Just a quick post to update our readers on our 2008 RAGBRAI -- Register's Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa. We drove to Missouri Valley, IA on Saturday in preparation for leaving from there this AM. Things got a bit stormy last night, but no rain - didn't even have to turn the AC on last night as there was a bit of a breeze. Today's ride to Harlan, IA was 59 miles and 3797 feet of elevation gain. We left about 7AM and were safely at the end point by 2:00 with bunches of stops along the way. We had our first Iowa pork chop from Mr. Porkchop's stand, and other traditional goodies as we slogged our way along. The temps were in the 80's and very high humidity, so we sweated quite a bit. Jack got in first, Greg second and Mandy and Judy came in about a half hour later. Mark and Sue had the motorhome parked and the beer cold by the time we got there so all is right with the world.
Tomorrow's route will test us all -- its 83 miles and 5239 feet of elevation gain on the way to Jefferson, IA. Hopefully the weather won't be too hot, but the humidity will probably still remain high, so we'll have to stay hydrated. Mark may post some pix on his blog for those of you who want to see more (www.didelottravels.typepad.com) and the Des Moines Register and RAGBRAI websites should have some good coverage also (www.ragbrai.org).
Hopefully more info tomorrow, assuming we survive. We'll post our pictures as we can.
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Friday, July 11, 2008
Exploring Iowa
We've kept up our preparations for riding RAGBRAI (which starts a week from Sunday, on July 20), by finally getting in some good hill work and some miles. However, in addition to that fun, we've managed to stay employed at Adventureland and keep up our sightseeing.
Over the past two weeks we've visited several interesting places within a short drive from our location here in Altoona -- Pella, Iowa (which is famous for its manufacturing industry specializing in high end doors and windows) is also a very quaint Dutch community about 45 miles southeast from Des Moines -- and, in a completely different vein, the Iowa I-80 Truck Stop, about 140 miles east of us, which bills itself as the largest truckstop in the world. It was having its annual Truckers Show and Exposition this week, and we took a drive over there. Joining Mandy, me, Mark, and Sue on the way to there were Jim and Yvette, who we met in Texas several years ago, and who stopped here to see us this week on their way back to the Austin area.
Here are some shots of downtown Pella - we were there on a beautiful day, and really enjoyed the visit.
There was an interesting glockenspeil in downtown Pella which did a show every other hour and displayed mechanical figures of the history of Pella -- including the famous western gunfighter Wyatt Earp -- who was born here. The nearby courtyard was decorated by some very detailed ceramic pictures with traditional Dutch scenes.
This last weekend was the Fourth of July, and, as you might imagine, the park was very busy. In addition, there were two fireworks shows -- the Casino/Racetrack next to us had a spectacular show on Friday night, and Adventureland had their own show on Saturday night. We didn't get much in the way of pictures, but both the shows were outstanding, with thousands of people coming to see them both.
Our friend Richard had alerted us to the truckers show at the I-80 Truckstop a week or so ago, and Mark and I talked the ladies into a trip there for our day off this week. Jim and Yvette, who were in town, also came along and we had a wonderful day looking at new and custom Freightliners, Kenworths, Peterbuilts, and Volvos -- and collecting all the swag we could. The best swag item -- for me, at least -- was all the free fuel additives that the representative from Howes Lubrication was giving away. I'd used their anti-gel and fuel conditioner for the past several years, and he loaded me up with all sorts of free samples of new stuff -- not sure if it will do any good, but it can't hurt. Their new fuel conditioner/injector cleaner additive is "guaranteed" to increase your fuel mileage by 4.85% -- its worth a try, with diesel still at the $4.60 level and lots of miles to drive after we leave here in September.
In any event, here are some pictures of some neat trucks, and of us just having fun on our day off -- and the BBQ afterwards.
On the road again, on the way to the I-80 Truckstop -- Mark, Yvette, Mandy, and Sue.
How about this for a custom dashboard?
The same truck from the passenger's door -- the finish work was amazing, and the driver used the truck daily -- his trailer was in back of the truckstop waiting for him to hook up and get on the road again.
This truck and sleeper were custom-made for this disabled trucker -- this was also a working truck; this guy drives it daily all over the country.
Some other interesting trucks and general shots of the show.
The whole gang with their swag and the truckstop in the background.
(Mark really outdid himself on his blogpost of the Truck Exposition, using all sorts of bandwidth to post many more pictures than we did (although its his bandwith, so I guess that's fair . . . . . ). Go to his blog to see many more super trucks)
Sue's not that sure that Mark can attack that pork chop with just a plastic knife and fork.
It was a relaxing drive back to Altoona . . . . .
We did take a slight detour to Kelona, a small farming community south of Iowa City, that still has families of Amish farmers living in the area. Mandy went looking for a new quilt for our bed -- this one was beautiful, but we passed it up.
We invited Bob and Vicki over (they had to work that day) and finished the day off at our campsite with a few refreshments, some barbequed brauts that we'd gotten at the meat market in Pella the week before, and a bit of BS-ing.
Over the past two weeks we've visited several interesting places within a short drive from our location here in Altoona -- Pella, Iowa (which is famous for its manufacturing industry specializing in high end doors and windows) is also a very quaint Dutch community about 45 miles southeast from Des Moines -- and, in a completely different vein, the Iowa I-80 Truck Stop, about 140 miles east of us, which bills itself as the largest truckstop in the world. It was having its annual Truckers Show and Exposition this week, and we took a drive over there. Joining Mandy, me, Mark, and Sue on the way to there were Jim and Yvette, who we met in Texas several years ago, and who stopped here to see us this week on their way back to the Austin area.
Here are some shots of downtown Pella - we were there on a beautiful day, and really enjoyed the visit.
There was an interesting glockenspeil in downtown Pella which did a show every other hour and displayed mechanical figures of the history of Pella -- including the famous western gunfighter Wyatt Earp -- who was born here. The nearby courtyard was decorated by some very detailed ceramic pictures with traditional Dutch scenes.
This last weekend was the Fourth of July, and, as you might imagine, the park was very busy. In addition, there were two fireworks shows -- the Casino/Racetrack next to us had a spectacular show on Friday night, and Adventureland had their own show on Saturday night. We didn't get much in the way of pictures, but both the shows were outstanding, with thousands of people coming to see them both.
Our friend Richard had alerted us to the truckers show at the I-80 Truckstop a week or so ago, and Mark and I talked the ladies into a trip there for our day off this week. Jim and Yvette, who were in town, also came along and we had a wonderful day looking at new and custom Freightliners, Kenworths, Peterbuilts, and Volvos -- and collecting all the swag we could. The best swag item -- for me, at least -- was all the free fuel additives that the representative from Howes Lubrication was giving away. I'd used their anti-gel and fuel conditioner for the past several years, and he loaded me up with all sorts of free samples of new stuff -- not sure if it will do any good, but it can't hurt. Their new fuel conditioner/injector cleaner additive is "guaranteed" to increase your fuel mileage by 4.85% -- its worth a try, with diesel still at the $4.60 level and lots of miles to drive after we leave here in September.
In any event, here are some pictures of some neat trucks, and of us just having fun on our day off -- and the BBQ afterwards.
On the road again, on the way to the I-80 Truckstop -- Mark, Yvette, Mandy, and Sue. How about this for a custom dashboard? The same truck from the passenger's door -- the finish work was amazing, and the driver used the truck daily -- his trailer was in back of the truckstop waiting for him to hook up and get on the road again.
This truck and sleeper were custom-made for this disabled trucker -- this was also a working truck; this guy drives it daily all over the country.
Some other interesting trucks and general shots of the show.
The whole gang with their swag and the truckstop in the background.
(Mark really outdid himself on his blogpost of the Truck Exposition, using all sorts of bandwidth to post many more pictures than we did (although its his bandwith, so I guess that's fair . . . . . ). Go to his blog to see many more super trucks)
Sue's not that sure that Mark can attack that pork chop with just a plastic knife and fork.
It was a relaxing drive back to Altoona . . . . .
We did take a slight detour to Kelona, a small farming community south of Iowa City, that still has families of Amish farmers living in the area. Mandy went looking for a new quilt for our bed -- this one was beautiful, but we passed it up.
We invited Bob and Vicki over (they had to work that day) and finished the day off at our campsite with a few refreshments, some barbequed brauts that we'd gotten at the meat market in Pella the week before, and a bit of BS-ing.
Monday, June 30, 2008
Finally, just a normal week
I guess you can say that things got back to normal just a bit this week, given the unusual weather events of the past several weeks. We had visitors this week (Chuck and Lorraine, who we'd met in Quartzsite), we got in a good bike ride on Wednesday, including some hills, and attended the annual Des Moines Arts Festival on Saturday.
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!
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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