Going into Souix City, IA should have been no problem. Unless you didn't look at the map long enough to tell that US 20 turned into interstate. I picked the single worst way possible into town, instead of residential surface streets we got a few miles of divided highway followed by a few on busy shoulderless trucking routes. Brad's still pissed at me that we didn't get to take a picture next to a Welcome To Iowa sign because it was surrounded by four lanes of 80mph traffic.
The only upside was when we stopped at a supermarket for directions there was a music shop in the strip mall. We'd been wanting to buy harmonicas for a while so it seemed like the time. One of the employees was . . . you guessed it, a BikeE owner. He was able to give us directions to the only bike shop in town.
Now being the only bike shop in the town that 8-10,000 RAGBRAI riders would be departing from in two days, it was, understandably, completely crazy. Finding someone to show me pedals was tough, trying to get work done on the bikes was out of the question. Brad picked up a new derailer [which we still haven't gotten around to replacing as of 8/7/01 -am] and I left with a new set of Shimano SPD pedals (For the non-bike people they're clipless pedals. It's kind of like ski bindings, you wear special shoes with a very stiff sole. Each shoe has threads in it so you can screw a metal cleat in to the bottom. The cleat is what snaps into the pedal and connects you to the bike. And sorry I don't know why they call them clipless) We went to a park so I could replace the cleats from my old pedals with the new ones. While I was fiddiling with them Brad tried to call some of his parents' old friends who lived in Ft. Dodge, IA, a couple days away. He wasn't able to get a hold of them and I only suceeded in stripping the screws on the old cleats trying to get them off.
Back at the bike shop I gave them the poor touring cyclist sob story and convinced them that they should try to get the cleats off. Twenty minutes later they'd drilled the screws out and we were on our way.
RAGBRAI left the day after next but we had to pick up mail in Correctionville, IA which was to the south of the RAGBRAI route. We weren't totally sure we wanted to meet up with them. While it would be cool to ride with the qroup for a day or two Brad had promised Erin we'd be in Chicaqo, IL on the 26th. Joining the group meant we'd be wasting one of the five remaining days. Since we had to get the mail either way we started riding out towards Correctionville.
US 20 that had served us so faithfully since Bend, OR had changed. Iowa had corrupted our noble friend. The wide shoulders of Wyoming and Nebraska were gone, replaced by a two inch drop from the concrete onto a foot wide strip of gravel. "It's probably just this county", I told Brad trying to reassure myself while the sun sunk lower and lower, "It'll get better".
As we were stood on the side of the road debating whether to just pitch the
tent or push on to the next town a police car pulled up behind us, lights
flashing. I was actually glad, now I had someone to complain about the roads to.
I was a suprised when the cop just leaned out the window to ask us if we'd seen
any accidents.
"No..." Brad replied as a second cop pulled up behind the first.
"Well were going to keep going then" the cop said motioning on down
the road.
"Okay, I think that's a siqn we should keep going" Brad said as we
watched the liqhts disappear over the next hill.
"Uhh, I'm pretty sure it's an sign that we should camp here. I don't want
to be the accident".
andrew
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