Sour Knees and Nebraska

I made it to Nebraska this morning!!:D

I'll condense the last 2 days:

2 nights ago while biking to Viking Lake state park, my knees started to hurt from all of the hills in Iowa, and I was lucky enough to run into another park where I stayed the night. I chatted it up with a park ranger for a while. We talked about RAGBRI, which is a huge biking event that takes place annually in Iowa. 20,000 (yes, I had that number confirmed from others) people bike from one end of Iowa to the next. It's basically a big tailgating party that goes from town to town. They dip their rear tire in the missouri river, and then make it to the Mississippi and dip their front tire into it. It sounds like a lot of fun. Maybe I'll come back to Iowa some day to do it... The funny thing is, everyone I would talk to in Iowa would ask me if I'm part of RAGBRI, and then tell me I'm going the wrong way, haha.

When I woke up in the morning and started biking, my knees were still hurting, so I realized this could be a bad situation. Iowa's hills were unplanned for, and having a single speed fixie isn't good for touring through the state that has non-ending rolling hills (as opposed to my plan to have flat land, then rockies, where you actually have a goal of getting over something). The result is that my knees started to wear out towards the end. I decided I would take the day (or a few days off) and biked to a park 20 miles away. When I got there in the afternoon, there was an old couple that immediately invited me to have hot dogs with them. Ron and Mary Ellen were there with their grandkids, and they were extremely nice to me, and even offered for me to set up my tent in their yard in Red Oaks, about 20 mi from there. I chatted about RAGBRI with Ron, and about Obama with Mary Ellen. Mary Ellen made a cringing inquisitive face and asked me if I was an Obama supporter and I kind of cringed inside and said to myself, "alright, this is going to get akward when I say I am". It turns out she's a Democrat! According to her, their county is 95% republican. During the elections Iowa was a swing state so Obama visited 6 times and she went to go see him every time. She also did campaign calling (that must have sucked in a 95% republican county).

Once Ron and Mary Ellen left, I took a nap and decided to take them up on their offer and bike to Red Oaks. When I got to Red Oaks, my knees were still feeling good, so I decided I couldn't imagine staying in Iowa another night, and decided to push my luck and get to Nebraska. I ended up getting to a border town at 10pm, and decided to find a place to sleep there. I got some subway, and then went to a motel to see the prices. It was too expensive, but I noticed a small woody area behind it, and just set up my bivvy behind the hotel, haha. This was one situation, where the bivvy's small size was great for camouflaging. I got up at 4am, did some sketchy major highway riding to get to the bridge to Nebraska, and crossed over. I'm still looking for flatlands though. I should get to them once I leave the library.

I'm excited to be this far! I feel the balance of inertia tipping me towards San Francisco. I'm too far to go back!!!

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