The strange weather isn't entirely over yet, as several inches of rain (and a bit of hail) came our way on Thursday morning -- pushing the first six months of this year into the record book here -- something like 15 and a half inches. Thursday is our day off, so we had a pretty soggy day for the most part.
Chuck and Lorraine visited the four of us here this week, and we were able to have a good time with Mark and Sue fixing some crawfish etouffe one night, a couple of drinks and laughs here and there, and also giving us an excuse to get together for a potluck BBQ, along with Bob and Vicki. As you can see, we didn't let this week's marginal weather get us down.
On Wednesday, our fellow RAGBRAI-er Chuck took us on a section of the Raccoon River Trail about 50 miles west of the Des Moines area, where he promised we'd get some hill work in -- and he was right. The trail is fairly level, but he took us on some side diversions where we got at least 1500-2000 feet of elevation gain and loss, which was the riding component we'd been missing in our RAGBRAI preparation.
Along the way we ran into a biking buddy of his -- Dan -- who had recently ridden the first two days of this year's RAGBRAI route with Brian Duffy, the Des Moines Register's cartoonist who is blogging this year's ride. Dan particularly mentioned the route on day two, which is 83 miles long, and has almost 5000 feet of elevation gain -- as something to really prepare for. He referred us to a particular set of hills at Springbrook State Park (where we were heading) as good training for that day, so we took them on. Chuck, Mandy, and I struggled up all of them, and came away feeling that if that is the worst that we run into, we can probably handle it - although it will be a challenge!
We also wanted to show you the results of some of the recent flooding on one of the bike trails we use near us here at the park. This same segment overflowed again just a day or two later with this week's recent rains.
This week we also took in the Des Moines Arts Festival - and here are a few shots of that:
On a closing note, since you all know that we can always find an excuse to eat, here we are enjoying root beer floats and sundaes at Adventureland this week -- they had and employee-only float day to recognize our efforts, and, as you can see, we didn't miss a chance to be recognized (Mandy was there also -- she was taking the picture) . . . .
RAGBRAI is now only three weeks away, so we'll be trying to spend some serious time getting some miles and hills under our belt so we won't be totally blown away. Our good friends Jim and Yvette will be coming though here next week for a couple of days, and we're looking forward to seeing them -- after all you can't be in training all the time!
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