7/24/96 (Wednesday) LAKE MILLS to CHARLES CITY (69.8 miles)

On the road by 6:30, we once again hit a church for breakfast - this one down a short gravel road that discouraged the crowd. They had excellent bisquits and gravy and Kath had a potato cheese & egg thing and both came with homemade cinnamon rolls. We met a guy with a Hovercraft, then hit the line for the luxury of indoor plumbing where we met Katy, a local girl (blond, of course) who told us the local women had made 7 dozen cinnamon rolls each and were worried they were going to run out. They will.

When we got to Northwood, the first thing Kath saw as the 10,000 bikes rolled down the tiny main street was a music store - closed. She pressed her nose up against the window and when the owner opened up, she said, "Can you play us a tune?" And he said, "Sure, come on in!" His name was Dewey Kruger and he played 3 jazzy little tunes on a synthesizer souped up piano while doing stand-up ("If you'll pay close attention, you'll notice my fingers never leave my hands!").

Next we went to Carpenter where the Thrift Shop was selling "recycled" t-shirts for $1 each. The woman said they normally sell them for any donation but "... we're fleecing you guys."

As we rolled into St. Ansgar for lunch, we heard "Hey, Big F-er's! Tell Wendy I got the dragon." Since Kath & I both had our Bicyle Fun Club (aka "Big F Club") t-shirts on, we knew he was talking to us (and the F _is_ for fun!). We asked what was in the box he was hauling on his rack and he said, "I'll show ya!" and proceeded to unbungee and untape this box that was obviously prepared for shipping. Packing peanuts started flying down the street so we took refuge between some nearby buildings, where the peanuts turned into a peanut tornado! We grabbed as many as we could and he finally got the box opened to reveal ... a dragon! It was made of silverware - serving trays, forks, teapots, you name it - all bent and soldered into the form of this wonderful dragon he had found at an antique store 25 miles off the route (recommended by Wendy, a fellow Big F-er).

Lunch in the park was accompanied by karoake, some really bad but some pretty funny, especially the guy who sang "For all the Girls I've Loved Before" doing both Willy Nelson and Julio Eglasias in extreme charicature.

Today was an option day. Some did 69 miles (like us), some added a loop to get 100 miles, and some did 150 miles in honor of Iowa's sesquicentennial. Dan & Sara, an 18 year old couple who rode a tandem, beat us into camp and they did the 150! They were more than twice as fast as us.

Some of the sights on the road included Team Bikini who actually biked in bikini swimsuits (luckily they had lycra bike seat covers to reduce chafing) and a man in a loin cloth who was taking donations to pose with people. And the good news is that babying my knee worked. After a few twinges in the morning, it quit whining and never bothered me again. And it was another magic day of tailwind biking.

For dinner we went into town where the mall had a Hy Vee grocery store serving a great buffet. There we ran into Jerry, a fellow Kath has known for several RAGBRAIs, who says he can do RAGBRAI on $15 and I believe it. He hauls all he owns on his bike and scouts ahead for all the free stuff. You can usually find free pops and showers somewhere in each town. Charles City (Chucktown) greeted us with free home made apple pie and Jerry got 4 pieces! He told us later he had even spent two hours in one town hawking various types of bars (chocolate chip, raspberry, etc) in order to walk away with eight of them for free.

In the evening after dinner we went into town to check out the action, including the one-man blues band, Patrick Hazel, and the juggler tossing flaming torches riding a 6 foot unicycle which we watched from a precarious second story porch. After a few false starts, we found our way back down the bike trail to our camp in the dark, dodging light-less bikes all the way. I got a call in to Stewart just as the fireworks went off. We were told later there had been fireworks last night and Kath & I both slept soundly right through them!