R: Friday dawned beautiful and perfect for riding. There were a few tough hills just to get out of Ottumwa, however--we passed Janelle’s parents walking up the first monster one. (They said they weren’t yet warmed up enough for the hill.) By the time we wound through the Indian Hills Community College campus and officially left the city of Ottumwa, we were halfway to the first town of Hedrick, 16 miles in. Rather than stopping at Hedrick though, we opted to stop at the Farm Boys Breakfast Burrito stand, in one part because going into Hedrick was a mile out of the way on a gravel road, and in the other part because Aaron had been talking about wanting to stop at Farm Boys all week, every time we saw their sign.
J: For the first 30 miles of the day, we kept seeing signs for Dutch letters in Packwood, so we HAD to stop. Most towns on RAGBRAI offer a large variety of food options, but they may or may not be exceptionally organized or even centrally located. Packwood, on the other hand, had an assembly line set up. They had a large offering of food and beverages, so we were worried that it was going to be a huge mess and take forever to get thru the line, but it was an extremely well run operation. And after seeing the Dutch letter ads for well over 2 hours, Rebecca couldn’t resist the urge to try one. 
R: This was a day of clever sign advertising. Not only had the advertising worked on me in regards to the Dutch letters, but also the Catholic ladies’ double-entendre-filled signs about “whoopie” in Brighton had me curious to find out what exactly they were selling! So after riding to Brighton and having some walking tacos (mmmm….walking tacos) we headed down the street where I had whoopie. From the Catholic ladies. And it was great. Okay, “whoopie” is actually two chocolate cake-cookies with a frosting filling. But it was actually really tasty! And apparently trendy. Check out this NY Times article on how this delicacy is re-sweeping the nation: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/18/dining/18whoop.html?_r=1 (I’m glad mine only cost a dollar, not the $4+ in the Williams-Sonoma catalog!)
R (continued): I think we were dragging our feet about leaving Brighton because all day we had felt a southerly breeze/wind. This hadn’t been a problem yet, but we knew that a majority of the remaining 25 miles would take us south, directly into the wind. This was probably the hardest stretch of the whole week for me. Yeah, the hills the first few days were tough, but there were hills here too, with wind blowing in my face. Plus it had gotten hotter out and the sun had caused a really attractive rash to take over my legs from the bike shorts edge to the knees, as well as some on my calves and neck too. The rash, I think, made my body feel even hotter, more uncomfortable, and more tired. We thought we only had about 7 miles to the next town of Germanville, but were dismayed to realize that this was one of those fake towns—only a few houses with no big welcome set up for us! So we had to keep plodding on another 9 miles to Lockridge.
J: The hills wouldn’t have been so evil on Friday, if it hadn’t been for the nasty headwind. On a good day, I could get up to 35 mph or so going downhill and make it partway up the next hill before I had to start working hard. Not so on day 6. I was happy to not come to a complete standstill at any given time – possibly an exaggeration, but that’s what it felt like! So, when we finally rolled into Lockridge, we were all ready for a break. I’m sure that we had some tasty RAGBRAI treats, but I have no recollection of that stop other than that we sat under a tree for an hour. R: Actually, I think we were so tired and I, for one, was feeling too yucky, that we only drank Cokes, and didn’t even eat anything other than Cliff bars from our bike bags. Sad, right? But the shade was awesome. I think I even took a brief nap that helped revive me for the final push.
J: It really was the day of great advertising because the Lutheran church posted signs for free ice cream starting about 10 miles out. After the ride we’d had, there was no way we were passing that up even though they were set up only about 3 miles from the overnight town. Once we finally made it into Mt. Pleasant, we were happy to see that Matt had once again set up our tent for us. Tent service really is a wonderful thing. It was a fairly uneventful evening until we got back to camp after dinner. The police were driving thru the campground telling campers to leave their tents and move to the museums at the bottom of the hill until the storms passed thru. So, we joined thousands of other riders in a couple of buildings shoved full of antique farm equipment. On a happy note, Rebecca finally got to visit a museum. On a scary note, the storms were supposed to arrive with 70 mph winds, heavy rain and hail. Luckily, we ran into our new friend Al again and he had saved bench space for any Grinnell alum that happened to pass by, so we were saved from wandering aimlessly or sitting on the floor. But the best news of the night was that the storms never materialized and we were soon able to head back to our tents to sleep before our final day of riding.
R: Yeah, I think we were back to the tent by 11:00. This was later than we had been going to bed the rest of the week (yup, we’re party animals) but it could have been a lot later if the storms hadn’t conveniently skirted around Mt. Pleasant. I was, sadly, too tired to actually look through the Thresher Museum, and instead preferred to sit, chat, stare at my heat rash without itching it, and finally attempt to nap in a seated position on a wooden bench. It seemed that a giant metal pole barn full of heavy machinery may not have been significantly safer than our tent had the storm really hit hard, but thankfully we’ll never know.