So if you have been reading my daily whine, er, blog you might of noticed a few complaints about the amount of rain I have encountered. 

Not today. Beautiful sunshine right from the start. So promising and uplifting. 

Until I started to ride that is…. 

Mother Nature has changed tactics. Likely she got tired of me whining about the rain so then how would I like a little breeze? Maybe 30 to 40 mph breeze out of the northwest to keep you cool in all this sunshine as you are pedaling west? 

If you veer even 1 ft off a state road around here expect to enjoy some gravel or dirt roads. Loose gravel or mud rods really. 

So I spent most of day headed west on SR18 to Rock Valley, IA. 18 has a 36-inch shoulder, which is great except the Iowa State Transportation Dept. has placed a rumble strip 6” inside the white line and the strip is 12” wide. With wind pushing my bike and my panniers acting like sails, I was constantly being shoved into the rumble strip.  

I could go on the other side of white line but the constant stream of trucks carrying pigs, cows and crop supplies made this a scary choice.  

Do I Have Any Teeth Left?

By the end of the day my arms were wrecked from the constant course correction caused by wind shove! And the times I failed to correct the dang rumbles which are made of 2 in deep divots quickly loosened most of my teeth.  

Kinda brutal. 

Took over 8 hours of bike time to go 70 miles to Rock Valley. Arrived around 6:30 p.m. and found a city park with about 15 campsites. Most small towns have a park with camping but most have not yet opened the bathrooms due to Covid. Thrilled to find the Bi-centennial park open with facilities! 

After setting up my tent and watching the local fire dept. parade (not sure what they were parading about), I walked 1/2 mile to local Casey’s and scored a beer. 

Great way to end the day. 

Notice how I made sure not to end with a whine but a beer instead.