DECORAH, IOWA: My Bike is Faster Than Your Buggy

August 3, 2016

I was in a deep sleep, dreaming that my hand was reaching into a crackly bag of Cheetoes. The blissful dream went on for some time before I woke up and realized there was an animal snuffling around and making a crackly noise outside my tent. I felt around for my bike light, which also serves as my flashlight. When I finally located it, I turned it on and there, right in the tent vestibule, was a raccoon with its yellow eyeballs brightly reflecting the light. The raccoon froze. I yelled, "Get out of there!" Only then did it run away.

I tried to think of what the raccoon had gotten into because I knew I didn't leave any food out there. When morning came, I figured it out. I forgot that I had left my 100% DEET in a zip-lock baggie outside the tent. Perhaps it had the scent of Polish sausage on it. I found bite marks on the baggie, but lucky for the raccoon its teeth didn't penetrate the vial of DEET. That would have been terrible for both of us--for very different reasons.

The day began with a long climb out of the river valley and then another hour of "okay" Minnesota before entering awesome Iowa. The last part of that stretch was through the Amish communities of Bristol and Granger. I saw three Amish men driving their horse-drawn buggies right down the highway. I've seen the traditional black buggies in this area before, but when driving a car I never heard the "clop, clop, clop, clop, clop, clop, clop" of the horses hooves on the pavement. I relished the quaintness of the clopping as I passed them all.

I entered Iowa at the twin border towns of Granger, MN and Florenceville, IA. There was no "Welcome to Iowa" sign, but you can clearly see how non-boring the state ahead is. In addition, I was interested to see that there's a town named after a cooking oil and it's only ten miles away.

This is one of the many beautiful Iowa vistas along the way to cooking-oil-town. You can see the Cresco water tower on the horizon five miles away.

I stopped here to visit the owners of the shop. They used to ride RAGBRAI in the same group as I did for a few years. One of the owners wasn't in, the other one didn't remember me at all. That was a powerful punch to my enormous ego.

I took a break in a nice shady park in Cresco. I liked the town, and in the future I will only use Cresco when I need some grease to fry a batch of potatoes or chicken wings.

What's that? CRISCO? Not Cresco? Oh boy, my face is red. In that case, I'll just stick with butter or olive oil for my cooking needs.

The Pole Line Road from Cresco to Decorah was a non-stop series of rolling hills. Non-boring rolling hills to boot.

Unlike cows, which universally stare at me, 66.6% of sheep turn their asses toward me.

It was a nice ride but the heat and humidity picked up big time. I was glad to get to the Pulpit Rock Campground (a Decorah city park) by 1:30 p.m. I drank about a gallon of water, showered, and roke my bike into town to visit the highly-regarded Toppling Goliath Brewing Company. Brew pubs are a little more familiar to me than wine tasting rooms, and let me just say, a couple of fine beers in air-conditioning cannot be beat in this heat.

I wrote up my journal for the day in air-conditioned comfort.

It was nearing sundown when I got back to my campsite on the banks of the Upper Iowa River.

Today's ride: 47 miles (76 km)
Total: 156 miles (251 km)

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