R17 45 Slacker Sunday More Saturday Recaps!

Remember Saturday? In Orange City? There were tons of recaps. Here's more of them.

Just a little flash back to before Ragbrai even started on a Sunday in January. These are all pretty short. The longest one is me at 3:39. Too Much has really taken on the role of beaver-facilitator in these memos. Enjoy.

Steven's story about Troy:
Steven's Recap

"Just like Storycore." 
Here's Pochy's recap:
Pochy's Recap

Here's what I had to say:
Norm's Saturday Recap

Masinga's Recap:
Mainly Masinga

Beavers Finish Up: "Baby Bandit!" "Grandpa's glad to be back" "The rideout was fucking awesome." "I love you beavers."
Beavers Wrap It Up

Just a note: I just talked to the Deb and I got a fairly hard committment for the return of the Ark! And a driver, Deb and Dale's friends Matt and Michelle (they are only friends with people with alliteration names.)

They do have one condition for these drivers though: once we know the route, we need to put together some "things to do" on the route for these drivers.

R17 44 1.2 Spencer to Algona: Angels Come in All Kinds of Packages

PDBA: I'm writing this Sunday night. I'm on glass of wine number 2. Vacuum is still in the middle of the living room. Typos creeping in. Send help!

The long road to Mallard

'

Things were not going well for me in the saddle-area-department. I was in a lot of pain and I could not find a comfortable spot. In hindsight, I think I know what was going on and how to fix it (for starters, train!), but that didn't help me in the moment. 

I was alone. I was grumpy. I was in pain. The only thing that helped was drinking and that seemed far, far away. And to make matters worse, people kept talking to me. 

"Hey, good job!"

"Keep it up!"

"Nice day huh?"

Why, why do people feel the need to encourage me? I take it as hostile. Like they are judging me. Like, oh, look at that big girl on a bike. This must be a major feat for her! She has a lot of courage to get out here and do this. Way to go! I'm so tiny and smug that I just better give her some good vibes. 

Of course, I am projecting. I know that. In January. But in the moment, I hate it. 

Even worse, when Pochy's fan club arrives. "Oh, hey Team Beaver! Is Emily with you?" 

"Who?" 

"Emily. I worked with her at XXXXX and we XXXX."

"Oh, yeah. She died." 

[Just kidding. I don't say that.}

"Oh, yeah, she's up there some where. But if I see her I'll tell her that Adam said hello."

"But my name is Steve."

"Whatever." 

This was the nadar. The darkest moment of my sunny ragby. And then out of nowhere, came an angel, with a beard. 

It was Calico Steve (I only call him that because I can't remember his real name.) He was the cute, bearded tattoo artist that we met with the Manthers way back in Funda when we danced the rain away. He rode up next to me and said hello and amazingly he wasn't fucking annoying. He was nice. And chatty and compassionate. And cool. We had a nice funny lovely chat that brought me all the way into Mallard. 

Outside of Mallard the beavers were waiting and we had a funny chat with Calico Steve and his brother (?) Pork Chop. They were so happy they got coozies and they showed off their beaver bandanananana. They were cool. I like them. 

Nice beaver

We were waiting for Kenny, but it got to be a long, long time, so we finally decided to head into snack land and catch up with him in town, while we were beered and fooded. 

Oh Calico Steve!

I was worried about him, but I only had so much capacity for others at this point. 

R17 43 1.1 Spencer to Algona: Wear a Helmet, Don't Be a Dick

Somewhere between Gillet Grove and Hell

We continued on. And on. And on. At one point there was a big hill. Near the Watson Heritage Site, perhaps? I don't know. I do remember that I stopped to pee before going down and watched a tiny lady with no helmet zoom down the hill at 45 miles an hour. 

Speed on, sister. Hell ain't half full yet. 

When we found one another in Ayershire, well there wasn't much to find. There was a bar called the Beaver's Den, so put our bikes down in the sun and went to get some food. I got in line for the walking tacos. Along with everyone else, I shuffled along as they filled our Doritos bag with delights. Then, out of no where, the Me-Off ladies barged in front of me. Taking no care for the sanctity of the line. Sigh. I would have stepped up, but I wasn't running with my full beaver crew, so I just rolled my eyes. 

Then, once we got close to the end of the Walking Taco line, we could see our tacos being built. As they were working on them, a fresh pan of loose taco meat came out of the bar and was poured on to the near empty pan in line. One of the Meoff Ladies, noticing that the meat tray was not full and her potential taco, if you counted back in line wasn't going to be new meat, yelled at one of the poor 17 year olds working the booth: "um, excuse me. But I want fresh meat." 

The 17 year old blinked. Then turned to the adult next to her and said, "she wants fresh meat." Then there was chaos as tacos were passed back and slowed to a halt so this Meoff could get a "fresh" meat taco. See, Iowans want to give you what you want. They do. And if that means grinding an assembly lines of processed chips and loose meat to a halt, just so some bag can have "fresh" (I honestly don't know what that means in this context) meat, then they will do it. And this is the source of all ragbrai slow downs. 

Hello. We are talking ground beef with taco seasonings. This isn't fucking Kobi beef bitch. You are eating it on Doritos. What the fuck? 

I scooted around the picky Meoffs and grabbed one of the perfectly fine walking tacos from the "unfresh meat" and left with a bottle of water, a bottle of Gatorade and two Busch Lights bundled around me. 

Just a casual butt! 

I made for the shade of a hoop barn and waited for the rest of the beavers to find me. 

I shared the story of the Fresh Meoffs with the rest of the beavers and we were all disgusted. After food and drinks and some not half bad country music, we went back to our scalding bikes and got back on them.

I stopped shortly outside of town to pee and put on my music. And then we began the long slog towards Curfew and Mallard. 

We met up in Curfew. I found the beavers who were recovering from a Kenny fall. Just a clip out problem but he stayed down long enough to cause some concern. We didn't stay in Curfew. There was nothing there, really, but as we rolled on ward my mood soured to the darkest part of the week. 

Fuck. This. Shit. 

R17 42 1 Spencer to Algona: Happy Birthday Levi!

Day 2 or Day 10

Good morning Spencer! I had a comfortable, but sweaty, night on the sofa. We woke up, got our shit together and left Spencer. We found the route lickety split and then rode into the foggy, misty morning.

There usually is one morning like this, when the fog rises off the fields as the sun is coming up and of in the distance you see millions and millions of miles of fields and people riding bikes and all is right in the world. 

We rode into this, skipping Dickens, but appreciating some hilarious meme-centric signs for some breakfast stop. (Dickens was a bit off route and we had a date with the RV). At the RV stop, we found out it was Levi's birthday. 

Oh, I remember when Levi was knee high to a grasshopper and now he is a teenager, slinging those eggs. We got sandwiches and sat in the shady grass and enjoyed our Keystone Light. 

We weren't far from the RV family when ragbrai made the first major halt of the day, at a highway. We weren't too upset because it was clearly the driver's route, so we got to watch all those silly vehicles go by. And we made stupid jokes in the crowd and laughed. 

Pochy gave some guy a vodka and he said it was his first drink ever, and we beaver cheered and generally had a silly time. 

Even traffic is fun with these beavos

Then we crossed the highway and nearly had a ragbrai nightmare. A pupperino was loose and running along the side of the road, ready to duck into traffic and cause a Tour De France style pile up. Thankfully, a child wrangled said doggo and we all continued on. 

Finally we took an eastward turn and headed onward. Soon the road started to curve and there were more and more houses and trees. Then glimpses of a lake. Could this be a town. I kept riding. Not yet. Not yet. Not yet. 

Nope. 

We passed that gorgeous lake and were spit back out on to the worst road ever: forever dubbed "The Devil's Loofah." Just mile after biscuit pounding mile of pot holes, compression gaps, gravel bits and rough pavement. 

The worst. 

I think at one point I caught up with Kenny. He had taken a bit of break. We commiserated and rode on. This had to end, right? 

R17 41 Day 1.4 Orange to Spencer: Ohhh Shit

Just another 20 miles to go

But because the ragby gods are cruel, we still had 20 some miles to go before we found shelter in Spencer. And beavers usually (usually!) have the good practice of getting to a party first, getting it going, and then slipping off into the night, we left.

We found the bikes. That was hard. And we got on them. Even harder. And we rode towards Spencer. 

I don't remember much of those next 20 miles. Did we find a Back Pocket? Who knows? 

I do remember that when we got to Spencer, everyone was a bit crunchy. We were hot. Confused. Tired. And scared. We had a hard time with the directions. I remember we all took a wrong turn, but eventually the Night Beaver found the way, and we made our way through the streets of Spencer to find our very nice homestay in Spencer. 

The Spencer stop was pretty magical because the very nice lady that hosted us had adorable gift bags for each of us, filled with snacks. The most delicious snack mix. Salty Cheeto goodness. The Driver Dillon and Kenny were magical amazing creatures and they went to KFC and got us a bunch of chicken. 

And then we shared that chicken with the baggers and they were so happy! They were like little lost puppies who never expected free fried chicken in the whole wide world. 

I was excited when people went to bed because I was sleeping on the sofa. I was exhausted. Good night little beavers.

Here's the recap:
Sunday Recap

R17 40 Day 1.3 OC to Spencer: Beaver Bliss

Primghar? Eh? 

Honestly, between Granville and Hartley, there is zero recollection. We probably stopped at a Back Pocket, and that was probably cool. It was a gorgeous, sunny, RAGBRAI day. But not particularly memorable.

Some random stop between golf course and heaven

So, we roll into Hartley, mid-afternoon, and this seems like it will be the party town. Or we will make it the party town. We park our bikes on the far side of the party, work our way back towards the two dance areas--firefighters on the west and DJ Big Daddy on the east. We started in with the firefighters, but then changed tactics and headed east. 

Before party

We bought beers. We requested "Fancy." We began to dance. 

And just like that, the combined gravitation force of the beavers started to call all the powers of ragby magic to us. 

CEJ in the house! 

First, we found Crazy Eyed-Jeff. And with him, the Whiners. 

Why is this happening? 

Oooh that tickles! (check out the sexy whiners behind us, and then hunk! Hello!)

But why, CEJ? 

Then some tall girl who apparently "loves us" came over to dance. 

And, then, like a reunion of spirits, the Spirit Animals arrived! Dancing Queen and Hard Ass just as smily and charming and ambiguously gay as in 2015. 

Our friends!

THEN! The Baggers! In their morph suits! And they were just delighted with the party magic. I believe at one moment, in magical synchronic fury, got CEJ to squirt Jackie's Magic potion into his mouth through his morph suit. Yasss.

Bagger of Mystery

And we danced. And danced. And danced. And beered. And danced. And beered. And danced. 

Look at the pure joy and hair! 

We had found Ragbrai. No, even better. We had manifested RAGBRAI. It was here. Here we were.

Steven thanks the Ragby Gods, Masinga remains unimpressed

R17 39 1.2 OC to Spen: Swing 'Em High Me-Off

Wait! I do remember. Sort of.

Okay, I listened to the Voice Memo for Sunday and "remembered" some stuff. And perhaps things are getting a little hazy in my Sunday night box wine blog-challenge, but you know what?

You know what.

Okay, SO! in Primghar we stopped for much needed food. We put the bikes down and set out. Thankfully, I had Too Much as a food buddy. We found a short line for pie and then got pies to eat while we stood in line for sandwiches (?). I think that is what we got. Philly Cheese Steak? Seems right.

I also got a glimpse of that crazy Bruce, Euc--he was wearing a corn suit.

Then we returned to the shade tree with the bikes where the beavers were talking to some rando and we all ate our food. Pochy got me some soft serve which was fabulous and Bandit was eating a half pound of salami that she found at a grocery store. (Bandit was doing a keto-diet, where you just eat fatty foods. Which was a challenge, I think, on ragbrai, as 97% of the diet is Coors Light and pie, but it must have worked, because that girl looks smoking. Grr.)

Anyway, we ate our food and then rode off.

Oh Jerry! 

Then we found a Back Pocket stop. It was a nice, crowded farm house lawn with some shade, but way too many people. We found a tiny pocket of shade, which unfortunately, was under a rope swing. It seemed find. Most people recognized that there were humans sitting there.

Then Pierre of the don't diet of heart disease and being too fat so I am going to ride across the country guy came over and wanted to get a picture of himself swinging on the swing. Which he did, over our heads.

We all ducked, awkwardly, and held our beers and hoped for the best. We love Pierre and trust him not to come crashing down on our heads.

But. Then. The Me-Offs ladies showed up. And they wanted to swing. So they put some drunk broad up on the swing and started sending her flying over our heads. At first we laughed. "Haha, okay, you got your picture, cool."

Then, she kept going, insisting her friends swing her higher and longer.

We looked up and were like, "hello, fellow human. There are humans sitting here. Can you please stop swinging over our heads, reigning down the possibility of death from above."

And then Masinga did her thing. You know Masinga's thing, where she takes people to task in her very progressive and authoritative but super annoyed voice, using all the polite words, but really meaning, "fuck right off please."

You know.

Finally, we started putting up our hands and blocking the MeOff who got all kinds of huffy, "meh, people are just trying to have fun on ragbrai, GOOOODDD."

Listen, Meoff, this isn't Cir du Solie, and you may want to come in here like a wrecking ball, but you are a hot mess and we are trying to drink some god-damned beer and relax for one fucking minute. Okay?

She and her MeOff friends finally skulked off and a rivalry was born.