The morning we left Ames, Larry and Matt decided we should ride very quickly to State Center, which was designated as that day's Meeting Town. Every day's route had a meeting town, which was a nice place to get off your bike for awhile and meet up with whoever you felt like meeting with that day. On Wednesday, the meeting town of State Center was a 27-mile ride from Ames, into a moderate headwind. We made it there in about an hour and 20 minutes, and that included slow rides through Nevada and Colo. How did we do it? Simple. We formed a pace line.
The essence of a pace line is a handful of bikers riding in a tight single file formation. Riders draft off the leader and take turns breaking the wind for the others, like geese flying south for the winter. After 3 days on the road, I'd developed enough comfort in group riding that I could put my front wheel a few inches from the rear wheel of the guy ahead of me and keep it there for extended periods. I'd also found my sprinter's legs, which made it possible to keep up with Matt and Larry, at least when they were drafting for me.
Matt led the charge to State Center. When I worked at US Bank in St. Louis, Matt was an analyst in the Capital Markets group. He later transferred to US Bank's San Diego branch and spent a couple years there honing his roadie skills. This year Matt moved back to St. Louis to work for a different company and reconnected with former US Bank colleague Larry Baerveldt, who by way of Darren Van't Hof (a current US Bank guy who works with Larry), was introduced to RAGBRAI. Matt has sprinter legs and is the perfect guy for establishing a blistering pace. Larry and I would relieve him for short periods, then fall back in line when Matt's legs were rested.
During those 27 miles, I guessed we were passing 200 riders every mile, and nobody passed us. We rarely strayed far from the outer edge of the left lane, shouting "On your left!" about every 10 seconds. The flatter terrain of the eastern half of Iowa was working to our advantage as we closed in on State Center, but I cannot recall a single significant sight during our fast ride, other than the rear tire in front of me. If you want to ride fast, a pace line is the way to go. But if you want to take in the scenery, it won't happen in a pace line.
State Center was a nice little town where we parked our bikes, strolled up and down main street, and then proceeded toward Albion. As we left town, I could sense trouble in my right knee. The pain that came during my final training ride the week before was now slowing me considerably. Larry and Matt pulled away while I rode at a snail's pace. I couldn't use my knee for anything - pedaling, standing, or walking - without pain. Ibuprofen was ineffective, as was using only my left leg to pedal. The pedaling motion itself was too much. I'd pedal a couple revolutions with my left leg, coast for 30 feet, and do it again. The pain continued for a couple hours.
As I approached Le Grand, the next-to-last town before Tama/Toledo,
the pain finally subsided a bit. I could at least tolerate the pedaling motion in my right knee, even if my left leg was doing all the work. I cut off the route where it detoured into Le Grand and headed straight down a hill to cross the Union Pacific railroad tracks that we'd been loosely following most of the week. The crossing was rough at 15 mph, enough to loudly jostle my camera and cell phone inside a small bike-mounted bag I'd bought in Missouri Valley. Shortly after the railroad crossing, a guy came up from behind and asked if I'd dropped my cell phone. Uh-oh. No cell phone was in the bag, whose drawstring closure wasn't drawn. I turned around and navigated my way through about 100 riders cruising down the hill at speed and asked a Union Pacific safety officer, on hand to make sure we crossed the tracks without incident, if he saw a cell phone. He had, in fact, seen a cell phone, which he produced from his vehicle parked on the side of the road. It looked exactly like my company-issued cell phone, except it was now in two pieces and completely useless. I quickly assessed the impact of this unfortunate incident:
Downside #1: I had no cell phone for the rest of the week.
Downside #2: It was Verizon service, about the only cell provider with reliable coverage across Iowa.
Downside #3: My backup personal cell phone was the one item I'd forgotten to pack for the trip.
Upside #1: I still had voice mail.
Upside #2: The company that issued the phone had fired me the month before, so I didn't really give a shit. I was just happy I got a month's worth of free cell phone service.
The final 15 miles were much easier with partial use of my right knee. As I neared Tama, the effects of major flooding in May and June were still evident along the Iowa River. Most low lying areas were still swamps.
In Tama, I had only a general idea of where we would be staying that night. The day before, Marlene had secured our use of a vacant efficiency apartment in Tama's "twin city" of Toledo. I headed for the RAGBRAI information center to check on the address, when Larry and Matt happened by on their way out of the info center. I probably could have found the place on my own, but Larry and Matt had it already dialed in. We located Marlene and the RV parked two blocks from the main square in Toledo, where the entertainment events of the evening were to take place.
Toledo and Tama were the most working class of the overnight towns on the RAGBRAI route, or at least they gave off that vibe. Our efficiency apartment was part of an old house that had been divided into rental units. When we arrived, the upstairs unit was serving as party headquarters for a group of young dudes ready to hit the town. As Art Lindo aptly conjectured, RAGBRAI provided a target-rich environment for those guys, and this was their town. If they couldn't score tonight, they weren't trying. I sensed that Art would know these things. He had a smooth demeanor that surely served him very well in his youth. Even now, in his 40's, Art made friends in every beer garden. His connection to Greg Sierra via the Federal Reserve Bank in Washington D.C. was his link to Team Joyride, and he made the most of it. Every day a new and interesting jersey appeared on Art's torso, often reflecting the flags of nations he had visited at least twice and planned to visit again.
The rest of the team found our location just in time to witness the upstairs apartment guys driving large pickup trucks around street barricades by way of front lawns, and parking them in the grass. We didn't care, though. We would be sleeping on the floor inside the air conditioned apartment, with no need for pitching tents.
Greg Sierra, on his way through the information center to get directions to our location, had discovered an interesting fact about the Tama and Toledo communities: they don't get along well. When Greg asked a local lady in Tama how to get to Church Street in Toledo, she scoffed, "I don't know, I don't go there." She indicated something to the effect of "they don't like us and we don't like them." She went on to explain, in animated fashion, that during initial discussions of a proposed new high school location in Tama, the Toledo residents had complained that their kids shouldn't have to cross the busy U.S. 30 highway to get to school every day. She listened to these complaints for some time during a public meeting before standing up and declaring that if kids couldn't cross a highway, maybe they shouldn't be in high school.
That night we slept on the apartment's wood floor, where Kevin Boyne produced the largest inflatable mattress I have ever seen. It was approximately 2 feet tall and could have saved the Titanic. Kevin's link to Team Joyride was through a gal named Vivien, who was either his sister or Greg Sierra's sister, and one of them had been married to her, which makes them former brothers-in-law. He's a longtime attorney in Belleville, Illinois and was recruited to the team several years ago by Greg.
The upstairs apartment guys either stayed out all night or successfully ended their evenings, as we heard nothing from them after we went to bed. The second-longest ride of the week was complete, and we all slept well.
