RAGBRAI Day #1

Wow, today couldn’t have gone better. Despite turning in early, our sleep was interrupted several times by trains; that’s the scourge of camping next to the old train station. Nevertheless, I did get rest. We were on the road shortly after six o’clock. There was a very scary looking spike on the altitude chart of the day, just outside of Council Bluffs, but the hill turned out to be long and do-able. After that there was a long descent, on which I reached a top speed of 32.8 mph. DH said I looked really cool and confident on the descent, but the reality is I was terrified of going so fast! It was really hard to not brake, but I took the left lane and just held tight and concentrated.

We ran into Robert B. a paraplegic who camped with our group in our last RAGBRAI. Last time Robert rode a trike, but he has re-mastered the art of riding an upright bike–with clipless pedals, even–and was proud to ride the Rivendell Long Low he had acquired shortly before the farm accident that took his legs. Robert spotted us at a church lady stop, so we chatted & took some pics.

The weather was very pleasant today. The morning was cool, and there were spotty clouds that would give us an overcast break occasionally. We sampled chocolate covered bacon in one town. I love bacon and I love chocolate, but the chocolate-covered bacon wasn’t all that. I’ll look for other treats tomorrow.

Thus far DH and I have sampled three kinds of pie: rhubarb, gooseberry, and blueberry. All three were pretty good.

Biggest contrast between today and Day #1 of RAGBRAI 2011 is that in 2011 it was almost all I could do to just finish each day. This year I felt like I had more fun on Day #1 than I had on the whole of RAGBRAI 2011!