Iowa City, IA – 30 Miles

July 21, 2010

Today we rode into Iowa City, only a 30 mile ride from Cedar Rapids. Luckily I was with a group that wanted to relax on our short day, and decided to save our energy by taking it slow. We still arrived two hours early, and I woke up with a sore back after falling asleep on a picnic table as we waited for our police escort.

We then followed a police car into the city as it guided us to the old capitol building. As they dropped us off at the sidewalk in front, the first half of the team went the wrong way and ended up looping around another building before coming back to join us in front of the building. We were greeted by fans from the local Arc, and went inside with them for a few speeches.

We were staying on the Iowa campus at a hotel, and ate like kings at the university's main cafeteria. We had an all you can eat buffet for both lunch and dinner, and most of us took advantage of this even though we didn’t ride that far today. After dinner, we went back to a field across from our hotel, and played a few games of kickball with some of the fans that had greeted us earlier at the old capitol.

As a nice surprise, were all invited over by Tucker’s family for an evening of games, and chatting. It was great to have a place where we could all just hang out and be ourselves.