RAGBRAI 13 Stage 3 Lake View to Webster City

Lake View to Webster City 81.2

I was so excited about Tuesday.  The route was long (80 miles), but mostly straight and flat.  And, we were staying in a house that night!  Finally, we were going to be able to ride with some gusto!

It was a lovely morning in Lake View.  And, it wasn't that hard to get up since we hadn't really slept at all.  After a brief directional-snafu about getting out of town, we had a lovely ride through the forest-like streets around the lake and then headed south out of town.  It was a hazy morning and the sun was just coming up.  There were a lot of folks on the road, but it felt very quiet.

As we rolled out of Lake View, I noticed the Tiger had pulled off on the side of the road.  He looked alright, and he seemed to stop kind of randomly.  Sometimes, it seemed he wanted me to stop with him, other times he brushed me off when I checked on him.  He is a deeply inscrutable man.

The ride to Auburn, our first little town, was uneventful.  The town itself was a little bump on the road, and it was packed.  We found some breakfast near a fire truck and relaxed in the grass.

Breakfast, pre-wind

Somewhere between Lake City and Lohrville, the wind started to pick up.  And, that would be the name of the game for the rest of the afternoon.  Wind, wind, and more wind.

We all washed up in the meeting town, Farmhamville and tried to connect with our large and ranging group.  I just never expected that trying to connect 6 folks would be that much harder than connecting with two other folks, but I have never been good at expectation management.  I always felt like as soon as I would find one person that I wanted to spend time with, another peeled off.

Farmhamville was hot and windy.  After some food and some water, we trudged into the beer ghetto, though, enthusiasm was pretty low.  We found a bit of shade in the fire station.  The big doors were open and the garage was empty, and there were fans.  We sat, and drank beer, and watched the folks who are not good at sitting and drinking beer wander around.

I guess I will try on this boot.

Steven, bless her, did attempt a bit of a shenanigan, in borrowing some fire boots as we were headed out, but even that had taken on the grim and dusty pallor of head wind.

The rest of the afternoon was just a blur of slow speed suffering.  The Tiger had his bagger bike, complete with panniers, so he wasn't moving at any rate.  I felt bad leaving him, and, to be honest, I wasn't moving much faster.  The Tiger, though, refuses to work together on bike rides and I find it infuriating.  When he is tired, he won't draft me.  He just slows down.  And, when I am tried, and I try to draft him, he gives me huffy little lectures about giving him enough space.  So, we rode, side-by-side, 10ish miles and hour, into the flat, straight headwind.

In Gowrie, I believe, we found a golf club on the outside of town.  Inside they had air conditioning, bathrooms and cheap beers.

One of the fun parts of the week was running into the Nada, Jason Walsmith every day.  He was riding with a different team every day, so he always had a different jersey.  He would ride with the team then play for them at night.  One day it was Upper Iowa University.  Another day it was Team High Life, but no matter what, we bumped into him.  We ran into him at the golf club.  I think it was this day.  I need to take better notes.

The Mayor is cooked.

After we left the golf club, we hunkered in for more long, hot, headwind.  Steven and the Mayor were waiting for us in Harcourt, but we missed them, and pressed on to Dayton.

At one point, on the ride into Dayton, I remembered seeing a kid, about 12, pull off in a gravel parking lot near some trees to join his friend.  Just as he turned to walk away from his bike, the wind blew the bike off its kickstand and on to its side.  The kid looked back, considered it for a moment, then, gave the kind of casual, over-the-shoulder-toss of his wrist that say, "eh, fuck it."  And turned back towards his friends.  It might have been the heat stroke, but I thought that kid was the funniest thing I had ever seen, and I felt exactly the same way.

When there are head winds, Easy-E always says she feels like pulling off to the side of the road and tossing her bike into a bean field, then just sitting by the side of the road until something else happens.  I am more like that kid, "eh, fuck it."

We pressed on to Dayton at a snail's pace and rolled through the little town at the was both the start and finish of the Karras Loop.  No way was I doing that stupid loop on this windy-furnace of a slow moving day.

Scavenger Hunt: Get a picture of a Whiner dancing--bonus, topless!

Instead, the Tiger and I putzed around town until we found Steven and the Mayor.  We found a bar, and a cool corner, and sat around drinking beer until the state troopers came in and kicked every one out.  That was a first for me, still being in a town, when they are kicking folks out.  With no more beer to drink, we grinded on to Lehigh, the "big hill" town.

The Tiger was still smiling.

The nice thing about Lehigh was that at least we weren't going straight into the wind anymore.  And, there was a nice, long down hill into the river town.  As we looked for a place to hang out, we bumped into Wisconsin, who told us he had been there all day, since like 8 in the morning, and had been taken on a tour around town, and was practically betrothed to local gal with a couple of kids.

Across the river, we found the action.  Slip and slides, folks jumping off the bridge to their certain neck-break, and some cold beer.  The hill loomed to our left, like a storm cloud.  Eh, fuck it.

The last stretch, riding to Webster City, was not a good time for me.  It wasn't the hills.  It was something else.  Like I was standing at the mouth of the pain cave.  I was alone.  It was still windy.  Still hot.  Still sun.  Still miles and miles to go.  I turned the pedals.  I went to the dark place.  I turned the pedals.

Miles later the road turned and a bunch of RAGBRAI-ers had taken up residence in a yard.  I heard my name.  I stumbled down the embankment into the yard.  I laid in the grass.  I thought of nothing.

They made me get up.  We rode more.  Finally, we found the road where we were to turn.  Then, we rode on, up and down a little country road, past farms looking for our off route housing.  Then, we were there.  Down a shady lane was parked the trailer.  And, the house!  And my mom was there.

If there was ever a day I needed my mom it was this one.  Slowly, I climbed out of the cave.  We showered and ate dinner and did laundry and set up sleeping arrangements.  We ate a glorious home cooked dinner and sat in air conditioning.  The "adults" went into town to listen to Three Dog Night, Les's favorite band.  The Tiger and I slept in an unfinished bedroom, on memory foam, over some air conditioning ducts.  It was quiet.  It was cool.  It was heaven.