Today was a longer ride, but also one of the best ones, due in no small part to some wonderful tailwinds towards the latter part of the day. I also turned it into a day to eat all the junk food I had been skipping all week, so I consumed a corn dog, cheese curds, another Amish stuffed pickle, and finally some fresh Amish pie.
We pedaled past two wineries today, which I neglected to stop at. I'm pretty sure that's called "doing it wrong". For whatever reason, alcohol has not sounded good to me on this trip! Which seems to be the exact opposite of how many other riders are approaching this week!
We rode along some beautiful high ridges. I never knew how hilly Iowa could be! I was flying towards Washington at the end of the day because of that tailwind, which thankfully allowed me to make good time into town. I stopped at a local business just before town that was giving away free beer, just to say I had a beer on RAGBRAI. There were too many party people there, so I consumed my summer shandy and moved on.
We camped at the fairgrounds, and I somehow stumbled onto the one single shower instead of using the open showers that had been set up in the cattle barn. Downtown, I found some Chinese food, then wandered around trying to find some adequate wifi to make my evening phone calls. When even McDonalds failed me (these small towns cannot support 15,000+ people trying to utilize their public wifi!), I was lucky to stumble upon Washington's public library, which was staying open until 11pm just for us cyclists to have a cool place to hang out, charge phones, use a real restroom, and access their wifi. It was a really lovely gesture on their part, and I enjoyed an hour or so in the library.
I ran into our friend Jim in the shuttle line back to camp, and when we arrived back, Angie and Beth had bought hard cider and puppy chow and invited is to their tent to celebrate the end of the trip. We had a good time hanging out and chatting for a while before we all got too tired to stay up any longer. There was a band playing until sometime after 10:30, so it was a later night than usual, but that was ok given that it was the final night of the trip and we had a short day to Muscatine ahead of us.
Here's a photo of the four of us from the following morning:
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