RAGBRAI - Day 1 - Sargeant bluff, ia
Well, its time for another adventure! As some of you know, I.decided this summer, given the opportunity, to tackle RAGBRAI, the annual 7 day bike ride through Iowa. I’d never done this ride because i a m usually busy doing BTUSFMS stuff, and also because I wanted to go with a team and hadn’t been invited yet. But this is the year!
I try to keep it real on this blog, because it’s partly for me to remember experiences in the future, so I won’t sugarcoat things; today was tough. I left yesterday at about 2:30 Oakland time, and I just now at midnight on the following day am here complete with my bicycle. This is twice in a row that airlines have failed to deliver my bicycle and I’m done with them. It’s a nightmare because they never tell you anything. But I’m here, and I’m safe, and I”m going to try to turn things around. Iowa is incredibly hot, but everyone we meet has been very nice. The grocery store had a ton of high school kids working there and all of them were almost creepily nice. I got to catch up with my old friend Cheng, and got to eat at Culver’s so it wasn’t all bad. And Teri from my last ride is here so I’m looking forward to chatting with her. This whole environment is so different from BTUSFMS; there are tens of thousands of riders and the atmosphere is much more celebratory and remains me of a big music festival, but with bikes. I’m very tired but going to try to rally.