Tuesday, June 23rd, 2015

Start/End: Storm Lake/Sioux City, IA
Mileage: 65.6+
Weather: Remarkably calm and cool for a change

Storm Lake was a great place to stay. We are so thankful to those at the church who made our visit more enjoyable, including the pastor and his family. Not only did they take our laundry last night and return it this morning, but they also arrived at the church very early to prepare an amazing breakfast with the fluffy eat pancakes that I have ever had. They were amazing and seemingly never ending. Thank you so much for making our stay in Storm Lake at the United Methodist Church a great, memorable experience.

I had a few things that I left out accidentally yesterday from the blog. The wonderful woman who allowed us to eat lunch on her yard was Mavis Loving. Thank you so much! She also brought up that last weekend was the annual marathon to Marathon (Iowa), which was another small town we passed through. So if you are looking to recreate some of our route, this route starts in Storm Lake!

After eating an amazing breakfast, we were off again onto the route, but not before doing a ride dedication. Today’s ride was dedicated to Jim Noffsinger, who is a retired teacher and coach who has greatly impacted one of our riders. He is currently battling stage 4 metastatic squamous cell carcinoma. This is just a difficult fight to fight and we wish the best for him during treatment and beyond.

As I mentioned above, there was relatively no wind and it was, at times, a little chilly outside. As the day continued on, neither of these really changed! It never felt too hot, thanks to the abundance of clouds, despite that the sun was quite bright, and the winds never really slowed us down. For a westward journey, this was a fun day. In additional to the lack of wind, we just had these rolling hills, which I have talked about a lot, but for most of the day today, we had pretty big hills that were steep and longer and just seemingly never ending. As soon as we got over one, another would be hiding ride behind it, or they would be stacked. We learned a lot about our own methods to climbing hills as well as group climbing.

Today was also one of the first days that we have experienced that we did not encounter a new city every 10-20 miles. We only passed a few towns, many of itch did not even have a gas station or convenient store. Fun fact,me did pass through the coldest spot in Iowa today, which in 1912 recorded a temperature of -47 F. Washta, IA had that claim to fame on their town sign- I am glad I was not there in 1912! Brrrr…

Today we made it to Sioux City, IA, our last stop in Iowa. We are grateful for the amazing food donation that we received from Chipotle today for dinner. It is definitely a great meal to prepare us for another ride tomorrow. Additionally, many of us got to do a portrait of a rider’s mom, which was a little tough to hear how closely cancer impacted a family of a friend so near and dear to us. It just another reason to keep going, keep fighting against cancer on all fronts.

I am a little sad to leave Iowa tomorrow, because we have just experienced such kindness and generosity from people we have met, and gotten to experience such a beautiful countryside. Here’s hoping to smooth roads and calm winds in Nebraska as we continue tomorrow!
-LAH