Today's ride was one of my favorites of RAGBRAI. It started out with a little hill climb into the town of Rathbun, ten we approached the Rathbun dam. It was a beautiful morning ride over the dam, with Rathbun Lake off to our left.
Moravia was our next stop, with a cute little railroad depot next to the tracks. I stopped for my famous BLT lunch, and then hopped back on the road. I tried to not spend too much time in the other two stopover towns so that I could make reasonable time to our host town of the evening, Ottumwa. I did pause at the Beekmans homemade ice cream stop to take a photo of the sprawling line. It was extra impressive today!
We stayed at a beautiful sprawling park in Ottumwa, with lots of mature trees and lovely lakes. I got camp set up, and stood in line for close to an hour and a half for a 5 minute, $5 coin operated shower in a semi truck. There's a line for everything on RAGBRAI - with over 15,000 people on the route each day, the veterans have learned to just take it in stride.
After I got cleaned up, I took the shuttle to downtown and browsed the vendors set up on a bridge over the river. It was a really nice setting for the expo that evening. I was really not in the mood to sit on the curb and eat a street food meal, and luckily I found a Mexican restaurant after walking across he bridge. It felt amazing to sit in a real seat and let the food come to me!
Charging your phone is always a challenge too, so I found a construction site wired for electricity and plugged my phone in. I laid on some wood for the construction site for a while, called my dad, and just rested while my phone charged. It's funny how you adapt to bicycle touring by lowering your standards of living. Everyone is sprawled out on grassy patches, eating messy food on curbs, and searching out power supplies anywhere they can find them when bicycle touring. You do things you would never normally do, but it quickly becomes your new normal.
After the shuttle ride back (I sadly decided to skip seeing Rick Springfield in concert because it started after biker bedtime, or 9pm), I sat by the lake and talked to my wife and mom. Not a bad way to end the day.
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