Day6_2011

Stats:

78.9 miles               Start Town: Grinnell

14.6 mph                 End Town: Coralville

5 hours 23min

Today started out as normal as it can get for us. I awoke at 4am and woke the others at 4:15 to start the routine. We dropped off baggage and started riding at 5:05. (late due to the RAGBRAI baggage guys) The weather radar showed some rain to the South of us but it looked like we would not get any up our way. So far we only have had the sprinkles for about 10 minutes on Day 5.

The low temperatures have been climbing and when we left Grinnell today it was 77 degrees. We hope for clouds. Eventually we notice a low of 73 for the day on our bike odometer.

Photo Left: Brian poses with some girls in Homestead

Poto Center: Another Iowa Sunrise

Photo Right: Aaahhh the nice flat road today! 

Today’s route has a real nice 30 mile stretch in the middle that follows a river and is nice and flat. Just what Pam and I like to see. And about 5 miles into the flat we see Eli coming up to pass us and slide over into her draft. She pulls us for 16 miles into Merango which is the meeting town. We arrive at 7:52 and since we are ahead of schedule Pam and I decide to do a second breakfast at a nice mom and pop restaurant that had the best spinach, mushroom, and Swiss omelets. We looked around and everyone (bikers) were ordering the omelets.

We ended up in Merango for about an hour and started back out with more flat riding. We ride through the Amana colonies and that’s when we returned to the hills. And what hills! The back roads they routed us on were sporting 8 – 9 % grades – back to the granny gear. Our only advantage was about the same time the hills came back the clouds started to build so we started to get shaded for much of the later hill climbing.