Mr. Toad's Wild Ride (August 2nd, 2012)

Photos from Elkader:

The welcome banner says life is good.

Town tank - probably been photographed much.

Entering Elkader Iowa

A river runs through it.

We ate at this middle eastern restaurant. Owner big Red Sox fan.

Pata is happy about our food possibilities.

Summer is tourist time for Elkader

I'm taking a picture of Pata taking a picture of a Red Sox flag.

Today started early.  We were on the road at 6:20 AM or so.  It was surprisingly cool, especially given how hot it was last night.  We headed out of Elkader and stopped on the way out of town to get me a coffee.  When we told the clerk where we were going, she said emphatically there are some BIG hills on the way to Grand Rapids.  We sort of brushed her off, hoping that her impression of big was smaller than the Berkshires.

We soon learned that the hills of Iowa rival the Berkshires and we spent much of the day climbing.  The first road we were on was State Route 13.  It had little shoulder and when it did, the shoulder was narrow with a rumble strip on the left and gravel on the right.  There was also a lot of traffic and big rigs barreling down the narrow road.  It was not much fun and rattled my nerves.

We got off that road after about 9 miles or so and got mostly onto to county roads, which also didn’t have a shoulder but were less traveled.  Somewhere along the way, we were on another road which had the rumble strip/gravel arrangement and I went off into the gravel.  My wheel sunk into the gravel and caught the lip of the asphalt.  I fell over, but the panniers caught me and I unclipped and pushed the bike up off the ground.  I didn’t get hurt at all, but I was scared and shaken.  (This was my first fall on the touring bike, and I was saved by fat panniers.) 

We climbed and climbed and it was hot too.  The descents were sort of fun – but with no shoulder I worried about trucks needing to pass us.  Luckily there weren’t too many of them that caught us on the downhill.  

At one point, David was ahead of me and we had just crested a climb, when I hear barking.  Out of the woods, come a pack of eight or so dogs.  They are in hot pursuit of David, I am watching him yell at them and trying to veer to the left to separate the pack and wondering what the hell I am going to do as I am riding behind them and right into the fray.  As all of this is happening a red car comes up on the other side and breaks up the pack of dogs.  The driver slowed down and stopped in the middle of the pack.  The dogs seemed confused which allowed me to pass and David to follow.  The car showed up at exactly the right moment – another case of the Universe watching out for us. 

Once we got past the dogs, we did some more climbing and made it to Lansing where we stopped at an ice cream store and had the best chocolate shake ever!  A nice reward for such a hard day.

DW The dogs had the tactical advantages of surprise and location. I could hear barking behind the thick trees and bushes but couldn’t see anything. The dogs were right at the top of a very long difficult climb and they poured out into the road as soon as I got to the top. They were Australian dingo dogs and they quickly surrounded me. I tried to steer the lead (alpha dog?) into the shoulder and preempt his advantage – that’s when the miracle car appeared coming from the opposite direction. The driver could see my difficulty (I was in his lane trying to manage my stability and forward motion) so he slowed and divided the pack which confused them greatly and allowed Pata to continue forward. I had stopped and turned back to help her negotiate the canine calamity but the sharp driver shut down their game with his shrewd driving. The dogs galloped back into the bushes and we went on.

The climbing was unbelievably difficult! Heat and height seemed to converge at the same time. We crawled up the grades at 3 mph sweating profusely. Towards the top of one particularly difficult climb I started having visions…of food! I knew I was bonking. My synapses weren’t firing properly and my heart was beating like some distant bass speaker buried in my chest. It was high noon hot, hot like a sweat lodge or sauna with no exit. But we survived each and every one of those climbs just as we did the Berkshire Mountains in New York. And that is a wonderful feeling of accomplishment to outlast such pain.

Train is moving and nearly a mile long.

The rolling hills of Iowa...not much shoulder for us on the roads.

Massive energy plant on the Mississippi River.

Hundreds of summer homes and docks line the river.

Beautiful views everywhere on the river.

Pata cruises along - she's very strong on the bike!

Nearly in Lansing.

When it's this hot outside we need ice cream.