RAGBRAI - Day 2 - Shenandoah to Creston 75.2 miles, 3994 feet of climb)

This was the big day!  75 miles and almost 4000 feet of climb.  Nothing else was this big, although the third day could be considered steeper.

We got going bright and early again, before sunrise, trying to get in some distance before the sun hit us.  You'll see a few pictures in the dark in later posts.  We started anywhere between 5:15 and 5:45, and were up between 4:15 and 4:45 most days.  I'm still trying to shake that schedule four days later.

That's Adam in the yellow shirt.  We generally identified him by his orange shoes.



Adam kept going while Ming and I stopped for a fire station (run by a fire station, not at the fire station) pancake breakfast.  I kept threatening to post videos of Ming lotioning up.  This is as close as I'll come.


We had Chris Cakes a few times.  Ming wanted to know who Chris was at the end of the day, even though we had a pancake breakfast.  I learned much later that Chris invented the speed pancake biz.  Mr. Pancake sort of copied him.  And know Mr. Pancake's nephew (and wife) are also servicing the circuit as of the last three years.  You get to learn a lot going back for seconds.


Given how early we started, this is a good picture because you can see how many other people were trying to bit high noon.


We did manage to get there before this crowd.  We beat them by enough time that Ming was going to lean his bike against the standing table until I told him that was a place people were likely to eat.


We stopped for bathrooms and pie in the afternoon.  I took my gps odometer with me.  I didn't realize I'd have to charge it so much, particularly as I was just letting it run and collecting overall time, not moving time.  I bumped it here while filling my water bottles and thought I'd lost the first half the ride.  But troubleshooting a Virgin Pulse connect issue yesterday, I found it in the entries.  After that I carried it around less and just let it run on the bike.



I took a time lapse movie while eating my pie.


Mmmm....triberry.  I still remember the Amish telling me on a previous RAGBRAI that bumble (berry) pie is for children and all the little Amish kids laughing at me while I ate a piece.  That memory didn't make it any less sweet.  Wait...this is blackberry.  I had triberry at a different stop.  This was really good, but it was rough getting the seeds out of my teeth.


We got ahead of Adam and waited for him in Corning.  Corning is basically a hill someone dropped some houses on.



This guy passed us almost every morning.  That thing looks heavy as hell, but Ming says the cyclist told him he frequently tops 40 on the downhill runs.  We were in this tunnel for a while, but when Adam got there we moved to a nearby grassy knoll where they were playing Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy.  I swear I heard that almost every day.  As well as Katy Perry's Dark Horse.  I didn't realize those were bicycling staples.


I don't think you can appreciate the hill from here.  But it's there.  I broke my sunglasses in this town.  I'd already lost one of the nose rests.  I started to take them off and the frames just shattered.  As near as I could tell they'd gotten so hot in the sun they'd lost all cohesion. I'd have put on my second set, but Mean Mr. Mustard had stepped on them in his car after the visit to Klund's house for games.  Ming helped me pick out a new set that evening at the vendor stands.


Just some pedaling.



So we got to one town where there had been signs leading up to it declaring pie AND ice cream.  I'd been waiting for just such a portent.  When we pulled into town, there was only one obvious pie vendor.  So I rolled up and noticed their sign said pie and whip cream.  I asked, "Do you have pie and ice cream."  Guy: "No, whip cream."  Me: "But the signs into town said ice cream.  Is that another stand?"  Guy: "No, no.  We were going to have ice cream, but we couldn't get a license."  Guy #2: "We don't need a license for..." Guy #1, interrupting quickly: "For serving.  You need a license to serve ice cream."  Me: "No thanks. I don't want whip cream."  Guy: "It's pie.  With whip cream."  Me: "I'll keep going until I find ice cream." (I really wanted to say "I don't want to eat your lies", but I figured that wasn't very friendly).  At the end of the street, less than a block away, was a big sign for ice cream and pie to the left.

So I had a piece of pie with ice cream.



And watched the unicyclists go past with the church ladies.


And then, upon looking at Ming's pie, had another piece of pie and ice cream.



After pie, I seemed to be dogging it a bit.  I thought it was punishment for the two pieces of pie.  Then I noticed that I was going downhill slower than Ming for the first time, and a belly full of pie should have made that faster.  So I stopped to check and found my tire was getting mushy.  I had the slowest flat in the world.  I managed to limp up the hills into Creston, although on the last few 100 feet they gave me a gold beaded necklace and I attempted to put it on over my helmet and almost crossed into oncoming traffic.  That would have been the end of beads at RAGBRAI I bet.

I took my bike to a vendor in Creston as my gearing had been acting up as well and I knew my back tire had a chip in the rubber. Tyler the mechanic replaced the tire, the tube, the cassette and the chain.  When he talked to me he humorously spun a tale of how he'd measured my chain only to find the chain tool didn't measure that loose.  He was right - the next day was like a new bike.

We stayed at the college - which was nice except for some incredibly humid showers and disconnecting the wifi and had noodles for dinner at the Catholic school.



Excellent food, although it was more like spaetzel with chicken.  No shortage of food.  They offered us seconds, ice cream, two home made desserts, and all we could drink iced tea.  I was stuffed.


We spent some time in the college cooling off.  I like this photo.  It's not the library run by Ann Coulter (true...but not the Ann Coulter).  It's a classroom with a screen running that says "You are currently the only participant."  Seemed like the setting for a horror movie.

RAGBRAI: Pie Edition

My sister has already covered quite a bit of RAGBRAI if you're too anxious to wait for my write up. But I'm going to make an effort to get a chunk of it blogged today.

Rather than start with day 1, day 2, day 3, I'm going to get the bulk of my photos out here in a single post: the pie post. You see, there's really only a few ways I'd go on RAGBRAI again - I have other places I'd like to bike instead - and that's a.) if my pie-loving boss-of-bosses asked me to go or b.) if Olivia Munn decided to go. I've been lobbying her and her co-host Kevin Pereira to attend because there's bike p0rn to be covered for a week. Because contrary to belief, bicycle technology is not static. Because there are thousands and thousands of eccentric people to interview for a week. Because I doubt anyone has connected Iowa to a tech show yet, unless it has to do with farming (see...farming tech as well). Because Olivia probably looks good in bike shorts (and Kevin for the ladies). Because Olivia loves pie.

And there's so much pie. There's pie oozing in the streets, directly out of the veins of little old church ladies and Amish folk. During RAGBRAI, Iowa bleeds pie, necessitating an ice cream drip. Fruit pie: raspberry, blackberry, blueberry, strawberry, gooseberry, rhubarb, apple, peach, half a dozen other fruits, and then mix and match randomly. Bumble pie, which the Amish fed me in 2007, is a mix of pretty much everything (and not wikiable - so if you're feeling motivated, they could use an entry). So here is my pie journal, designed to attract Olivia's attention. If the idea of pie appeals to her, but riding 452+ miles does not, I suggest a Burley pulled by three interns. That would be something new at RAGBRAI.

Strawberry pie held by bike glove. A very subtle way to get bicycling into the picture. This was not my favorite piece of strawberry pie. I prefer less gooey pies with a lower sugar concentration. I should stress that the pie selection you're seeing is just a fraction of what I actually consumed during RAGBRAI. Which leads to the question, is this an eating event or bicycling event? It is both! And despite the vast amounts of pie consumed, I still lost almost two belt notches.


Packaged pie. I must have gone through more than a dozen plastic forks. If I go again, I may bring a metal fork in my pack.


Some people don't even sit down to eat pie. Or eat so much pie that for every bite that goes in, a bite has to come out, so they prepare by eating in a squatting position. There's something very RAGBRAI about grabbing a piece of pie and just heading off to a corner to quickly consume it.


For my part, I sit. This is Nodaway, Iowa, and I had blueberry pie here. Much of RAGBRAI can be remembered in terms of which pie you had in which town.


My blueberry pie, with my father in the background eating pie. He's not supposed to eat pie, but he gets a break when he's riding the road every day. The problem is he resorts to eating only pie and no real food and that won't get you through the day.


It would probably be amusing to make an animated gif of someone in the act of eating a few dozen pieces of pie on RAGBRAI. There's no shortage of shots.


It always seems as though the Methodists and the Baptists are big pie makers. There are hundreds of these signs along the road. I'm not sure why the pie on this sign looks sort of like a smelly clam, but it convinced me to find pie in Corning.


Church Ladies' Pies. Unintentionally funny.


There's more on this table than just pie, but you can see the variety of pies you have to choose from, and if you get sick of pie, there are many pie-like things to indulge your sweet tooth, all of them made by locals.


Rhubarb pie. Done correctly with a bit of green rhubarb to bitter it up, but it wasn't my favorite piece of pie. Rhubarb is one of those pies where I break my too much sugar rule. I like it a little sweeter so it has a tang on the back end of the taste instead of a crunch.


Looks good though, doesn't it?


Pie trivia! You can learn about pie while you bike. It's not just calories, it's education!


A list of possible pies. Pineapple. Raisin. Cherry. I missed quite a few earlier.


OMFG! This piece of blackberry pie was to kill for. Every RAGBRAI is a search for that piece of pie that is beyond all others. Last RAGBRAI it was from a farm lady selling them out of her front yard near I35. This time it was this piece of Blackberry Pie. I capitalize, because it was the form of blackberry pie. The universal constant. The form in the cave to which Plato referred, wherein all other pies are a reflection of the universal idea of blackberry pie. Blackberry pie can be difficult to find, because it disappears quickly. This piece explains why. I was drooling simultaneous to eating, which was no good, because I was concerned I'd overmoisten the perfectly flaky crust.


The blackberry was so good, I went back for raspberry. Two pieces of pie in 10 minutes. That was lunch. It wasn't as good as the blackberry, but it had an interesting cinnamon crust that was a surprising complement to the raspberries. The second best piece of pie I had on the ride.


Sometimes pie is delicious because you've been bicycling so hard that your body is craving the sugar to replenish your bloodstream. This was the case in Lockridge, Iowa, on the second to the last day of RAGBRAI, where the last 17 miles of our 81 mile day were a constant climb into the wind. By the time you got to Lockridge, where the air seemed rarefied, and you were sure you'd touch the faces of whatever deities you believed in, because they'd be hanging out eating church lady pie in some Olympian setting, you had very little energy left. That's where I had this gooseberry pie. Gooseberry is a tad bitter and it could have benefited from a scoop of ice cream, but the grapes were a sugary offset (know your pies, know how to complement them when faced with an ice cream shortage...it's a good maxim for good living) and I was drinking so much water that it cut the bitter edge anyway.


Here it is again. Good looking piece of pie, eh?


Almost an identical shot to the one that graced our 2009 RAGBRAI Participant Guide. Some people take their pie eating much more seriously than I do. Mr. Pecan Pie Hunter was part of a team that wore pie hats, each of them touting a different flavor of pie for which they were searching.


Olivia? Are you convinced? Seven days of pie eating without any worries about it going from the lips to the hips (as long as you keep pedaling)? Tens of thousands of pieces of pie, only six to eight of any of them identical to their brethren and each lovingly hand-crafted by someone with decades of pie-making experience? The added benefit of actually feeling the pie coursing through your veins to replace the sugar you've lost that day? Mmm......