Hard to believe I finally made it here. Had to spend hours fixing each of several problems to finally get on the road much later than I had planned. The bike speedometer bracket broke a strange-o custom bolt, and I had to rework it to fix it. The lock on the house door wouldn't work. Got ready to head out, and one of the car's tire valve stems started leaking. Fun. Then, on the road all day Friday. Drove through a quite impressive squall line in eastern Iowa last night- had to slow to 15 or 20 MPH because I couldn't see where the lane in front of me was. Lightning was blasting every 5 or 10 seconds for several hours, so when the rain eased and you could see, the landscape looked like it was in a strobe light. Somehow, setting up my tent at nearly 2 AM in that weather didn't seem like a good idea, so I found an inexpensive motel and got a little sleep.
Woke up at 5 AM, headed over to long-term parking and the bus to Sioux City, worked my way through a fairly disorganized parking system, dropped my luggage and bike off with Pork Belly Ventures (the charter service that I paid to help me through the week in several ways- including the bus ride). Parked and caught a shuttle back to PBV, got lucky and found my bus was the first one I checked out of a couple dozen that were there. Off we went to ride to Sioux City, where RAGBRAI starts. Nice comfortable bus, but seemed way too long of a bus ride.
Arrived at the Pork Belly camp area- where they had all the rental tents set up, and all of the other services. Checked in, set up tent, got bike and put it all together. Tested it, and got a beer (free as a part of the services I bought). Life was good today, once I got to that point. Came down to the expo, had italian ice, and wandered around looking at every possible bike part/accessory/shirt/etc.People selling energy bars/drinks, all unique and better. All sorts of other unusual booths, including avoidthestork.com, http://www.artjersey.net/ and go-girl.com, as well as old standbys like www.apresvelo.com and www.primalwear.com .
Coming up there's the Smash Mouth concert, which I'm sure is going to be a great show. Not sure if I'll stick around for it, though- might be better to go back to camp and see if I can get some sleep. Of course, I might also want to install the wireless ipod speakers I just bought for my bike, too....
More when I can...
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