The stay overnight at the starting town, Missouri Valley was relatively uneventful. The trip out there was full of fun conversation with my friend, Sandra, and the interesting part of the day was finding a good location for my Hennessey Hammock (my model is the Ultralight Backpacker Asym and you can check it out here). This was the first real overnight "camping" use for the hammock and I wanted to have a good test of its utility. The picture immediately below shows my bike (2007 Specialized Tri-Cross Sport) loaded with all four panniers, a rack top bag and water bottles in its RAGBRAI configuration (note that you can click on the pictures in this blog for a larger image). The bike and racks weighed 29 pounds and the load (with water in the 3 bottles) was 36 for a total of 65 pounds. Adding my weight of 161 plus 4 pounds for clothing and shoes gave a total riding "weight on wheels" of 230 pounds.
Note the metal device strapped on to the top of the left rear pannier. That is actually a telescoping bipod designed for stabilizing a gun while shooting. The reason I added it to my equipment was as a contingency for setting up the hammock as a tent, should I end up in an area where there were no trees (or other suitable structures) for tying up the hammock. The way this would work is that I would route one end of the hammock cord over the bicycle seat and the other end over the bipod ... connecting both ends with aluminum stakes in the ground. After tying off the center lines for the hammock and its rainfly, I'd have a secure (from mosquitoes, etc.) place to sleep ... although it would be on the ground. In the event, I never (thankfully) had to resort to this option.
The odometer reading at Missouri Valley was 1595, which also represents my training miles for the year (starting in the 2nd half of March). My plan was to make sure I kept track of the mileage to allow reporting on each day's progress.
My initial choice of hammock location was the corner of a covered pavilion. This setup did work, but it turned out to be less than optimal because there were lights in the pavilion and it became clear as the sun started to go down that there were going to be many people hanging out there talking till who knows how late that (Saturday) night.
So I did a bit of reconnoitering around the park and finally hit upon a spot that seemed almost custom made for the hammock situation. There was a cage with a wooden floor that someone guessed might have been used to weight livestock bound for shipment to market via train. No one was using it and so I hastily moved the hammock over to the new digs and was rewarded with an easy setup and a great situation for the night's sleep. Here's a picture showing the hammock along with the bicycle:
Now the funny part of this is that I felt quite a bit like Otis on Andy of Mayberry (except I wasn't drinking, hehe). He was the perennial town drunk always locked up in the jail but he had access to the keys ... and often would come in and lock himself up. Well, if you notice the doors at the far end of the cage, there are identical doors at the near end and I had to throw a swinging bar open to get in or out of the cage ... which brought back the memory of the Mayberry jail and Otis!
Several people were quite interested in the hammock including one fellow from Florida named Bill. He was very interested in the fact that my equipment this year weighed 19 pounds less than last year (36 vs. 55) and most of that change was due to dropping the tent, tent poles, sleeping bag and mini-mattress for the 32 oz. hammock and hi-tech (light weight) blanket plus bipod. I did also cut back on the number of pairs of riding shorts, shirts and socks but the camping gear was truly the big savings. My goal is to get to get to a load size of 30 pounds or less for next year's ride. Interestingly enough, by the way, I put the more heavily loaded panniers in front as the back already has plenty of weight (including me plus the addition of the two lighter panniers and the rack bag) and if the bike's too heavy in back the steering feels too light. I know it sounds a bit weird but that's the way it works best for me. Finally, I also made sure that the weight was evenly distributed left and right and I made a 4x6 card that identified the contents of each bag. You'd be surprised at how helpful that card was in allowing me to quickly and efficiently retrieve (and return) items from the various storage locations.
The night passed without incident although I did use the (supplied by RAGBRAI, bless their hearts) earplugs as there were both trains and plenty of highway 30 traffic nearby.
Sunday Morning ...
Got up a little before 6 and got the bike packed and rolling by around 6:30 (after letting myself out of "jail"). The first day's ride is from Missouri Valley to Harlan and it's very hilly. By the way, here is a nice summary of the day to day riding, giving the towns visited and the "ups and downs" of each day.
I set up the hammock at Pioneer Park in Harlan ... although I was mildly annoyed at having to ride all the way through town to get to the information center and then ride almost all the way back to get to a camping area with trees. Anyway, it was a pretty nice setup, as you can see from this picture:
Then I headed out to a nice little restaurant to have a sandwich and a vanilla shake in some restful and air-conditioned surroundings.
The interesting camping event at Harlan was the tornado warning at 2am on Monday morning. I heard the sirens and turned over for some more sleep and then heard them again ... along with a sepulchral voice giving some kind of directions (to a church, of course). Since I could feel the wind picking up significantly I decided it was probably time to heed the warning and I packed all my stuff on the bike in about 10 minutes and headed to a nearby street. There I met a couple trying to figure out where to go and I said that I heard "the voice" indicate that there should be a church to go to and they knew that there was one up the street a few blocks. So (since they were walking) I told them I'd ride up and check it out and ride back to let them know what I found. Well, the church was locked up but there was a school behind it that was open as a shelter (and already had riders spending the night there). I let the other two know the situation and then I put my bike inside and found a piece of carpet on the floor behind a stove in the kitchen area. There I laid out my blanket and pillow and got another hour or two of rest, or restless sleep. And there was no tornado but maybe 2-5 minutes of light rain ... however it did get very windy outside for awhile. What a tiring night!
For the day, I covered 64.54 miles in an average of 12.8 mph (5h 2m 32s of riding time). The odometer reading ended up at 1660.
Tomorrow day 2 ... Harlan to Jefferson
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