In Which I Bomb the Ditch on RAGBRAI

First town on RAGBRAI was Malvern, where I ran into this Milkweed booth. You could get clay balls loaded with Milkweed seeds to toss in ditches to help spread the plant, which is essential to Monarch butterflied. I loaded up and bombed away.

Monday, July 25--No, don’t worry, “bomb the ditch” does not mean face plant. I picked up some Milkweed seed balls in the magical town of Malvern and tried to strategically drop them in appropriate ditches.

It’s a thing one does on RAGBRAI, these days. One also finds pie and Koi in interesting hidden places, which is part of the magic of Malvern.

I was walking after parking in the first town, seeking breakfast and caffeine. Between two tiny commercial buildings was a fenced lot, with a pie sign. I went in, and found a cute little oriental style garden, dominated by a Koi pond. I had magical pie—some sort of berry I had not tried before—in a magical garden.

Shadows of RAGBRAI on first day's ride.

The second, and only other town I biked to (half day due to driving duties of team support vehicle) was Tabor, which was magical, too. I met Ben and Kate there, had lunch, and then met Cate there. A cat tried to ride along when I left town, but it was a charming stay.

The day had its share of RAGBRAI mishaps. Due to a sequence of misfortune, one half of our team was very late getting in, which messed with evening plans. Cate took a minor spill, but thankfully is OK.

But then we had to put up Brigid and Eldon’s tent, easily the most complex in our little group. It turned into theater, with Ben and Cate and Kate helping as I did a dramatic reading of 11-point directions.

Today, we had rain, we had heat, we had a fall. But, we had a little RAGBRAI magic, too, and that was nice.

NOTE: I wrote this on the first day of the RAGBRAI 2016 ride--but my plans to do a brief daily post quickly fell apart after that, due to time limits and lack of internet access. I'm sure I will do a more comprehensive longer post about the week as a whole, but here is my first RAGBRAI 2016 post. News that is only 6 days old.