Des Moines – 100 Miles

July 17, 2010

I, for good reason, wanted to push it a little harder today, and get to Des Moines a little earlier, so at the first crew stop I jumped into a paceline that seemed to be pushing it pretty hard. It was a group of four, but only one guy was actually on our team. The other three were riders from past years who had come back to relive one day of the journey. We soon came upon some construction yet again, and were forced to rack up a few miles. After driving up about a mile (around a 5 mile detour of gravel roads), we started unloading our bikes. Before we got them all off, the next crew van came back to tell us that the construction was not over. So we loaded the bikes back up, and drove another mile or two. At this point, we were running short on time, but kept going as hard as we could. We made it to Winterset, and it was there the decision was made that we wouldn’t get to Des Moines in time, so all the bikes were racked up yet again and we drove the remaining 40 miles.

We ended our Journey today in the parking lot of the Marriott in West Des Moines, where we’ll be staying tonight. It was there that I first saw Lolly as she met us there at lunch. We had a great lunch by some local sponsors, Melvin Rosario who has been on the Journey of Hope twice, and Gear up Florida once. We had “Walking Tacos”, which was a single serving bag of Dorritos, cut open on one side, and filled with taco meat, lettuce, cheese, sour cream and salsa. They were just what we needed after an exhausting day.

To my luck, after lunch we had the rest of the afternoon off, and I used it as you might expect, catching up with my wife, and using her car to get to Walmart to pick up a few needed supplies. We ended our day with a dinner at Red Robin, a restaurant in Des Moines that has a bottomless root beer float, and let’s just say we got our money’s worth on root beer floats tonight.

Tomorrow we’re off to my old camp, and current employer of my wife, Camp Sunnyside! I’m really excited to see the old stomping grounds, and hope we get the chance to sing a few of my old favorite camp songs.