July 15, 2023
First Trip, Day 1 - Houston to Preston (Minnesota)
Carl has taken an overnight bike trip before. It's been a few years, and I'm sure his brain has modified the memories somewhat (as do all of our brains) to soften the hardships. When he was in his teens, he and a number of other Boy Scouts went on a several-day bicycle/camping trip. The fog of memory, as it tends to do, morphed those blisters on his butt into "Remember when we rode from A to B and how sore our butts were?? Ha!" The 100-mile day was "I remember we rode a long time that day, and I was kinda tired." I suspect those good memories were an incentive for him to take this first ride with me.
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In my first post in Travels with Carl, you read how we take detours on the drive to our starting place. In this case, we intentionally went through Elkader because of an interesting restaurant located there.... an Algerian restaurant named Schera's.
An Algerian restaurant in Iowa? Would anyone in this rural state eat za'atar, bourek, b'stilla, or batata dersa? A camel burger?? (all of which are on the menu) How can a restaurant survive without a larder full of chicken fried steak and fries?? Pork chops??
And, I later learned, the owners are not only Muslim, but Muslim and gay. But Schera's does survive, and even thrive.
How? Because Iowa is special. When the gay, Muslim, co-owners first arrived in Elkader and were considering opening the restaurant, the mayor was so excited to meet them that, afraid he'd miss them, he left his house in his robe and walked downtown on a Sunday morning to find them. His first words to them were "Salaam alaikum.”
Iowa was the third state to allow gay marriage (only behind Massachusetts and Connecticut, and before California and Colorado), declared in its state Supreme Court that racially segregated schools were unconstitutional an entire century before the Brown v. Board of Education ruling, has the first African-American college graduate in the country, as well as the first female lawyer in the country.
Sure, Iowa has changed a bit since then and is now in a race to become less tolerant and more everything-phobic but, even so, Schera's is still in business.
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We passed through Whalan, a town with a population of 67 and a total area of 0.43 square miles. Even though there aren't many residents, they still somehow manage to cobble together enough musicians for an annual parade. However, a parade in a town that size would only take about 30 seconds, and then what? Turn around and walk back to the start?
Consequently, they're now the home of the Whalan Standstill Parade. Instead of the parade marching past the onlookers, the band members stay in place and the spectators walk in a circle around the parade.
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We pulled in to the Old Barn Resort and I waited outside while Carl went in to get us a campsite. Unfortunately, they were full and didn't have any slots - until Carl pointed out that we're on bicycles. Then they were very happy to take our $30.00 for a primitive campsite. We looked at it as a shower fee: $15.00 each. I should've been the one to go in. One smell and he'd have given us the campsite for free.
Today's ride: 36 miles (58 km)
Total: 96 miles (154 km)
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