October 4, 2022
Day Twenty-three: Onaway, Iowa to Audubon, Iowa
Last night was possibly the soundest sleep I've ever had in a motel room, which was fortunate, since I needed to be well-rested today. In 2019 I'd ridden from Onaway to Audubon on a shorter and less hilly route than today's. I was doing a different route this time for two reasons: I wanted to see some new things, and I thought the roads were just a little too busy last time. So the other day I worked out a 90 mile route through the Loess Hills, and then on to what looked like low-traffic county roads, including some gravel.
I was out as early as it was light enough to ride, and after riding literally just a few feet past the motel, turned onto a gravel road.
After a few missed turns, I left the outskirts of Onawa and was in the countryside.
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The first several miles were very flat. I could see the Loess Hills ahead, though. I'd be riding through them soon.
This morning was possibly my favorite Iowa ride ever. The weather was perfect, the Loess Hills were very pretty, and there was virtually no traffic.
I stopped briefly at an old Danish Church. It looked interesting, but unfortunately it was surrounded by a black iron fence, so I couldn't indulge my usual semi-morbid habit of looking at gravestones.
More nice scenery. This is now probably my favorite part of Iowa.
The route I'd worked out for today was great, with one exception: One of the roads appeared to go through someone's yard. I easily detoured around it:
I arrived in Moorhead, population 199, the first town since Onawa.
I walked into the Moorhead Mini Mart, which was a friendly place. The young woman working there had the TV tuned to a station playing - very loudly - a "Hits of the '80s" channel. She immediately turned down the volume a little bit as I walked in, and sheepishly told me that that era's music helped keep her motivated while working in the store.
She offered to change the channel if the music bothered me, but I just laughed and told her that it was fine - but I never thought, when I was in high school in 1984, that anyone would be listening to a song as lame as "Take On Me" nearly 40 years later.
There were no pre-made sandwiches without meat, but she offered to make me an egg-cheese sandwich on a croissant. I was initially dubious about the croissant, devoted to the more traditional biscuit as I am, but the croissant was actually delicious. Probably because it's full of butter. I told the woman this, and she replied, sort of smugly, that she knew I'd like it. I got the impression that making the store's breakfast sandwiches with croissants was her own innovation.
A few customers came in while I sat in my booth eating. One man had noticed my helmet sitting outside next to my bike, and commended me for wearing it. "A friend of mine went over his handlebars 25 years ago during RAGBRAI, hit his head, and has never been the same since."
Other than Joy's text the other day, this was the first mention of RAGBRAI in approximately five hours of riding in Iowa. Absolutely unprecedented.
I left Moorhead and rode about eight miles on a slightly busier, but still very low-traffic road to Pisgah, population 268.
The town featured two different "Welcome to Pisgah" signs for some reason.
It was about 16 miles to the next town, Woodbine, on another super-quiet, scenic backroad. It was getting hot now, so I stopped and removed my wool undershirt. I was briefly bare-chested in the outdoors, for approximately only the sixth or seventh time in my entire, very uptight life. I took a rare "selfie" to document this, thinking I'd send it to Joy later. Maybe she'd find it amusing. Or something. But then when I looked at it, and saw how disturbingly, unattractively scrawny I appeared, I deleted it from my phone.
I arrived in Woodbine, population 1,625.
It looked like Woodbine would be the last town on my route with services for the rest of the day, so I stopped for lunch at the "Dairy Sweet."
The grilled cheese, French fries, and chocolate milkshake were very good, although I had to eat the milkshake with a spoon. It seems like Dairy Queen is the only place nowadays that knows how to prepare a milkshake correctly: Thin enough that you can drink it with a straw.
That was the end of part one of today's ride, one of my favorite Iowa bike rides ever.
Now I turned onto road "F-32", which the Iowa Bicycle Map indicated would be very low-traffic.
It proved to be very low-traffic, but very, very hilly. Shockingly hilly. Unbelievably hilly. It would have been great fun on a light, unloaded road bike, but it required a lot of effort on my 75-lb heavily laden mountain bike, especially after more than 20 days of riding.
It was a slow 17 miles to Westphalia, population 126. There wasn't much in Westphalia other than a very impressive Catholic church.
I needed water, and fortunately there was a woman working at the church who let me refill my bottles. She warned me that "F-32" would continue to be very hilly. She repeated this warning several times as she looked at me, and my heavy bike. I felt like her glances were weighted with meaning, specifically: This guy is going to be lucky if he gets to Audubon before dark.
F-32 eventually turned to gravel. This wasn't a surprise; when I'd worked out the route I decided to do several miles of the gravel in order to avoid a busier road parallel to F-32. But somehow I didn't anticipate that the gravel section would be as hilly as the paved roads. It was.
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2 years ago
Really, I wouldn't have been bothered at all by even the rough gravel roads if I hadn't been carrying a laptop in my pannier. I was occasionally worried that I'd break it on some of the rough roads.
2 years ago
Finally, pavement returned - fortunately, because it was getting near dusk. I put my bright rear blinking light on for the remaining miles to my hotel outside of Audubon.
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I checked into the Bluegrass Inn and Suites, a surprisingly nice hotel for a small town like Audubon. Dinner was a cheese pizza from the similarly fancy truck stop next door, which is owned and operated by the same prominent local farm family who own the hotel.
I unwisely drank too much caffeinated soda pop while I worked on a route for tomorrow, the last day of the tour, and had trouble getting to sleep.
Today's ride: 91 miles (146 km)
Total: 1,585 miles (2,551 km)
| Rate this entry's writing | Heart | 11 |
| Comment on this entry | Comment | 3 |
That has become the unofficial Seventh Inning Stretch tune of the Washington Nationals, something of a tribute to Mike Morse, a former and much-loved Nationals player. Given their abysmally bad performance this season, I am in hopes they'll retire it in favor of something - almost *ANYTHING* - else.
2 years ago
Give my love to Joy - and congratulations!
2 years ago
And thanks for your routing suggestions. The Kansas route you suggested worked out well!
Jeff
2 years ago