Davenport, IA – 60 Miles

July 22, 2010

With only 60 miles, today was a pretty easy ride. We arrived into town a bit early and staged up at a Walmart to wait for our police escort. Some of us joked along the way in the escort because it seemed like they slowed down going down hills, and sped up on their way back up. The police escort was mainly for safety reasons, not because we had a big arrival. We headed straight to our hotel, but actually did have a handful of people there to watch us ride in. We were greeted with smiles and caramel popcorn, which made us feel welcome in Davenport.

After a few minutes of mingling, we said our goodbyes and headed up to shower before going to lunch. Since we are staying at a hotel, we were all pretty excited to get an actual shower. We got up to our rooms only to find out that almost none of the keys worked, so most of us found some floor space in the hallways while a few guys went to get new keys.

After such a long ride, we were happy to find out our lunch was at Happy Joe’s, an all you can eat pizza buffet. It was there that we had a chance to chat with our sponsors, two guys who have both been on Push America events. One was Jake Adrian, who rode in 2002 when I was a crew member. It was nice to catch up a little bit, and to meet his new daughter.

We ended our day at a water park and got to know people from many different organizations that serve people with disabilities. I started out at a big curvy slide, but realized after one go that it was easy to get stuck in. Instead of staying with that slide, I went with a few people over to a shorter but much steeper slide. The entrance to this slide was pretty narrow, and almost impossible to get into, but didn’t stop us from going several times. At the end of our time there, we grabbed some dinner, another batch of “walking tacos”. I’d never heard of these before the trip, but have now had them in two different cities from two different groups of people.