RAGBRAI 2005
Once again I hung out with Team Flashback, here they are loading up their truck
Cut it short this year and planned on riding the first 2 days. We arrived up in Le Mars Saturday night to an excellent host who had Johnsonville brats on the grill for us! I made it up to the beer garden for awhile, I ran into some people taking a picture and decided I would take the picture for them so they all could be in it. As I said "cheese", I got a special "pose" from one of the gals, quick thinking I said that I didn't get the shot and let's do it again! We had Excellent weather as one of our team members was able to sleep on the open ground with just a sleeping bag.
Sunday morning was a perfect ride, we even had a little tail wind. I stopped at the Oasis and had a few beers and ran into team member Bill. Pulling out I ran into team member Winchester and rode for awhile. Nice gentle ride until one of his spokes broke. We pulled into the next town and found a repair shop that did an excellent job and very reasonably priced. We also ran into a "Mean Gene's" Pizza for a photo shot.
Found another beer garden that was just a few blocks away from an excellent Buick "grave yard". Walked around and checked out all the old cars and then met some of the other team members in the beer garden.
We arrived at the Country Club in Sheldon to set up camp. It looked like rain so I had decided to sleep in Winchesters truck. Team "Budweiser" was there so we hung out at the club with the DJ. Coming back to camp I found Winchesters truck locked so I just crawled into the back of the bed and went to sleep, until it started sprinkling. I found Winchester and he unlocked the truck and I went to sleep. My bike was parked next to the truck on a cement slab. The storms during the night woke me and shook the truck but I was really unaware of had bad it was! I crawled out of the truck around 4 AM and found that people had taken shelter in the building next to me and lots of tents were heavily damaged. My bike was not where I had left it but I found it alongside the building, laying down and looked like it had been tossed around pretty good by all the wind. I tried to stand it up but the kickstand was broken so I leaned it up against the building and went back to sleep. Monday morning when I woke up I removed the broken kickstand and discovered that both tires were rubbing on the brakes. The brakes were so tight that we couldn't even pull the quick release cables. We loosened the cables enough so that the wheels would turn, but I was still nervous about the rest of the bike. We were ready to pull out when someone asked, "one more beer?" and the next thing we know it was around 11:00. Winchester and I decided to throw our bikes in the back of the truck and call it a day. Everything was soaking wet. But at least we got to see the "naughty police" and the "brownies" before we left.
(we were discussing camping tips of course)
The naughty police were out in force
I turned myself in - guilty as charged!
Questions:
Why did Theresa take Nelson's bath bag? and why was everyone opening beer for Nelson?
Thanks to Jim and Jenny for taking me up and bringing me back
Bike info: 5th year for Rans Tailwind, 6th year for BikeE CT and 12th year for GT Tequesta