RAGBRAI Day 1

Council Bluffs to Harlan

54.8 Miles - 2,476 Feet of Climb

We were up by 6 and threatening to shoot the generator a couple of doors away from us, we ate a little snack, changed our clothes, brushed the teeth, packed snacks, checked tires, filled water bottles and packed the camper and Tahoe, we were on the road by 6:45. Not bad when you have 2 night owls on the trip.  We wound our way along the route and stopped for breakfast in the old part of town. We gathered courage and, as we topped the first hill and turned the corner, we all noticed the church sign that said "Free Coffee, Free Water and Free Prayer"  Ha ha ha, we laughed to ourselves in an almost challenging way, but it a great day, the sun is shining, the birds are chirping and the weather  is beautiful, we even beat the heat. It's going to be a great day!

We trekked through small towns like Weston, Underwood and Neola stopping to take in some water and calories. All in all it's been a great ride, we have 4.5 miles until the meeting town of Minden which marked our halfway point for the day. We made great progress, 56.8 miles of relatively flat roads and excited about having our first day underway. People were talking, laughing, feeling great. It really was a great ride. We ended the ride by riding through Shelby, Tennant and ending in Harlan. Dennis had the Tahoe parked by the swimming pool and the camper very close to being set up for our overnight stay. 

We were so  SO excited that we were so near a flushing toilet AND a shower, going rate for a shower on the RAGBRAI is $5 but this was a total score because we had access to the shower AND flushing toilets AND a sink. It was awesome!! We gathered our things and headed into heaven.  Or so we thought... Little realized thought as we were headed in sweaty and stinky and sun-baked that a few number of showers + hundreds of RAGBRAIers and locals out for the day at the pool = no hot water... We were looking forward to a shower and if it were a cool one, so be it, it would feel great!  I will tell you it did NOT feel great! It made your body hurt and rinsing your hair led to a headache... A REALLY intense headache. We were clean and had the added benefit of having pre-soaped for our next shower because the water was too cold to do a great job rinsing...

We took the shuttle into town for dinner and headed back for the night. We all slept well and felt surprisingly rested for the next day. We were going to need it.