The plan was for me to ride to Austin, Minnesota today. I didn’t quite make it. I met Pat in Rose Creek, Minnesota which was a 73 mile ride from Decorah, Iowa and about ten miles short of Austin.

I got to bed early last night and had a good night’s rest except that I woke up at 5:30 AM to rain and thunder. By the time we met Dirk and family in Decorah, the rain had stopped, but we could still hear thunder off in the distance.

Dirk has been quite the trooper this weekend. Even though yesterday was his longest ride of the year and there was the threat of more rain today, he was still willing to join me and keep me company for the ride today. After waving good-bye to the support team (AKA Pat and Tomoko and Sarah and William), Dirk and I headed west out of town. There was some great Iowa scenery to the west of Decorah, but it certainly wasn’t flat.. At about 7 miles into the ride, there was a 2 mile long climb that was as steep as 7% grade. At the top of that climb, we were back into more typical Iowa terrain — gently rolling hills on roads through endless fields of corn.

We met the support team in Cresco, Iowa. Dirk decided it would be best for him to stop for the day. After refilling my water bottles and saying some good-byes, I was back on the road towards Austin, Minnesota.

I suppose I could have made it the last ten miles to Austin, but we decided to stop in Rose Creek. Pat and I planned to meet there for a refill of my water bottles and once we were there, it seemed to make sense to just stop instead of trying to figure out where to meet in Austin. Plus, I was pretty tired and it had warmed up considerably in the afternoon because the cloud cover was gone.

Today is my last bicycle ride until August 13. Pat and I are scheduled to be at the American Association of Diabetes Educators (AADE) conference in Los Angeles, California on August 9 through August 12. Our agenda for the coming week is as follows:

• August 6: After riding to the Austin, Minnesota area, I put the bicycle on the bike rack. Pat and I then drove to St. Peter, Minnesota to visit with my parents.
• August 7-8: These two days we will be visiting with my parents and doing some errands and getting ourselves organized for the trip to Los Angeles. Late afternoon on the 8^th, we will drive to Minneapolis to Dirk and Tomoko’s place in preparation for our flight on August 9.
• August 9: Fly to Los Angeles.
• August 10-12: AADE Conference. Fly back to Minneapolis late on the 12^th.
• August 13: Resume cycling from Rose Creek, Minnesota. Heading for Norfolk, Nebraska.

I expect to have internet access during our trip to Los Angeles, so I’ll continue to post entries on the web site and respond to emails.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 6th, 2006 at 8:32 pm and is filed under The Dream Tour, Bicycling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.