And a little more on Sunday's ride

RAGBRAI seems to bring together all sorts of people and vehicles. I've seen "The Shark"- a fully-enclosed recumbent bicycle, Someone riding a high-wheel two-wheeler, a large-wheel unicycle, an elliptical trike, and numerous other interesting vehicles. There are $5000 bicycles, and the $100 ones that people still have from when they were a kid. There are also all kinds of people- several senior citizens, some serious teams, some serious drinking teams, and some just out to find out if they can do it. If you haven't ridden in a large group before, you learn fairly quickly- everyone is teaching with a lot of patience. Mostly you have to keep on eating, drinking (not necessarily alcohol), and riding- and it seems most everyone gets there.

  As I mentioned in the last post, I enjoyed the hill riding a lot, and probably missed out on a lot of socializing. On the other hand, I've still been settling into the ride and still socializing a bit in the evenings. There have been a lot of new friends along the way- and most everybody on the ride is your automatic friend if you need one. It's quite the experience. The food is really something, too, and I've been enjoying the stops on the side of the road for someone's drink and snack stands. If I had it to do over again, I might try to slow down and socialize more, but I still got some of that along the way.
The campground I was in with Pork Belly Ventures charter service was a beautiful park right on the edge of Storm Lake. I set up the tent about 50 feet from the water, a little distance away from the main service tents with Pork Belly, but I really liked that location. I got my shower and evening meal, as well as a couple of beers- one of the wheat beer and one of the pale ale. Those were refreshing, and after all of that I was feeling much better. I tried to get in to get a massage, but they were booked. As it headed into night and cooled off, the weather was perfect- cool but not chilly, with that perfect soothing feeling that you can only get on a lake edge. I left the fly off the tent, so I got plenty of gentle breeze all night long- and slept wonderfully. Packing up in the morning, my legs felt much better and ready to go for the day's ride. It started to feel like this would be one heck of a week.