July 23, 2002- Emettsburg to Forest City
68 Miles- 1108 Feet of Climb
Conditions- Cool and breezy, some light headwinds. Practically flat terrain. An excellent day! (First time in about 3 years)
As always, our great thanks go to Rich Ketcham at Geobike for allowing us to use this helpful information.
Towns visited
Emmetsburg (start town)
Fenton, Lone Rock, Titonka, Woden, Crystal Lake, Forest City (overnight town)
Well, we did it. This has been a goal of mine. Sleep in, leave late. See the entire teams we've never seen in years with these early departures, maybe even see Mary, the Phantom Hawg. We always heard that she had been there, but we never actually score a sighting. Yup, it happened. Mary was there. She exists.
The was the first time we've ever seen the bus leave the campsite. We left at 8:00 AM with about 70 miles in store for us. In the tour de France, it's called a "nature break". Speaking of the Tour de France, Lance Armstrong is doing wonderfully. We are proud of him! Note Bruce and others anxiously awaiting theirs! Here's team Tutu eating breakfast at a very nice home on the way to Fenton. These folks have much fun, but the guys wear their tutus a bit high. Later, they pulled me in to the next town, meaning led the paceline.
This late crowd knows how to have fun, I guess. I'm not sure my stomach would allow bloody Marys at 9 AM. W Fenton has a delightful park. Here's Diana from the North Pole, a part of Illinois. She does this so that she can leave the kids at home! She has a Christmas list from her various friends. A new bike heads the list followed closely by a new ________ (fill in the blanks with any moving body parts). She says these requests are all from "wedgie riders", as opposed to recumbent riders, which she has. Next in the park were some young men from Sentral Fenton HS (not a spelling error) who were mostly football players selling cookies to raise money for their Senior trip. Because the high school is extremely small, they play eight man football. Is this half the team? They never told us where they were sure to head on this trip, but indications are that they would get at least to Lone Rock, or maybe Algona! Also in Fenton, we met a celebrity, Captain Cornelius. Aaron feels that he should be a colonel.
Next was Lone Rock, Iowa. About 20 years ago, the lone rock, it's namesake was moved to town. But these folks soon learned that most of the rock was underground. They used dynamite to blow it up and reassembled it in town. Our information source were some of the local townfolks, Duane Haviger and friends. Also in Lone Rock is the newly reformed Killer Bees from Cedar Falls and Waterloo.
Titonka means Buffalo in Sioux and there's one at the entrance to town. Aaron, Meghan, Ginger, and Katie are just hanging out. I learned of a special Ragbrai only story which happened the other day. The Team Cockroach folks did not fasten the compartments on their bus and two tents fell out on the side of the road. These were found later by a fellow Ragbrai rider who searched for them for two days to get them back to their owners. Only on Ragbrai. Lunch was a huge rib eye sandwich. They had four fast moving lines and great food. Too bad there was only one cash register. Good job, though for a great lunch! On the way out of town on one of the vans, we immediately spotted a tuba bell. We thought we were in store for a concert. Nope, it was a tubabong, which holds five gallons of your favorite beverage and allows 12 at a time to partake of it.... My, my.
The next town was Woden. We heard that the party got quite wild as the day progressed. Remember that this was the first time we traveled late. I mean real late. Many do that, spending 12 hours on the road! We lingered in all the towns as part of the above goal and the parties were heartier than we have seen with the early crowd. In Woden, it was just getting started.
The famous last pass through town was Crystal Lake. There was a "water" slide set up with about 400 observers. This is a family oriented site, my, my. Between events, there was line dancing.
Crystal Lake is a beautiful town with obviously, a beautiful lake.
We're overnighting in Forest City, and it's nice and cool. We'll get an early start tomorrow.
Email me at plummer_dave@prodigy.net
Links to Today's Towns
