RAGBRAI - Day 5 - Centerville to Ottumwa - 57.6 miles, 1999 feet of climb)

ADDENDUM: I can't believe I forgot to add this, but Adam reminded me I left out one of the best parts of RAGBRAI Day 5.  While we were at the Ottumwa bridge, a nice couple on a golf cart offered to give the three of us a ride back to the camp site.  We piled onto the suicide seat and....the golf cart just sat there, the front wheels almost lifting off the ground.  With dozens of people watching, the cart slowly moved forward about a foot.  Then another.  Then just wouldn't do it anymore, much to the amusement of a few who shouted encouragement and advice.  That's what precipitated our long walk back past the McDonalds.

Day 5, Centerville to Ottumwa.  Other than the last day, this may have been our fastest day of cycling.  We flew through the route and ended up getting to the campground in Ottumwa ahead of the truck.  We spent a lot of time just hanging out where we intended to camp and talking to Tun about his $8000+ loaner bike.

Here's Ming using the porta potty in Rathbun.  These seems obviously to be color coded for men and women.  Sexist porta porties.  Ming defied color convention and used the pink one as Adam was already occupying blue.  A following day one of the stops had multi-colored porta potties - much more PC.


This is the Rathbun Dam on Rathbun Lake.  Beautiful.  But I couldn't get cyclists not to pedal in front of me and stop to take photos as they didn't want someone in their photo taking a picture.  Sort of dickish behavior. I was tempted to just wander ahead of this guy, but then I decided if I ever need a better picture I can just crop him out.  A beautiful place to catch the sunrise.  Reminded me a bit of the really long bridge Adam and I crossed during the 2013 RAGBRAI.


We stopped in Moravia for breakfast.  It was a nice little town.


Ming and I were excited to have something different for breakfast and the biscuits and gravy at the church with fruit was delicious.  Adam wasn't having it - he went for lighter fare.


My geotags aren't doing this service because this probably wasn't Troy, IA. I think it was Unionville.  This is the pie spread that greeted us.  One of the ladies had made something like 113 or 130 pies leading up to RAGBRAI in the last 24 hours.  $2 for pie.  $1 for ice cream.  Endless coffee was free.  An amazing set up - fruit pies, cream pies...I wish I hadn't eaten that heavy breakfast and could have done seconds.  Ming later opined that he should have just eaten half of two slices instead of a whole slice.


Look at it.  It is beautiful. That's the RAGBRAI pie experience you hope to find.


The campgrounds in Ottuma were excellent.  Huge park with old trees near a loop in the river.  Cool.  Quiet (comparatively).  Shady.  So nice compared to the open hot fields we usually inhabited.  After our tents were set up and we found a shower truck, we told Tun we'd meet him at the local BBQ place.  He biked over there - we chose to use the shuttle.  In retrospect, waiting 30-some minutes (or more) for the shuttle to go about a mile wasn't the best plan.  By the time we got to the BBQ joint, Tun had eaten his food.  But he stayed to chat while we ate.  And if we hadn't taken the shuttle Ming wouldn't have struck up his friendship with the Hyvee lady and we wouldn't have seen the guy who sat down at the shuttle stop in his bibs with a whole large pizza, and folded two slices in half like a sandwich and ate them, rinse and repeat, until he had one piece left he gave away.  That was a big appetite.

After BBQ we headed over to the local theater.  Ming and Adam went to the Star Trek flick I'd already seen, so I went to Lights Out, which was boring (and reminded me of a story in my George Saunder's book, just longer and with less capable acting). Lot of cyclists came in to use the A/C.  One guy came in speaking another language and the teenage ticket guy started talking to him in an Eastern language.  Apparently the guy was Polish and the ticket taker knew Russian and Ukrainian.  They talked, remarked how stupid each other sounded in their own language selection, and then got down to figuring out for the price of a ticket how the Polish guy could optimize his movie-watching experience so he didn't have to leave the theater for the next six hours.  Some very good natured theater staff.


This was a bigger town, so they had bigger entertainment.  On their bridge, Rick Springfield performed later.  We didn't catch that, but we wandered around, shopped for t-shirts for kids (found Eryn a tie dye one to replace the Elroy Sparta one she had as a little kid), found some food, and watch the entertainment prior to Rick.


The number of people downtown was fairly sparse, but if you got over to the bridge it was pretty solidly packed.


The pre-Springfield show was a bunch of folks dressed up like famous entertainers (Adam had to point out to me that the woman in the skirt was Katy Perry).  We watched them and all the "dancers" (quotes intended for irony) on a big screen right near where they were playing.  I think we could have turned around to see them if the food vendors hadn't been behind us.  At one point one of the guys sitting near us said (paraphrase), "Is it just me, or have they been playing the same song for the last 20 minutes?"  I don't think he was wrong - they were sort of jamming and dancing for a long time at one point.


We took the long path back when we got routed around the river and stopped at a McDonald's for a cone and fries.  They were out of cones, so I settled for more soda than any human should drink just to rehydrate.  A lady on RAGBRAI stopped at our table and asked why we were eating at McDonald's given all the RAGBRAI options.  She was there for a cone as well, so our goals were similar.  We told her we generally hit the churches and stands or local places.  We saw her again a day or two later and noted we were eating local.  There were a lot of people we saw multiple times - Dan K from Minneapolis who pulled a trailer behind him every morning, the McDonald's Lady, the aeroshell bike guy, MBA Trek woman, Ms. San Antonio, Ms Panties (Adam's nickname), the not-dressed-as-much-as-other-riders-and-very-tan pair (of women), some of the Cuisine riders, Tun (almost every day - he finished near the front of the pack)...sort of like being in a new town for a week.

RAGBRAI - Day 4 - Leon to Centerville - 65.1 miles, 2708 feet of climb)

ADDENDUM: I missed pictures from breakfast!

Day 4 - Leon to Centerville!  65.1 and only 2708 feet of climb, but it was hot and there were some bigger hills.  This is the day Adam and Ming made their gentlemen's agreement that you would wait for someone at a stop for only 30 minutes before all bets were off and they could move on.



I said we got up early.  This early.  Damn that's early.  That's Adam headed to the truck.


And Ming, getting his stuff loaded.  He's facing the other direction because he's got morning wood from all that watermelon.  At least that's what Adam says.


Our first stop was Garden Grove - a Mormon town.  They weren't really ready for us so early in the morning.  They were still getting the tractors and wires adjusted for parking bicycles.


This guy was actually pretty good. I liked his foot pedal that allowed him to sing with himself.  I hope he got a much larger audience later.

We ended up stopping for breakfast in Humeston, Iowa.  This gigantic bull's head greeted you to town.


My sister was dubious of our breakfast.  It wasn't typical RAGBRAI fare.  We ended up in a sit-down cafe with a waitress, the Grassroots Cafe,...


...eating quiche of a glass plate and drinking coffee from a ceramic cup and following it up with custom baked bread and grape salad dessert.



Almost looks like one of those French paintings of a bicycle outside a cafe.  Ming, Adam, and I are all in this photo.  Ming paying the bill and flirting with the teenage waitress.  Ming and I reflected in the window.


I spent a chunk of the day sprinting ahead of Ming and Adam trying to find a bathroom without a line.  Something wasn't sitting right.  Most of the towns on Day 4 were unincorporated, so they were just a bar, or a corner, or a church.  Every single one of them with porta potties with a big line.  Finally, in Mystic, only 5 miles from the end, I found an unoccupied pair.  It was a good place to stop - goat races, pinch pies (like you'd get at McDonald's but better), a smoothie, pulled pork sandwiches, and a big hill leading out of town.  A lot of folks rested before the hill and commented that once they got up it they were stopping again for the craft beer tent.


I didn't actually see the goats racing.  I was talking to a guy from the lower midwest and a woman from San Antonio.  But I did see the goats getting ready.  The little one wasn't ready to race.



Ming texted me to shoot ahead and I found us a spot at the community college right near the fence and truck.  It was an interesting time to pull in as about the only other riders pulling in at the same time were many attractive young women.  They're FAST (as was the woman from San Antonio in Mystic).  I'm not sure if they've got something to prove to male riders, or if they're just staying ahead of the pervs.  I talked to one for a while who was interning in Madison at Trek and was headed out West to work as management for another big outdoor firm if she got the chance.

It was our day to wash clothes.  This is the laundromat I found on Google.  There's a problem.  We talked to a woman who was going to give us a ride to the other laundromat, but then I just started walking.  Sometimes you just have to assume you'll get there before the details work themselves out or you'll be waiting all day when the rest of the riders catch up.  There was a tractor shuttle in town, but the guy was from out of town and didn't know if he went near the other laundromat.  He did.  Within three blocks.  We probably walked at least a mile.



The other laundromat was a bit dicey.  The shower trucks were washing loads of towels and many of the dryers were broken.  You can't see it in this smaller panorama, but if you click into the original you can see that every single washer on the side where Ming is sitting is out of order.

Original Size (huge)


Someone doesn't trust Carl to fix them anytime soon.  But we got our hands on a few and a few dryers and talked to a guy riding unsupported and another guy supporting the Air Force team.  We'd passed a church on the way there, so we went back for dinner.  There was an elevator.  But that was a mistake because a.) it was hot and b.) you'll note I didn't mention a shower for us prior to the laundromat.  It was a hothouse of stink.  This other guy on the elevator made a face.


Centerville had a nice setup.  I got to see a lot of it as I forgot my clothes on the way to the shower truck.  We had waited for quite a while to catch a shuttle as they kept stopping before the stop and people would run over and fill it up that weren't in the line.  So once I was back to collect my clothes, I stopped at the other location.  And it promptly switched to the correct location.

They decorated their porta potties with themes.  You can't see her, but behind me in this photo is Ms. Pancake Day.  Madison Moorman, Miss Pancake, is over on the Facebook Pancake Day page if you really need to see the details about Pancake Day - she explains it in depth.  We didn't have the ham ball dinner, so no photo for us.


A close up of the yellow brick road porta potty.


Here's the tractor transportation.  We spent some time downtown just wandering around visiting the stores and taking in some air conditioning.