The floor floppers had some excitement last night. About 11:30 pm the fire alarm went off. I
guess it was totally piercing. Fire and
police all showed up and turned the place upside down before they got it shut
off. Meanwhile I am out in my tent and
slept through the entire episode. The
drumming of the rain on my tent had put me off to a sound sleep.
While I am on the tenting thing Mal, who is this little
English fellow and who has never camped/tented throws down the gauntlet as to
who can set the furthest out. He comes
up to Greg the tour leader and says “Look at Terry he has camped half way to tomorrow’s
destination.” Then he pitches his tent a
good 50 feet further out and says to me that he is now furthest out. And I thought Earnie camped a long way out.
Today’s ride was 84 miles with only 920 feet of climb, in a
word dead flat. However it was the roads
which made it a tough ride. Minnesota’s roads all seem to be terribly broken
perpendicular to the direction of travel. Each crack is offset by 0.5 to 3.5
inches, as a result there is terrible jarring every 50 feet or so. A couple of
the riders are complaining of carpel tunnel syndrome in their arms as a result
of this. I just feel shaken. It is route
I think I would have just ridden down the main highway but Ed was with Auzzie
Bob and myself today.
Picnic was under the giant ear of corn in Olivia which has
proclaimed itself the corn capital.
There certainly is lots of corn but then so does Kansas and I would have
to see some numbers to be convinced.
The big major storm seems to have moved off to the east
leaving us with blue skies. It was raining here in Hutchinson when we left
Montevideo and router Dan who was out doing Saturday’s ride into Northfield was
complaining about being in the rain. I
think there must have been a lot of rains as the fields all seem flooded.
The storm has changed the weather pattern so that we now
have a wind of 15-20 mph out of the NNW.
This is more of a cross wind than a quartering tail wind but as the
route was up and down on all these side roads we did have both tail and head
winds.
About mile 63, I was feeling kind of done so I ate a snack
and the van went by and I got a protein bar off the van and felt a lot better. Ed did a lot of pulling as that sure helped
as well.
We are in a big community hall tonight which has great big
open area for the floor floppers but as it is so nice out a lot of people have
chosen to tent and tenting is really crowded. This is also caused by half of
the tenting area being under water.
Ed, Auzzie Bob and I rolled in about 1:15 pm so we did
pretty darn good.
Terry
5 comments:
Sounds like you had yourself a great day despite the rough roads. Good riding tomorrow! I'll be thinking of you on my run.
Corn Capitol has to be in Iowa! In route to RAGBRAI. MN Road bumps sound maddening.
Merrilynne and I are in Cold Lake visiting her Mom, so we are experiencing that wild Prairie weather. Last night a spectacular lighting display and pounding rain entertained us. Keep the bike rubber side down and keep up the commentary.
I remember Minnesota and Wisconsin being pretty flat; no hills to climb, just river valleys. Seems to me, in 2014, we rode in the traffic lane as the road was sparsely traveled, but I do remember the frost heaves.
Canada Ken C.
I may have camped way out, but a lot of the time you were further out than me! I like my privacy!!!! I thought that picture of the flooded corn field was a random picture of a lowland/marsh with bull rushes. After your comments, I re-looked at it and saw it was corn. The radar shows it clear for at least a couple of days. Hopefully no headwinds.
Later,
Earnie
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