83.20 mi / 6:11:59 time / 13.4 mph avg. / 25.5 mph max. / 1308 ft. climbing
Staying at Smith Lake County Park

The tent held up well enough last night after what seemed like a good bit of rain, but who really knows? I woke to a sunrise I could actually see, packed up camp, and was ready to roll at 8am. Then I noticed a strange clunking noise, and saw that my rear tire was dead flat. Crap. Just when I was starting to think that my fancy tires (Schwalbe Marathon Supreme) were totally worth the money, I got bit. Well, better here in camp than out on the road (since it’s the rear wheel, I have to remove all the bags and flip the bike over). However, when I got the tire off, I saw that it wasn’t a puncture; the valve stem had come right out of the tube! So the good news was that my tires *are* still good. Don’t know what happened to the tube, all I can figure is that the lockring on the stem got loose and somehow the tube was being jerked back and forth inside the tire.

So after that delay, I headed out to face my first real headwinds of the trip (or crosswinds, but never anything behind me). I did the first half of the day on empty backroads to the resort town of Clear Lake where I stopped for lunch and library. Iowa is pretty indistinguishable from Illinois. You have corn on one side of the road, soybeans on the other, roads are straight and mostly flat, and I’ve only been chased by one dog. Well, actually it was the other way around, it was a big dog that sprinted out and easily outpaced my 22mph until it reached the end of its territory, stopped, turned, and barked at me when I finally caught up.

After Clear Lake there was a stretch on US 18, which was fairly annoying once the shoulder disappeared. The Iowa State Bike Map has been helping quite a bit by indicating paved backroads that I can take (although the gravel here is good-quality and perfectly rideable too, just slower). Made it to Algona and while I waited in a long line at Subway, I saw that the sunny skies were finally starting to darken. It wouldn’t be right if I went a whole day without rain, would it?

I rode a couple miles up the road to the unremarkable campground and was able to get my tent pitched before the rain rolled in. After an hour so it stopped, and by then it was dark, so I stood outside for a while watching a pretty amazing lightning show all around me. Then I took a shower which I needed very badly (I think it’s living in wet shoes that makes most of the stink, oh, and I’d been wearing the same clothes for 4 days!), and returned to the tent before the next round of showers. The leaking through the ceiling was back again, but now I think I’ve got the problem solved. They sell a thing called a “Gear Loft” which I assume is just a piece of fabric that you hang by these four loops near the top of my tent, so it’s essentially like a shelf above your head. Well, my new “Gear Loft” is made of plastic sheeting, and it’s more properly a “Water Loft”, but it does the job swimmingly. I’ve got a lot of experience with water dripping through my ceiling, so I knew this was one I could solve!

109.53 mi / 7:03:08 time / 15.5 mph avg. / 31.0 mph max. / 2504 ft. climbing
Staying at Beeds Lake State Park

I woke up this morning and had real Cheerios for breakfast in the motel lobby. Best motel ever! And yes, they provided lots and lots of towels, I didn’t even get through half of them. When I got everything packed up and rolled the bike out the door, it wasn’t even raining.

I had been up late the night before, planning my route, since I’m now well off my pre-planned path. I set a goal of Iowa Falls, which has motels, and is 100 miles away. Halfway there, I’d stop at Waterloo/Cedar Falls, check the forecast, and figure if I wanted to go all the way and get a motel, or stop sooner at a county campground.

The ride to Cedar Falls was pretty uneventful, except for this bright, hot thing that was shining on my back. That was weird. I’ve entered “waving” country, where many drivers will raise a few fingers off the wheel as they fly past. I passed pretty close to the town of Waverly, so that must be where they’re all coming from. Oh yeah. Been waiting to use that one all day. I made it to the Cedar Falls library, did a quick email check, and then checked the radar to see a storm was headed right for me. I packed up as fast as I could, and made a mad dash to Subway, where I arrived seconds before the rain hit.

While there, I was checking my map, and noticed this town “Hampton” up to the northwest. It too had motels, and a state park just outside of town. Even better, it was north, unlike Iowa Falls, which actually would take me five miles south of my northernmost point in the day. Since I eventually have to get back north, that’s an extra ten miles I would have added to the trip, so Hampton made a lot more sense. I have no idea how I could spend hours last night with full Internet access and come up with Iowa Falls, when I found Hampton in a few seconds while eating lunch.

By the time I was done, the rain had stopped, and the southeast wind was much stronger than it had been before. So I was crusing pretty well. There was one stretch of road where I was playing a game that somehow I’d never played before: cloud chasing. There were small clouds passing in front of the sun, and they’d cast a shadow on the ground that was moving exactly in my direction of travel, at about 20mph. If I wanted to be in the shade, I could speed up and catch a cloud. Otherwise I’d drop back and let them pass me. It was almost like porpoises leading a ship, if a bit of shadow can be compared to a mighty porpoise.

With the sun out, I was finally reminded that it was summer, and I actually started to think “a bit of rain wouldn’t be too bad right now!” But with the tailwind and the flattest day so far, it was tolerable. A note on my “climbing” figure: that’s a number reported by my cyclocomputer that adds up all the hills I climbed during the day, while ignoring the downhills. I don’t know how accurate it is, and there are all sorts of different ways to calculate it (see TopoFusion’s website for discussion!), but it should be a good way to compare from day to day. Today’s number was the lowest so far, and given the distance, the average grade was quite small. My max grade today was 6%, whereas the first two days had 12% and 15% climbs.

I made it to Beeds Lake State Park, got a beautiful site on the lake, watched the sunset, and ate my new campground-meal discovery (Country Crock Mac & Cheese…I was going to heat it, but after opening it and trying some cold, I realized it was pretty good that way, and didn’t even bother setting up the stove. The retirees group here told me it’s supposed to rain tonight, so maybe I’ll get to test out the tent’s waterproofing again. It would seem weird to have a day where I dodged all the rain, and the wind is picking up pretty good right now, so we’ll see…

86.25 mi / 6:28:06 time / 13.3 mph avg. / 42.0 mph max. / 4476 ft. climbing
Staying at Manchester Super 8 Motel

It continued to rain on and off through the whole night, although it must have been “off” for a while since I think I got a pretty good chunk of sleep. On the other hand, it was “on” enough to cause a good amount of dripping inside the tent. I still can’t figure out if there’s some sort of leaking in the fly, or if it’s just crazy condensation.

The rain would come and go in waves, and I had to wait out about three waves (while packing up between them) to get out of camp around 8am. Then I quickly got reminded that I was staying at Apple River CANYON State Park, when I was greeted by some 12-15% grades. Add in the rain, and it was pretty rough. It’s too bad it was raining the whole time, or I would have explored the park more. It looked pretty cool, with lots of sandstone bluffs surrounding the river.

Then it was lots of up and downs through the back roads on the way to Galena. This is the “driftless” area, one of the only places in the region where the hills weren’t knocked flat by glaciers. It’s pretty weird how quickly it seems to appear out of nowhere. Again, it’s too bad it was raining, or I would have gotten more pictures; what I could see through the rain and fog looked like beautiful country. It reminded me a lot of Kentucky, except without dogs chasing me.

When I reached Galena, the rain had stopped, and the sun almost came out again. Then it was onto US 20 to Dubuque, where the grades are a lot more tolerable (6% seemed to be the max). As I crossed the bridge over the Mississippi, there were a couple of kids sitting on the concrete wall on the Illinois end holding a cardboard sign that said “Honk if you don’t like Bush!” They showed it to me as I went by, but even at uphill-bicycle speed, I could barely read it, so I don’t think they were having much luck with the speeding cars.

I ended up spending (wasting?) a lot of rain-free time in Dubuque. First, a stop at a pharmacy to buy contact solution, which I’d forgotten to pack. Then I stopped at the McDonald’s because I knew they had AT&T WiFi access ($2/month with a standard DSL plan!) It was the world’s slowest McDonald’s, but I had plenty to do, so that was no big deal. Then it was off to a bike shop to buy some new sunglasses (I lost them somewhere on the first day!) And finally Target to buy more poly sheeting for various water issues.

My original plan had me going northwest out of Dubuque, but it turned out there were no towns anywhere near where I was heading large enough to have motel. And since it was likely to be raining, I figured that would be a good option. So instead I headed straight west. It started raining soon after I left Dubuque, and didn’t stop for the next 40 miles. Like yesterday though, I had wind pushing me from the east while I had rain soaking me from the west, so it wasn’t all bad.

They were cool with me rolling my wet and disgusting bike (and self) into my room here, they have free WiFi, and it was really nice to take a shower and dry off. To top it off, the pizza place next door had an all-you-can-eat buffet. suckers! It’s almost midnight and it’s still raining, and guess what’s on the schedule for tomorrow? (and the next day, and the next…)

Little Debbie update: I think I decided that I’m going to attempt to sample as many different varities of Little Debbie Snack Cakes on this trip as I can without endangering myself. Today was the the Frosted Honey Bun, not to be confused with the regular Honey Bun. The FHB has some white substance that looks like white silicone caulk laid atop it in a solid sheet. If that’s not disgusting enough, there was some loose oil floating around in the bag. It was ok, but I prefer the regular Honey Bun. But how can you beat 500 calories for 50 cents?

116.71 mi / 7:09:31 time / 16.3 mph avg. / 34.0 mph max. / 3690 ft. climbing

Staying at Apple River State Park

My goal for the day was to make to to Le-Aqua-Na State Park, about 100 miles away, with a contingency to stop at a county park about 80 miles out if conditions were less than favorable. It turns out that conditions were so favorable, I ended up overshooting my goal and stopped 10 miles further west.

All summer long, I’ve noticed an abnormal amount of east winds in the Chicago area. I figured that meant all the east winds for the year were being “used up”, and by the time I started my trip, west winds would be the only ones left in the bag. Well, there was at least one more east wind hiding in that bag, and it blew me forward all day long. My flat-land cruising speed was about 21mph, so I wanted to use up as much of that easy speed as possible, and not let it go to waste.

In addition to the wind, I think the temperature helped out quite a bit, as it was quite cool. At 3pm, it was 57 degrees, and it rarely got above 60 all day long. It was hard to believe that it’s still the middle of August. Those temperatures would be about perfect, if I wasn’t wet for much of the day. I rode through two or three hours worth of rain, in two main bursts. I was wearing my jacket almost the entire day, even when it wasn’t raining, because it was really that cold. Beyond that, the day was pretty uneventful, except for a 2-mile detour (which included a mile on a good-quality gravel road) because a bridge was out.

It’s funny how it’s almost the complete opposite of the first day of my Atlanta trip. On that one, I was fighting a headwind all day, and it might have reached 90 degrees. By the end of that one, I was beat, whereas today’s ride was almost relaxing. I was hardly ever pushing at all, and even once I got into the hilly country out here, I never felt very tired. And it sure does feel nice to know that I’ve already banked 35 miles on my first day out.

For the last 15 miles, the clouds got a little less dark, and I could even see the sun shining through them for a little bit. But then it started sprinking again while I was finding a site and setting up camp. The campground is surprisingly full for such a crappy day. The rain managed to stop long enough for me to cook some dinner, but now as I sit here holed up in the tent, it’s started once again.

Yeah, so I’m riding my bike to Portland (Oregon!), starting in three days. I think I’ll be posting journal updates on this blog, so I’m just trying it out to see how well it might work.