Pre-ride thoughts

I will readily admit that my first thought upon hearing that Marcus had signed us all up for this ride across Iowa called RAGBRAI was "Iowa? Really? Iowa?"  Why, oh why, had he picked a ride with complete immersion in corn fields for our first big multi-day ride together?  But, being the good little brother that I am and having learned to go along with my brother's whims...I agreed.  As the ride got closer, and I started mentioning to friends that I was spending a week of my vacation to ride across the state of Iowa, I was amazed at the number of folks who said ,"Oh, you're doing RAGBRAI!"  And each proceeded to tell stories of how many they'd done, how much fun they'd had, and how much jealousy they possessed that I was going and they weren't.   Interestingly, it was only the folks that had moved from Iowa who said "Why Iowa?"  I started to realize that this RAGBRAI thing had the potential to be something special.

Bike Packing

A week before the ride started, I decided it was time to do something about getting my bike there.  So, inspired for once to do a job right, I went out to a bike store and got a bike box (which it turns out they all have many extras of and are happy to give away) then on to the hardware store to get pipe insulation, and finally over to Michaels to buy some foam packing material.  I then spend hours in the garage, carefully measuring and cutting the foam to fit the bike frame and gluing the pieces onto the shipping box so the bike wouldn't shift around during shipping and covering every exposed inch of the frame in pipe insulation.  I thought I had done an excellent job!  Off to FedEx to ship it, and of course it was too late for the economical ground options, so $120 later, my bike was off to Iowa.

4 days later,  I arrived in Iowa and located my shipped bike box in the open field stacked with the hundred other bike boxes and set to opening it up.  Once the tape was cut I found a bike (that luckily was still in good shape) and a pile of foam pieces that had completely disintegrated during shipping, coating my entire frame in a strange green dust.  So much for careful planning.  I made a mental note for the return shipping to just stuff it in the box and tape 'er closed. 

Iowa

This is where I should probably write something about the ride itself, but I can't remember it....soon the buzz will wear off.