All joking aside, Iowa surprised me.  I had modest expectations for this bike tour because the territory I would be riding through was so familiar to me.  I have driven from my house to my folks house maybe a hundred times over the last 30 years.  I worried that I might have to do some serious embellishing in this one-joke journal to prove (even to myself) the main point that Iowa is not boring.

I should not have worried.  As always, bicycling provided an entirely new perspective.  I took several roads that I've never been on before, a couple more that I've only driven once or twice, and, unavoidably, a few sections of highway that I've traveled many, many times.  Yet I'm happy to report that every mile of the route seemed like a new adventure from the seat of my bike.  

I'd like to tell a little story to conclude this journal.  It's a story I've told many times to incredulous Iowans and other mid-westerners over the years.  I remembered the story on day one of this tour and considered telling it almost every day since then because it's so relevant to my theme.  Now that I've come to the end, I guess this is the time.

I was a college freshman attending a medium-sized university in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.  I knew absolutely nobody, but the first person I met was a guy from Bozeman, Montana.  While waiting for our Ecology class to start, we introduced ourselves and said where we were from.

"Iowa, huh?" said the Bozemanite.

"Yeah," I replied with a little embarrassment.

"I've never been there, but it must be sooooooo beautiful.  The flat landscapes.  All those farms.  The long views."

"WHAT!!!!????"  I was momentarily stunned by his ignorance.  When I regained my composure I said, "Man, how can you say that?  I've never been to Bozeman but I've heard enough about it to know it's in the Rocky Mountains.  Iowa can't possibly compare."

"Greg," I clearly remember the Bozemanite saying, "the mountains are overrated.  When they're everywhere, they get boring.  And they're hell on your car.  The mountains tear up transmissions.  I've blown two of them.  And you have to put chains on your tires in the winter."

So there we were, an Iowan and a Montanan, both of whom escaped our respective "boring" states to find something else and we ended up in Michigan.  Since then I have been to Bozeman and its mountain setting was as spectacular as I thought it would be.  I have also been to almost all of our states and have seen many equally spectacular places.  But the thing I learned from my only conversation with the Bozemanite is that I should always appreciate where I am AT THE MOMENT.  Minnesotans who are bored of trees and lakes flee to the beaches of Florida.  Floridians who are bored of the humidity and the bugs flee to Minnesota to catch walleyes.  Arizonans, bored of the desert and a life of running from one air-conditioned place to another, flee to Michigan.  Michiganders can't wait to escape their boring ice box of a state and retire to Arizona.  City folks desire the wilderness, the ski resorts, the lakes, the wide open spaces.  Rural folks long to see New York City, Chicago, Orlando, Las Vegas.  There always seems to be someplace better than where you live.  I get it.  I love visiting different places.  I love the mountains.  I love the deserts.  I could easily relocate to the mountains or the desert now that I'm retired, but I fear that if I lived there all the time, like the Bozemanite, I would long for someplace else--like IOWA.