Follow-Up (1)

The trip from Tipton to Le Claire was wonderful. You truly could not have asked for a more perfect day to ride a bicycle. The humidity was non-existent. The skies couldn't have been blue-r. The road was on a slight downgrade the entire way. The wind was at our back most of the time.

I woke up at 4:00am after having gone to sleep around midnight. I decided to go ahead and start getting ready for my last day. Packed everything up, did the "stand in line" for the john. (Yeah, even at 4:30am.)

I then decided I'd "donate" the tent. It was something I'd picked up at Target for about $30 or so. It had never been designed for the kind of set up / tear down usage I'd put upon it. It was more of the, "Set it up and let it sit for two weeks," kind of tent. So, like in Apollo 13, I stood outside the tent, cast off its stakes, and said, "Farewell, Aquarius, and we thank you." The folks around me hollered at me to shut the hell out, for chrissakes, it's 4:30 in the goddamned morning . . .

Got on the bike at 5:15. The sun wasn't yet up, but there was enough ambient light to see clearly. To me, that's the best part of the day to ride bikes. The air is still. The birds are just getting to work, after finishing off a juicy worm latte at Starducks.

The world is quiet. The other riders aren't chatting or being goofy. We're just down to the business of moving from point A to point B on a riding machine. The soft whisper of the tires sounds like the rustling of clean linen sheets.

For the last two days of the trip I listened to songs on my little iPod shuffle. There were several songs I'd simply hit the repeat button over time and time and again:

Ronnie Milsap's "Pure Love." (The crescendo at the end almost gives me some sort of sugar rush and I pedal like mad to the lyrics.)

Ronnie Milsap's "Nobody Likes Sad Songs." Au contraire, RM. I like 'em just fine. And if "NLSS" plays in my earpiece before I've had breakfast, I'm liable to cry like a baby, too. (Did I say that out loud?)

Rodney Carrington's "Dear Penis," "I'm Dancing With a Man," and "Fred." The songs crack me up no matter how many times I listen to them, but there's some great piano work in them. I listen to music kind of weird. For certain songs I like to listen to particular single notes. And the piano work in these songs give me lots of notes to listen for.

Pieces from two different movie soundtracks: The Green Mile and The Shawshank Redemption. Lots of violins. Lots of piano work. My all time favorite piece of music has to be "Suds on the Roof" from Shawshank. (If your "ring tone" in my phone is "Suds on the Roof," that makes you a very special person.) These songs are soothing and they take my mind away from the ride. "Brooks Was Here," also from Shawshank, is a long (6+ minutes) that makes the miles glide by.

There wasn't a lot of intermediate towns on the way in. I'm guessing most towns realized riders were focused on getting to the end and weren't going to waste their partying time on anything but the final destination.

It was nice, rolling into Le Claire, to have people standing on the sidelines clapping and cheering you on. I'll admit to a momentary uncharitable thought: Where were you folks on Day #2 when we were climbing hills and sweating like the pigs we ate on Day #4? But it lasted just a second and I returned to thinking good thoughts about Iowans. It was nice for folks to turn out, wave, clap, and watch the show.

There was a ceremony to close out the ride. But it wasn't going to start for three hours after I'd done my Mississippi dipping. I just didn't want to wait around for three hours. So I reluctantly pedaled on over to the car. Found my bags, changed clothes (right in the middle of the parking lot -- again, we riders have no modesty), loaded the bike on the car, and headed back to Columbus.

I've got lots of comments I'll respond to, plus some observations I want to trot out over the next couple of days. Trust me when I tell you that if you never come back to this blog again you're not going to miss anything. Thanks to both of you for reading this far. (Yeah, lost another reader when I didn't post the picture of me dipping myself -- nekkid -- in the Mississippi.)