Today was HOT. And we mean HOT. But we're getting ahead of ourselves...
FC and Unc enjoyed the best breakfast pizza ever at the Wesley community center. Unc determined Wesley was his favorite town in the entire state of Iowa. Breakfast featured comfy chairs, the aforementioned amazing pizza, wonderfully nice people, lots of fans... And REAL FLUSH TOILETS! (Holy smokes!). Meanwhile Moo and Oink took the yodelling pickle on various adventures in Wesley, Britt and Garner, as featured above. In case you were wondering, yes the pickle really plays a yodel. And yes people look at us strangely when we ask them if we can take their picture with the yodelling pickle. When you add sincerely "and it really does yodel!" then hit the button to start the music, people know we are crazy and are too afraid to deny us our photo request.
Thumbs up to Britt and Garner for rolling out the red carpet for RAGBRAI! Britt was full of great entertainment - the place was rockin' with a man on stilts, a little bit of Mayberry, a band, a hobo, kybos with short lines... AND the best part: Oink and Moo wanted to hug the girls in Britt who were handing out free cold packs (frozen paper towels in plastic bags), but strangely they didn't want a hug from sweaty bikers.
Moo, Oink, FC and Unc rolled into G-town / Garner excited to visit the old stomping grounds of our dear friends, Sheila and Eric. G-town didn't disappoint with yummy food, a shady beer garden with live music and grass soft enuf to nap on, ice cold beer (Oink wasn't sure whether to drink it or hold the can to her face), free water that you could use to fill your water bottle or drench your head, Lion's Club lemonade to fill your other water bottle, and a Schwan's truck parked right on main street. After much debate ("do we finish?" "do we stay in this shady park and beg our mom to come get us?... but she can only haul 2 bikes..."), we saddled up as the temperatures continued to climb and headed for Clear Lake.
A couple notes: 1. The head wind heading south stunk worse than we did. 2. RAGBRAI - Today's route was not 58.5 miles. It was over 67. Those extra miles are very relevant when its 90,000 degrees out...
We survived the heat and found our camp site in Clear Lake. Judy continued her roll as mother of the year as she's staked out tent sites and even put 2 tents up. (Goodness gracious she's awesome.). (But she didn't want a thank you hug when we arrived either. Hmmm...) Then we sweated more, had cold water and beer at camp, talked about how hot it was, located showers, showered so we could sweat more walking back from showers, and welcomed Oscar Meyer and UPS to the group - who arrived from Chitown today and will start riding tomorrow. Given our camp site is no where near town (we aren't a fan of Clear Lake logistics), again Queen Judy (QJ for short) was amazingly generous and shuttled us in 2 car loads to a nearby Pizza Hut. Pizza. Breadsticks. A/C. Lots of laughs... Especially at the "Pickle Story" time when we swapped adventures to see who won the trophy (PUMMEL and Geezer both were top contenders). And even flush toilets. Does life get any better?
Thank you to Sheila for stopping by the Hut to say hi to the team. It was great... Garner and an in-person visit from one of Garner's finest in one day. Almost too much. ;-)
Shorter day tomorrow. Hopefully RAGBRAI doesn't get all sneaky and tack on more miles like today. And we HEARD a high of 81. Keeping our fingers crossed!
Note: PUMMEL has pickle duty tomorrow so we'll have to find something else to entertain us.
ZZZZZ,
Moo and Oink
PS In case you were worried by our earlier post, we found Geezer.
2 comments:
I would like to clarify that "a shady beer garden" in Garner meant it was a beer garden set under shade trees, not a "shady" beer garden!
It was great to see the team last night and especially, to give Oink a birthday hug in person! (and yes, before I typed "Oink" just now, I had to go back and refer to handle reference list to make sure I had the right one)
Hahahahaha! I am glad you clarified between a shady-with-trees beer garden vs. a shady-with-strange-people beer garden... we all know everything in Gtown is the good kind of shady...
Post a Comment