This Isn’t Disney World!
“On to Minny!”
“It’s not Disney World!”
I think Minny is an endearing name for the city of Minneapolis. Apparently, Minnesotans think otherwise. No matter, I was still going to call it Minny.
You’d think that after such a long break in Kansas City, sleeping in separate beds and having our week long’s rest to slow down and restart our batteries that we’d feel great heading north. Not so! We had a pretty tight schedule in KC actually. We met with news agencies, youth programs, attended an extra-inning game and showed off the sights of KC to Rex and Steve. It was action-packed all the time.
And it was HOT. The heat wave America has suffered through this summer has been well documented. And I’ll be the first to tell ya, it’s not comfortable riding in it. It was 104 as we left KC and quite humid. Farms don’t provide much, if any, relief from the heat. Once you made the commitment to get on the long and unwinding road, you’d better get used to it, cause there wasn’t a whole lot else to provide variance on the ride. We’d ride through cornfield after cornfield, stopping whenever a lone tree might lean out over the road and shade our path to cool off and hydrate. At each service stop, we’d be sure to fill up on water and food to keep us going. We’d dealt with the tough temps before in Arizona and then again in Texas, so we knew how to handle this. We were pros and we showed it.
We also knew that we would only have to make one camping pit-stop before we made it into Des Moines for a night’s stay with Ben Clark, who was Adam’s friend Adam’s big brother. Thanks to Ben and Steph for being great hosts to the B4B team!
Adam also was able to family hug with his grandparents. Yeah Des Moines! Way to be awesome!
On our way up through Iowa, there was one cycling adventure that was on everybody’s minds – RAGBRAI. Ragbrai is a week-long group ride across the entire state of Iowa, from west to east, that consumes the state. As we stopped at gas stations to fill up on our way through Iowa, nearly every passerby asked, “training for RABRAI?”
“Noooo… not quite,” we replied back with a smile. Some would ask further questions and we’d tell them about Biking for Baseball, and some would think we wouldn’t be able to handle RAGBRAI.
Either way, it was fun to hear Iowans boast about their ride. Averaging ~70 miles a day, they’d take over small towns in Iowa with each stop along their route, partying all night with the entertainment provided by the RAGBRAI team. This wasn’t, “Oh, I’ll just have a Coors Light” party. Riders PARTIED. After a full day of riding and then the preparation to get ready to do it again the next day, one of the last things on our minds is to down a few frosty beverages. But RAGBRAI’ers do it like champs, day in and day out, for seven straight days. This year was the 40th year of RAGBRAI! What a run! We’d love to ride across Iowa one day with the RAGBRAI’ers.
Another night of open road, hot rides, and camping separated us from the trails of America’s bike-friendliest city, Minneapolis. Riding into the city, it was apparent why the city had earned the title. Normal roads led into the city from the suburbs, just as any other city would have, where cars drove on two or four lane roads broken up frequently by stop lights. But next to these roads were bike roads!… with bike lanes!… and no cars to tangle with!… and no stop lights to stop at!… all the way into the city!
Chase kept getting all excited to show us the bike routes he took on his daily commutes around the city, and we could now get excited with him! We had such pretty rides over bridges, around lakes and through wooded areas, and all within a major city. Unreal that such a city could have this many great trails. Cities like this should be the future of America.
We had scheduled to do a group ride the day after we arrived in Minneapolis, but it rained all morning. Pretty hard too. Too hard to ride through on our “day off.” We fit a ride in a bit later, but with an unfortunate ending. Due to the rain, there was a slick part of the trail around a turn that caused Adam to suffer the third fall of the journey. The slip-up caused Adam’s rear derailleur to snap too! Suck! Don’t worry, we fixed it on our way out of town in Stillwater, MN. And as we rode through the city for the next couple of days, Chase lent his commuter bike to Adam for our team rides. All was not lost.
After hearing Iowans boast about RAGBRAI and Chase boast about the great trails of Minny, it was great to see such a connect of bike culture, dispersed among all Midwesterners. The West, with Portland, Seattle, San Francisco and Anaheim, is known as a big bike community. But at times, the culture seems divided. Here in the Midwest, people accept bicycles; and the two cultures, cyclists and non-cyclists, have merged into one. Who woulda thunk?
