Day 5 - Marshalltown to Cedar Rapids

The view from the repair tent in Garwin

Finally a break in the heat! This morning it was in the 60s, which after the first 4 days is welcomed with open arms. Today we're off to Cedar Rapids and will be staying at the Hiawatha office. The day started off to what we thought was good. However, Elizabeth and Karen were having some issues with their bikes, so we visited a repair tent in the first pass through town, Garwin. This was the slowest line....EVER! Elizabeth's bike turned out to be fine after a quick look and adjustment and more importantly free of charge! Karen's bike on the other hand was deemed defective and she was advised to not ride any further. Against the repairman's advice Karen decided to keep riding at least to the meeting town.So we continued on to the town of Clutier where we had one of the best $3 hamburgers I've ever had; it hit the spot!

Karen and I as we entered Clutier

Old fire truck at one of the cooling stations

Once we reached the meeting town of Vinton, Karen decided to keep riding as her bike did not feel any different than it did while she was training. Since we are staying at the Hiawatha office we were told that we would have a few miles shaved off  route. Little did we know that we would actually be adding additional miles to the day's route. Our path deviated from all other riders in Palo; this is where our ride became interesting. We rode with traffic...lots of traffic since it was late in the day. Our support truck followed us to ensure our safety. However, they also thought it would be fun to heckle us and yell out "go faster!" Nothing like a little pressure to keep you going at the end of the day.All day 85.9 miles

Headed to see Counting Crows

We arrived at the office shortly after 5pm. Which means we had an 11 hour day on our bikes...granted we did our fair share of stopping to take in the sites! We completed 85.9 miles! We ate dinner with some of the Hiawatha employees and shared stories from the day. After dinner we all headed downtown to listen to Counting Crows.

Headed back to the office for bedtime!

Me, Jim and Elizabeth at Counting Crows