While riding for 6+ hours a day we ended up eating an intense amount. Many of our stops while riding were to eat and see the towns, but our hunger was the dominating force and we found ourselves in line for food more often than not.

To give you an idea of what kinds of meals we were having in an average day while riding ragbrai here is a list of everything we ate on Wednesday:
Granola bar and a banana (pre breakfast)
Cinnamon rolls and breakfast burritos with coffee (breakfast)
Spinach Tortellini with corn and garlic bread and more coffee (pre lunch)
Pb&j and snow cone. (pre lunch snack)
Pork BBQ burgers with super nachos and a chocolate malt. (lunch)
Two beers and a monster energy drink. (pre dinner drinks)
Open faced burger and fries, covered in cheese, with another chocolate malt. (dinner)
A fat tire beer (post dinner drinks)

Warning!

I’ve also heard from numerous people that it’s easy to gain weight on ragbrai and I can see why. Especially now (the day after ragbrai ended) we are still craving the 5+ meals a day.. We’ll also be posting some pictures of the yummy food we had.

Yesterday was so tiring that I didn’t get to blog at all. But today I’ll make up for it with some interesting RAGBRAI facts.  While talking to a nice farmer, we learned some interesting facts about Iowa crops:

The tall stuff is corn. It’s related to grass, and most of the time only one corn is harvested per stalk. All the corn in the field is field corn, not sweet corn, and ground up to feed animals or perhaps made into ethanol. Corn rows always have an even number of kernels! And he helped us remember that corn likes humidity by relaying a saying his father told him: if your ma sleeps with her bum out of the sheets, it’s a good year for corn. Graphic, but memorable!

The short stuff is soybeans. They aren’t your edamame variety, but instead  are ground up for animal feed.

In many of the towns, they set up ropes held taught by tractors so people can park their bikes. You can see an example in the picture.

As for the actual ride yesterday, it was good but long. We went to a waterpark afterwards and went down a slide in which the slider picked up speed in a chute, spun around a huge funnel a few times, then gracelessly fell through the bottom.  It was miraculous. Then we saw 38 Special perform, which was a very good show that mercifully ended around 9:30 so we could sleep.

Today was much nicer weatger-wise. We saw a pep band, enjoyed brief periods of rain, and ate some (ok, a lot of) really good food.

John got to drive with the people who run the charter, which was apparently an adventure in itself. He tried riding bike, but it hurt him to brake… and braking is pretty good to do on a bike.

We ended in Grinnel, which is a very cool town. First, Ryan and I went to an awesome water park complete with big slides, high diving boards, and showers!  We all enjoyed a tasty meal with chocolate malts. Afterwards, Ryan and I ran to put rainflies on the tents since it started sprinkling. Then the rest of the people came back and we went downtown to watch a country style band and a laser show! It was great.