66 Day 4 For to Mas: Amish Wine Bags, Poorly Organized Draft Lines, and Casey's Yards

Shortest of Short Days

I remember the ride out of Clear Lake just being delightful. We rode north for a while, and lots of the beavers were together and chatting and riding. Then, we turned east and rode, pleasantly, and made the crossing of I-35, with only one near death experience from a semi truck.

Not far from the interstate, there was an Amish ice cream stop. I'm not sure who called the beaver halt--pretty sure it was Too Much; he's both fast and he has good ideas--but we stopped and made our way to some of the most delicious pie and ice cream. Peach, I think? 

Too Much's Panorama of our ice cream stop.

The spot wasn't ideal for relaxing: poorly mowed grass on a narrow strip along a field, but they had a few small tables set up under an awning so we settled in with a few young hipster kids and got to eating. 

Did I mention that at the ragby party there seemed to be a lot more hipster kids? Like young men, with those fancy razor-ed hair cuts..like cool cats. And young. I think the demographics of the ragby might be changing. Average of 47? I doubt it. 

Anyway, those hipster kids were rocking an bladder of Franzia red "table wine." That was their daily ration of booze. Classic. So, we got to chatting and they passed it around and we all took long swings sprayed into our mouths. Hmmm...pie and wine. 

We got the full Jens while waiting to leave the ice cream stop. A rare treat.

Then, we rode our bikes some more. At some point, we decided to line up and do a little pace-line: always a good idea on a high traffic day, but we got a good line going, and were rotating through pretty well for a good chunk of the south-ward stretch. It was pretty fun, zinging along and beaver-chanting, and amusing all those we whizzed by. 

Things broke up under a combination of that L-turn you see above and me deciding that I would "race" everyone and breaking away. Oh good times. 

Soon, we were making our last turn into Mason City and we decided, well, we better stop for a refreshment before we ride into town, so Too Much darted inside and bought us a half-rack and we found a nice shady spot to have our picnic. From there we watched other hipsters doing yoga. 

Picnic time!

It seems like we stayed there a really long time, but we had ridden 16.5 miles with just one stop, so we did need to rest, right? 

Blame it on the Coors but I don't remember arriving in Mason City, except, the whole race car thing. Steven and I found a race car. I passed it but I heard behind me, "Norman" in that tone that Steven gets when she is slightly scolding me for trying to skip something ridiculous/fun.

Vroom

Little known fact about Steven. She was a semi-professional go-kart racer and she used to take me to watch her at the track in Newton. She knows her way around a track, so, we convinced the guy to let her get in (harder than it looks) and give it a little gas. 

It didn't seem like much of a chore to find the YMCA where we were camping. Pochy, our Indian guide, grew up in the area, so she knew the way. There was some slightly scary busy roads, but we managed. 

The ark was parked in the grass next to the Y, so we got to work settling in for the evening. 

I have that same tshirt! Ask Ranger Dave about it!

 An evening that would be full of adventures...