It is Thursday, July 18, 2019. Ragbrai 2019 -2 days and counting. We have made the jello squares
Loaded the refrigerator….
And the bikes
Time to point Ark IV east and make tracks for Council Bluffs, IA. Time to put the training, sweating, bike maintenance, vacation time, and anticipation to good use. Time to make some more biking memories with family, friends, and strangers. Time to see some more of that beautiful Iowa countryside and to meet some more of those incredible Iowans who open their hearts to a swarm of strangers every July. It’s time for Ragbrai.
And we are on our way !!!
If you look closely at Ark IV, you can probably see a slight bulge on the sides from all of the stuff crammed inside. What you can’t see is that the generator is running so that we can run 2 air conditioners. It is hotter than blue blazes and promises to stay that way for several days. We run our generator so we can run our air conditioners while driving down the road – and stay cool. I 💕 our generator !
Heading northeast on Interstate 76, we stop at Julesburg to dump and change drivers.
And in a few moments . . . .
We are in Nebraska and closing in on Interstate 80.
As is tradition for the 3Dudaks Bicycle Team, the first night’s stop is at the Walmart parking lot in North Platte, NE.
Day -1 of Ragbrai 2019 (Friday, July 19, 2019)
As is also tradition, we make a run into the store on Friday morning to pick up ‘just a few’ things that we didn’t get before leaving home. Then to Flying J for diesel and back on Interstate 80 eastbound. Usually we stop at the Flying J at Gretna NE for our second fuel stop, but this time we did something a little different. Kevin did a bit of research as we drove and found that diesel was $0.50 per gallon cheaper at the Costco on the southwest side of Omaha. So we deviated from the tradition (Egad!) and headed for Costco. Not all Costcos have diesel, but this one did, and so we were able to fill up and save some $ all at the same time. Turned off the air conditioners and the generator to fuel, then they went right back on. Still hot as blue blazes 🙂
We had another departure from tradition at this stop – a really good one. Shortly after David’s diagnosis of male breast cancer, we became affiliated with an online support/advocacy/awareness group for male breast cancer. It is called Male Breast Cancer Coalition, and one of the ladies who is very active in the raising of awareness for male breast cancer is Pat Washburn. Her husband Marlyn died a few years ago from breast cancer, and she has become a tireless advocate for spreading the word that men can get breast cancer, too. She is a lovely lady, inside and out, and we are so grateful to know her. Well, it turns out that she lives in the Omaha area, and we were able (via facebook and text) to arrange to meet for a quick visit at the Costco fuel stop.
She drives this car from coast to coast in her efforts to educate everyone that men can get breast cancer too. Surprising how many people don’t realize it.
After getting back on I 80, we were just a few miles from our destination of Council Bluffs, Iowa. We pulled into the Horseshoe Casino, which was adjacent to the Mid America Center (the location of the Expo and the starting point for Ragbrai 2019). The casino has RV sites with hookups, and we were hoping to get there in time to secure one of those spots. David, Kevin, and I had all been trying to call them since the route was announced months earlier to make a reservation. All of us had been shuttled and shuffled from extension to extension, ultimately disconnected. Or had left message after message after message over the months, none of them returned. So we had no reservation. And, of course, their first question was “do you have a reservation?”. No, we said, you never answered your phone, you never responded to our messages – how could we have a reservation? I don’t have to tell you where we ended up. In a parking lot with no hookups, because we didn’t have a reservation. Grrrr! Good thing we have a generator. I 💗 our generator!
This particular Ragbrai RV parking lot was actually part of the parking lot for the AMC movie theater.
So there was a perpetual battle for parking, and we had cars zipping by the narrow slot between the front of our motor home and the curb. Kind of unnerving at times.
So here we are. It’s Friday mid afternoon (day -1)and we are parked about 1/2 mile from the Expo, which is the hub of activity for the beginning of Ragbrai. There are a zillion vendors of all kinds plus a number of stages for bands to perform throughout the day on Saturday and into the evening. But nothing is happening on Friday. Except for the setups of thousands (and I’m not kidding, thousands) of tents for the riders who were inbound.
Those little brownish dots are all individual tents. And there are fields and fields of them everywhere you turn.
So, because it was still hotter than blue blazes, our trusty generator continued to run (I ❤️ our generator!), powering 2 air conditioners that were barely able to keep up. The temperature was at or near 100, felt like about 175, give or take. So we spent a lot of time in the motor home on Friday. One of our team members, Andrew, stopped by during the day. He had flown into Omaha and was staying at a hotel near the Expo Friday night. He was waiting for his bike, which he had shipped from Gainesville FL earlier in the week. He and Kevin had been in contact, so Andrew knew where to look for our motor home.
A few more bike team support vehicles arrived during the day on Friday. Since most of them support riders who sleep in tents, grassy spots are in great demand. We had asked for a spot next to some grass when we arrived, and we had a good place for Erik and Andrew to put their tents. Sooner than we expected, some of the other tenters began setting up closer and closer to our little spot of grass. So Kevin and David quickly set up Erik’s tent (well, it’s really Kevin’s tent, but Erik uses it when he rides Ragbrai) to claim our turf.
This, plus a quick conversation with another group of tenters, secured the area for Andrew’s tent.
Day 0 of Ragbrai 2019– Saturday, July 20, 2019 (aka Ragbrai Eve)
On Saturday morning, Kevin rode over to the Expo area to get some work done on his bike. Well, the vendors were not allowed to open until noon, so he pedaled back to Ark IV. We spent a quiet morning, and Kevin pedaled back over close to noon. Within a short time, he was back with a fully repaired bike. Soon after, Andrew showed up on his bike with some of his stuff. He made a return trip to his nearby hotel to get the rest of it, and we began to get his stuff settled into the Ark. Then Andrew and Kevin pedaled back over to the Expo to look around.
Kevin found a new beer to try – a Ragbrai brew of some sort.
David changed the front tire on my bike (it had an incorrigible flat), and then we headed over to the Expo. It was soooo hot, and I had not hydrated adequately, so I mostly sat under a tent and drank water and juice while David took a quick turn around. It was too hot for both of us, so we pedaled back to Ark. Sometime after about 2:00, our other team member, Erik, arrived on the shuttle from Keokuk (the ending town this year). He had driven into Keokuk the night before and caught an early shuttle across the state to meet us. So now our team was complete.
Andrew went on a bike ride to find a Runza, some kind of sandwich type dish that a co worker had encouraged him to have. As is tradition :), we had spaghetti for the night before the first ride.
We ate on a table set up behind the motor home in the shade. Andrew was inbound on his bicycle (he had found a Runza and then gone on a bike tour of part of Omaha) and he joined us at the dinner table soon after his arrival. We enjoyed the (relative) cool of the shade and ate linguine topped with Kevin’s delicious 3 meat (elk, deer, antelope) spaghetti sauce until we were full and the bike riders were sufficiently carb loaded. We also enjoyed a salad, the romaine lettuce picked from Kevin’s garden just a few days earlier.
Meanwhile, our trusty generator motored on, powering our air conditioners and keeping us cool. Have I mentioned that I 💕 our generator????
Soon enough it was getting close to bedtime. I set out the breakfast fixings (oatmeal, fruit, bagels). The riders – Kevin, Erik, and Andrew – had decided to try and leave between 6:30 and 7:00 in the morning, so I set my alarm for 5:30. The heat was supposed to break sometime in the night with a rain and thunderstorm. But, as the evening drew to a close, there was no sign of the break except for a breeze that preceded the storm.
3 Dudaks Bicycle Team 