RAGBRAI Day 2

Harlan to Perry (Karras Loop)
83.0 miles (24.4) 4,239 Feet of Climb

We look downright adorable here, the smiles are there and we are excited! That's what our faces say, but really, we are nervous, really nervous and we were right to be that way. This would be the longest distance we would ride and the hills were there for us to tackle. It's one of those moments in life that you have two choices, you can delay your ride, fuss with stuff and figure out ways around the challenge living in denial of how to make it seem not so bad OR get up early, pack the best you can and just get on with it. We chose the latter. 

We got on the route at 6:30 and sucked it up. We started the day riding through fog and it was already warming up. Bad juju for things to come, but what are you going to do... We were in a group of riders 5-6 people deep for miles up the road and down the road. When you are in a pack like that, you tend to ride faster and be in a better mood because we are all focused on the same goal and we are, in a way, just a big team.   We stopped for breakfast at Mr. Pancake, it was so tasty!  Nothing like using a drill with a paint stir attachment to stir our breakfast. AWESOME! 

This was the day that you could choose to ride an optional loop to make your day a "century" ride, one that consisted of 100 miles or more.  Jessica and I were happy to be average and just get through the day, but leave it to Aaron to decide to take the extra loop.  We cheered for him when he took off for the extra challenge as we were riding off talking about his high insanity level...

We all road through Kimbalton and Hamlin before we all met up in Guthrie Center for lunch. Aaron made great time and was only about 30 minutes behind us. He said the route was hilly but doable. We congratulated him and he NEEDED food. We had a great lunch, rested up and put our game faces on for the rest of the ride. We were only halfway done for the day.

For some reason, I thought the worst was over. Whatever... Our challenge continued but now we had to really bring in our mental toughness.  We did tackle half the distance and saw a number of hills, but we didn't realize that the majority of the climbing was in the later part of the route. The weather took the typical Midwest late July trend for high humidity and high heat. Really? Why not... It's going to be a mess of a day, lets just put all the challenges at once. We rode, and rode and rode. We had head winds, tail winds, side winds and it seemed that as we rode, we saw fewer and fewer people. We rode late into the day past when support wagons and help stopped for the day. That is a really bad feeling being out on a route and looking around seeing very few people. This day also saw the longest steepest hill in RAGBRAI history. ARE YOU KIDDING ME!!! Man this day sucked...

We were 7 miles from our ending town of Perry. As we were taking the last break of the day, I overheard a very excited woman talking about a man that wasn't doing very well and needed help. The ambulance was called and as I identified my skills as a nurse, I felt the day get even longer.  We found the man in very VERY bad shape. The ambulance was not an overreaction to say the least. He suffered from severe dehydration, very low blood sugar and there were moments I was pretty sure I was going to have to perform CPR on him.  He was loaded into the ambulance and taken to the hospital for treatment. 

I returned to Aaron and Jessica and as we turned north for the final leg, we noticed growing thunderheads that were getting darker and more ominous. AWESOME... We had been watching them throughout the day but now we had the added pleasure of feeling the cooling wind that could only mean one thing. COME ON!! So we rode the last miles watching the sky and encouraging our legs and bike and everything we had to get just a little faster, just - a - little - faster...  

We got into town and struggled with cell phones that had little to no service in the town we entered, trying to coordinate with Dennis for his location and get into shelter before the storm hit. 

As we were riding the last 19 blocks of our journey, it started sprinkling, then raining... We pulled into the parking lot and the rain was really picking up and so was the wind.  We dove into the set up camper and all agreed that we were never so happy to see the day of riding come to an end. FINALLY!! As we sat inside the camper the storm descended for real. HAIL now started coming down in sheets and the wind was ferocious... MAN CAN WE END THIS DAY YET!!

We had a huge encouragement as Jessica knew of a family who's parents lived in Perry. We cold called them asking -well begging - for the use of his shower... PLEASE!!! THEY SAID YES!! It was doubtful that Lance Armstrong had these issues, but well, we had a shower and it was amazing! Heaven that night was found in a little house with a tiny shower. We were so especially grateful to sit on a cozy couch, watch the 10 pm news-yeah-10 PM... and settle down from the trauma of the day. Next stop was McDonald's then back to the camper for some sleep. HOLY CRAP!! Totally sucky awful, no good, very bad day...