Friday's report

We left Bloomington this morning and drove to Cedar Rapids seeing more rain on the trip. There is flash flooding in Manchester and Dyersville, two of the towns on the last two days of the ride. Hope it is cleared up by the time we arrive. Dyersville, by the way, is the home of the "Field of Dreams" movie baseball park where Shoeless Joe "lives" in the corn field.

We visited some friends, dropped some stuff off at Jeri and Bill's house where we are staying tonight, and went to Coe College to meet most of the other riders and to enjoy a spaghetti dinner. Riders come from throughout the country, as far west as Utah and east to Washington DC with most from Cedar Rapids, of course. Coe has changed a lot since I attended it from 1959 to 1962. The campus looks about three times larger with some really fine new campus facilities. I'm told the enrollment is nearly twice what it was back then--about1300 now.

We loaded the bikes and supplies and returned to Jeri and Bill's. We were hit by a thunderstorm tonight while watching the flood pictures on the news from Manchester and Dyersville. Lots of noise, rain and hail.

Forecast for the first part of the week is much better. We'll see.

Tomorrow we leave at 10 for the bus ride to Sioux City where we'll set up camp after unloading the truck. Then join the other 10,000 riders for a concert by SmashMouth. I brought my ear plugs!

To bed then and up on Sunday to start our ride with the climb out of the Missouri River valley. This year's ride has about half the number of feet of climb of last year's but I believe the agony of the first day will be typical for RAGBRAI. If you think Iowa is flat, you are wrong. I'm told there is a very challenging hill between Dyersville and Dubuque for the last day too just so we don't get too confident during the week.

I'll put something together for tomorrow so see you then.

Remember, help the Clemmons Food Pantry with a donation. Send to Clemmons Methodist Church, Clemmons, NC 27012 and note on the check that is is for the Food Pantry and/or Roger's ride. There are good people who need your help.