|
Team photo outside the Hiawatha office. |
Today is the short day! We started our day off with biking through downtown to get back to the official RAGBRAI route which tacked on an additional 10 miles to the day. We stopped in Czech Village for breakfast as a team. We were all pretty pumped about the short day....until on our way out of the Czech Village we were greeted by a nice, steep hill. Today was the day that most of of realized that we had to climb out of every overnight town...not sure why it took us 6 days to catch on, but nonetheless this is not how I like to start my day!
|
Elizabeth, Ramon and me before leaving Czech Village |
Our next stop was in Mount Vernon, home to Cornell College. This town was packed shoulder to shoulder once you passed Cornell. Emily, Elizabeth and I stopped for breakfast sandwiches and water and a little bit of people watching.
|
Entering Mount Vernon |
|
Love this lady and would not have survived without her! |
Along the route today we took in some beautiful scenery and stopped for a few photo ops.
|
Me, Emily and Elizabeth |
Once we got into Anamosa I did my best at following our directions on how to get to the camp site. And for those of you who know me know that I follow directions to a "t." We began to doubt the way we were headed and stopped and ask for directions. The locals provided directions that were completely contradictory of what we were given...therefore I doubted their directions even more. Elizabeth encouraged me to trust the locals...after all they would be the ones who would know the way! Once we found our camp site at the country club we couldn't help but notice a neon pink tent. We figured that it belonged to one of the other female team members, but little did we know it belonged to Oswaldo. He was a good sport when we teased him about it! During dinner a few of us were able to catch part of the opening ceremony of the Olympics from the club house.
Following dinner a few of us were pulled aside to discuss the next day's ride.We have some fast riders on the team but some of us are the "stragglers" (and we openly know and admit this). We had a strict deadline of when we needed to be done the next day in order to stay on schedule and wanted to provide some options to ensure we could meet the timeline.
Camping does not come without it's nuances. Literally as soon as our team was in our tents ready to go to bed our lovely neighbors began to play music extremely loud. A few team members walked over and politely asked them to turn it down since they could hear it through ear plugs! However, they refused to turn the music down until an anonymous party called the cops on them. Needless to say they were still sleeping when our team was heading out on the road at 6 am the next morning.