relatively quiet BG, so I had a chance to get to know some of the guys I'd not previously known well. Rather than staying out late drinking and carrying on, Sparkle, Screamer, and I hit the grinder stand, the pizza stand, and then the Dairy Queen right at the stroke of midnight for some more calories!
Thursday: Newton to Marengo
We slept in (again), and in the morning, all 4 of us headed out on our bikes. It was hazy and REALLY humid and that pretty much made for some miserable riding. We stopped for breakfast of bagels and OJ in Reasnor and all was well. 10.2 miles later when we pulled into Sully, everything had gone bad. Not only were we dropping Screamer off there (she needed to get back to Chicago), but Sparkle's ride had been less than stellar, and she, too, wanted to go home. Not in a day or two, not in a couple of hours, she wanted to go home NOW.
Last year, I believe it happened on Wednesday; this year, it was Thursday. But it seems like once a year, after living in such close quarters for a number of days, we all suddenly hated each other. I know it's just going to be a passing thing, but it really sucks when you're in the midst of it.
In the midst of all the "team dynamics," we realized that Lance Armstrong was on his way to Sully for a piece of pie. RAGBRAI is famous for the homemade pies all along the route, so when it was announced that Lance would be on the ride, one of the first questions he was asked was what was his favorite kind of pie. He likes coconut cream, so women everywhere have been making cc pies in the hopes that Lance will stop at their booth for a sample. As we sat on the street (not speaking to one another), we say Lance speed past us and stop at a "famous" Sully cafe for an orchestrated dessert stop. He was swarmed with bikers as he rode in, swarmed by photographers as he entered the cafe, swarmed by locals as he ate, and swarmed by more cyclists as he rode out of town again. That is my Lance sighting in a nut-shell.
We got Screamer (kind of) squared away with how to get to her vehicle. Clearly, Sparkle's ride was over for the day (although we did talk her into staying another 24 hours). Sunshine was unhappy but getting over it. Sid and I were fairly indifferent. As wise Sid once said, "If it doesn't affect the price of beer, it makes no difference to me either way." I couldn't have said it better myself. Sid and Sparkle hit the road in the truck, while Sunny and I forged ahead with a goal of completing another 19 miles. After more brutal hills, Sunny and I finally arrived in Montezuma. This town gets my award for being RAGBRAI friendly. They had tons of volunteers handing out free lemonade and iced tea right as we got into town. I had 2 of each!
As one would expect, we went looking for more to drink. Sunny was particularly interested in finding Team Emerson (I think it's 'cause she still hated Team Satisfied). We saw one bar on the town square, but ruled that out because it looked dead. We instead headed to the beer garden. It was pretty lame, but the drinks were cold, and we had no interest in riding anymore. And we knew we had quite a wait until Sid and Sparkle could come get us. We watched a new game that we believe was invented as we sat there. Basically it was like curling, but with apples and empty plastic beer bottles and other assorted trash. There were a couple of very enthusiastic drunk guys who got a bunch of other drunk women to become enthusiastic about the game as well. It did nothing but annoy us.
After one beer, we started to like one another again. After the second, we were back to being good friends. As we were finishing the second, I spotted a Team Emerson shirt out of the corner of my eye and sent Sunny after it. We were very bitter to learn they had been in the dead-looking bar the whole time we'd been in Montezuma. They were on their way out of town when we spotted them. Bummed by this news, we headed down to that bar to check things out. Aside from the thick clouds of smoke, it turned out to be a good little watering hole. We stayed and chatted with some other riders until Sparkle called to tell us she was in town to get us.
Thankfully, we were done riding for the day. So, the whole team (plus one member of Team B&BIL) stuffed into the truck and we drove the remainder of the miles into Marengo. We made our way to our host home, and that's when things started going downhill. This was the worst host we've ever had. Not only would they not let us in to shower, but they wouldn't let us in to do anything... never have I been so thankful that we had a camping toilet in the trailer! I shouldn't say they wouldn't let us shower there because they would, just not in the house. They had rigged a garden hose at the driveway, so I shaved my legs on the curb and showered in my clothes on the side of the street with most of RAGBRAI going by. I did get a chance to finish up with a "real" shower with the solar shower (filled with ice cold water out of the garden hose) by the trailer. Sparkle and Sunshine paid $4 to shower with 8 other women at the Marengo Fire Department. I'm pretty sure they'll just never speak of that incident again...
Although we were all clean and dry, the heat (still well over 95 degrees at 5 pm) was cooking us. There was literally no breeze at all, so we all sat around, trying not to expend any energy at all, sweating like pigs. We sucked down water bottle after water bottle just trying to stay on top of the dehydration. At one point I even tried to climb into the cooler to save myself. After 3 hours of sitting in pools of our own sweat, the temp finally dropped enough that we could dry off and head into town.
Armed with our Team Brewhaha Bar Guide (this team researches and publishes a guide to every bar in every town along the RAGBRAI route every year - very handy), we wandered around downtown Marengo in search of the best bar in which to spend our final night on the ride. We found a local bar that was not very hospitable to riders and a bar that turned out to be a sit-down restaurant. There was one more bar on the list but we were having trouble finding it. We were looking for the typical neon signage, but we didn't realize that it would be inside an old stone building that used to be the Marengo Bank. We hit the jackpot, running into more friends on the inside. The only thing that was missing was the Emersons. Sunshine and I left the bank bar in search of our friends.
Sunshine was convinced that they'd be in the beer garden, but I knew better. I knew they'd be hanging with the locals. We did a quick run through of the beer garden to appease Sunshine. After finding no one there, we ran smack into them right inside the local establishment. We stayed for one there then headed back to the bank. Upon returning, one of the female patrons mangaed to tear the bathroom sink off the wall, shattering it and showering water all over the floor. To RAGBRAI'ers, this is just a good excuse for beer slides on the floor of the bar. Team Satisfied declined.
We had another very fun night with the Emersons. We all headed back out to the town square in search of more food. Our favorite pizza vendor was still serving. As soon as Sunshine and Sparkle had their slices, Sparkle backhanded Sunny's slice across the street. Thankfully, the Emersons bought another slice for Sunshine. We said our goodbyes to Team Emerson for another fun year and headed back to camp for the night.
Getting Home:
Friday morning we loaded up our stuff, headed to Team B&BIL's camp to load up their stuff, then headed to Coralville to drop off Team B&BIL's stuff at their next overnight host. We hit the Hy-Vee for breakfast, enjoying some of the first really good A/C of the week. We inhaled everything we could get our hands on, then hit the road for Ames, bringing an end to RAGBRAI 2006. Only 51 weeks til RAGBRAI XXXV!
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