Ragbrai

Ragbrai, Register's Annual Bike Ride Across Iowa, is a 480 mile trek across my home state. I did it for the first time this summer as kind of a "goodbye" sort of thing. Travel the whole state, see what I'll miss when I leave, see what I never had before, meet middle age bikers, eat whatever, and poop in a cornfield; all that junk. And it was fun. I saw all sorts of hills...and fields...and...you know, Iowa stuff.
Funny story: After the first Ragbrai, they decided to name the second, Sagbrai. After that they decided to name the third, Tagbrai. Then the fourth would be, Fa... hmm, maybe not. That's a real story, copyright and everything.
Anyway, one of the good things about Ragbrai for me is that I got to go camping and riding bikes around with my girlfriend who, if you've read the last blog, was about to move it India for half a year. I won't go into any lame details, but it was nice.
So, with my bike, tent, some clothes, and my girlfriend, we jammed into her dad's car and went back to Iowa City where I will spend a couple weeks moving Tori and camping in my friends' apartments. More on that later.
As far as work goes: Ragbrai is money central. If it went on all year I'd be rich. For example, the mechanics I talked to made about $1000 a day. At one of the towns some joker laid some tacks on the road and popped a bunch of tires. I got popped and walked to the nearest mechanic, who luckily happened to be my friend the Iowa City bike shop. He told me that he'd been changing tires nonstop since eight in the morning, it was noon when I saw him and he had a mile long line waiting for his services. At $10 a tube change, he made enough to buy a bank.
P.s. One of those pictures above is of a goose herder. He dresses his geese up in vests and feeds them Pepsi while they follow him around and honk.