Raymond Johnson @ downclimb.com

Chautauqua Park in Storm Lake I made it to Fort Dodge and the mobile networks seem to be coping with traffic so far, so I'll add more to this post. Last night in Storm Lake I awoke to rain at about 2 am. I knew it was raining because I had purposely left my rain fly half-on and it didn't take much to secure it to keep me dry. I woke up around 5:30 to the sound of other people breaking down their tents, and I (slowly) followed suit, eventually rolling out of town at 7:15. Bathrooms, bottle filling, bag loading, etc. can all take a while with so many people doing it at once. Storm Lake I've quickly learned that while I might not be fast to get up, I'm decently fast on my bike. With about 3000 training miles in Colorado, I can keep a pretty fast pace without getting winded. I rode the first two hours today in the rain, which finally let up around the time I got to Manson. Brunch in Manson Some people come to RAGBRAI for the ride, some come for the party. ...

What a beautiful day to ride a bike! The air was cool and (relatively) dry for July in Iowa and I couldn't help but push the pace today. Some riders surely got out before 6 am, but I didn't dip my rear tire in the Missouri River in Sioux City until 6:45. I left town slowly in a crowd, but as I passed people and skipped most of the many stops along the road, the number of riders around me shrunk considerably. I saw very few riders in the last 10 miles into Storm Lake, and I felt a little like a guest who showed up to an event well before it was scheduled to start. I couldn't find a place to fill with water, the food vendors hadn't finished setting up, and the volunteers at the bag pick-up were still getting the hang of things. Getting here early did have some advantages, though: I had my pick of tent sites, plenty of time to shower and rest, and for an hour or two, Verizon's network was still mostly functional. That last bit is certainly not the case now, so I'm ...

Sunset on the Missouri River As a kid in Iowa whose childhood freedom was viewed over bicycle handlebars, I always wanted to ride RAGBRAI, the [Des Moines] Register's Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa. It might have taken me a while to get here, but I'm writing this from my tent just feet away from the banks of the Missouri River in Sioux City. Tomorrow I pedal. I bought a new bicycle in January of 2013. I don't remember why I thought I needed a new one, exactly. My 1990 Bianchi Osprey mountain bike was (and still is) serving me pretty well as a commuter bike back and forth from campus. But Boulder is a bike-crazy town, and a trip to one of Boulder's many bike shops (which outnumber coffee shops, to give you an idea of their number) turned into a shiny new Fuji cyclocross bike. I'd never ridden cyclocross, but I liked the bike's versatility and robustness over a regular road bike. Since then, I've put many a mile on my new bike, much of it on th...