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05/30/2003 Entry: "Lafayette, Indiana"
Hello again, long time no see. I have 45 minutes to fill you in on a week of stuff, so I'll do my best. If this entry ends abrubtly, it's because I had to post it or risk losing the entire thing. If it's not proof read and spelled like a drunk 12 year old (as opposed to my usual spelling like a sober 12 year old) this is the reason. I'm am doing the normal entry, Josh did a picture entry, and Jesse will be doing an entry dicussing mechanical issues and a seperate one discussing roster changes. Please read all 4-ish of them. (they may not all appear at once). Firstly, I'm going to start this entry by saying that Mike is fine and back on the road with us, and will be riding the entire way to Boston. You can all sleep easy. His arm is healing and you can even see pictures in the photo section of this page thanks to Josh. On the same subject, Norm wrecked today. No one is really sure how, but what we've pieced together is that he "zoned out" as he tends to do, and bounced off a guard rail onto the pavement. He's doing fine and only has mild road rash. In the interest of saving time I'm going to not do this entry in the usual chronological order and will instead skip around some. Firstly, concerning RAGBRAI, and then Illinoise (which we are now finished with) ....
RAGBRAI: There was too much fun things happening on RAGBRAI to relate them all here, and we didn't ride together often so all our individual stories are different. The general way a day went was Jesse woke up, we woke up, Jesse and Paul started riding, Mike, Mark, Myself started riding a bit later, and Josh and Norm either were will asleep at this point or left after us. There were some exceptions, but this was a general day. We all rode, had adventures, ate food, and met back up at the bus later. Sometimes Josh fell asleep along the route and we didn't see him until late night, however. Those of us that showed up at the bus went down town and did a couple juggling shows, and then went to bed. THE SHOWS WENT AWESOME! Is started with Paul, Jesse and/or Joey (visting from Iowa State) doing balls, then Norm did Diablo, followed by myself on the Devil Sticks. Then Jesse and Mark did a passing routine, sometimes we did high number passing routines with Joel and Nick (also visiting from Iowa State), then Mark and Jesse passed around a volunteer while Joey or Norm solved 3 or 4 (it varied) Rubix Cubes somewhere between 3 and 5 minutes (it varied on the person.) We also did fire occassionaly. The crowed loved the show. We passed out tons of cards, and had HUGE audiences. It was an amazing experience. We would like to thank Team Meg-A-Sor-Ass for feeding us on Tuesday. They gave us tons of wonderful food and company and we juggled for them. They even let us take food with us. They ruled. We also would like to thank Chad from Team Kamikaze for letting us ride with them and transporting some or our extra RAGBRAI gear (extra business cards, etc). We would like to say "Hi" to all the people that we met and gave cards to, including but not limited to Ariel, James (who's picture is in the photo gallery after a mild accident) and Devin. Ariel is an old RAGBRAI friend of ours and part of the inspiration for this trip. Hopefully the three of them will be joining "Team Roadshow:Unloaded" (working title) on RAGBRAI next year. We'd also like to say Hi to Team Fancy, Team Bicichica, and the wondeful folks at Pastafari. Mechanically, RAGBRAI was the beginning of the end for our wheels. Jesse will fill you in on the details in a post being made simultaniously to this one. I broke a 3 spokes in a row which caused be to need to hitchike 7 miles to a bike shop. I then borrowed the tools I needed and fixed the wheel so fast they thought I worked in a bike shop too. That was cool. Jesse and Mark also broke spokes and we found out that all our rims were cracking into pieces. I'll let Jesse explain the details, however. In summary of RAGBRAI, it was an awesome expierence, we met some wonderful people, Mark and I got to see out girlfriends for a week (!), and we became quite the sensation. By day four everyone knew who we were and either had seen or wanted to see our show. It went very well. Illinoise
The last day of RAGBRAI we went straight from Fort Madison, the end town, into La Harpe, 20 miles in to Illinoise. We got in at varied times depending on what we did that day. Mike, Norm and I, for instance, played with Ariel and the gang in a fountain in Fort Madison and didn't leave until 7pm. We stayed in a city park except for Jesse, who was being visited by his girlfriend a few towns away. La Harpe, Il to Tremont, Il A wondeful day. We had a TAILWIND for 2/3 of it and it was overcast. Hot and muggy, but overcast. We had severe thunderstorm warnings the whole day, but didn't get hit by any of them. We were going to stay in Pekin, south of Peoria, but discovered that it was a rather nasty little town and rode 10 miles more into Tremont. It was a nice 90+ mile day. Things of interest that day: The discovery of a frozen Dr. Pepper slushi machine. It was awesome. Shortly after this discovery I was riding with Mark and witnessed his tire explode. Not just go flat, but blow a 6 inch gash into his sidewall resulting into a very large noise and an impressive flash of white smoke from the dust inside the tube. Luckily it was his back wheel so Mark was able to not end up eating pavement. It turns out his sidewall on his tire had finally failed, pure random chance. Chalk one up for our nasty Roadshow luck. I was carrying a spare tire, thankfully, so we were able to get him back up on the road. We tried to find a bike shop in Pekin, but, as I said before, Pekin sucked, so the bike shop wasn't open. Oh well. That night Zach, a friend from Iowa State, visited us, it ruled. He bought us Cherry RC, the best drink in existance. Tremont, Il to Gibson City, Il Say goodbye to the tailwind, say hello to pouring rain and a headwind. We slept in late enough to miss most of the rain, but it was still a tough ride. At around mile 30 we hit Bloomington were Illinoise cycle and fitness is located. This might possibly be the coolest bike shop in the world. We got amazing discounts on tired and gear, AND they drove us to the grocery store so we could get stocked up on food. They ruled, you should all shop there. We then road 40 more miles to Gibson City where we met a fellow biker in the park we were staying at. A really cool fellow biker who's name I never caught and so I hope he'll leave a comment and let us know what his name is *hint hint*. Anyway, we hung out for awhile and then he bought us a ton of food at the grocery store. It was amazing. It was like Christmas in July (tee hee hee). I can't really say enough about how cool this guy was. Thanks oh nameless one. Last night Rob also took his leave of us. But, he will be doing a journal entry about his experiences soon, so look forward to that. Gibson city, Il to Lafayette, Indiana
As Jesse probably mentioned (I hope) we had to haul behind to get to Lafeyette to Project Bike would build us some new wheels. It was 75 miles with kind of a sidewind/headind but really flat, as Illinoise was the whole way. We crossed into Indiana around mile 50. Illinois was a short state. Not much of interest happened besides Norm eating pavement. Indiana is beautiful. Wonderful clouds, trees, and fields everywhere. Both Illinoise and Indiana definately have our approval for being to flat, scenic, and short. ah, I'm out of time! I finished though, so yay. We are caught up! ILYQ
Replies: Leave us a note! (4)
Just want Jesse to know that I did do all of Ragbrai. I thought it was well-organized, rigorous, and a great learning experience for me. Considering I'm 58 and had been on my bike about four times in the last 20 years, I really needed a good lesson in using my gears. I got that and had a lot of fun. My husband and I
did catch your show at two stops. People loved you guys!! Hope the rest of your ride is safe and a happy adventure.
Posted by Ellen Holm @ 07/31/2003 10:06 AM CST
Hi to all, glad to hear from you again. I thought all of you had gone to Ragbrai and that was the end of the trip, tooooooo much fun! Hope all is going better with some new tires/tubes whatever it is you are running on, plus some food. Mark, I will be with your parents on 8/21 will you be home? Would be good to visit with you. Continue to keep you in my prayers, be careful and take time to eat. Best wishes to all, Aunt Nancy
Posted by Aunt Nancy @ 07/30/2003 09:22 PM CST
We caught the show in Oskaloosa -- awesome. It was good to see Seager and Q and meet the others (quite the shoulder Mike). We may be a bit biased but Seager's devil sticks were certainly one of the highlights. We had no idea he had gotten so good.
Posted by The Other Seagers @ 07/30/2003 04:37 PM CST
Good to see that Josh's slacker/sleeping too much ways are not being ruined by this trip. I guess it was too much to hope that he would start moving at something above a turtle's pace... :)
Posted by Amy @ 07/29/2003 09:08 PM CST
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