summer heat

OK, it is hot – and I do mean hot. The kind of hot where you are drenched in sweat and perpetually soaked throughout the whole day. And I don’t mean to return to unpleasant topics, but you can imagine that clothes rubbing against your body all day is irritating enough – I’ll just say that it’s even worse when the clothes are completely wet. Also heat rash has started popping up on appendages all over camp in the form of little red bumps. In this respect, I think I do actually have an advantage – growing up in Georgia certainly prepared me well for dealing with heat. While it’s not the loveliest of conditions, I don’t find it all that bad.

Today we cycled 72 miles, and encountered a lot more neighborhoods than I’ve been used to seeing in the vast and open wild west. As we move into the more populated areas, we’ve met more bicyclers and have also cycled near enough to Big Ride alumni that several of them have come out to say hello and ride with us. Today, a 2010 alumni, Deidre Lindstrom, drove 20 miles from her home to meet up with us along the route and she brought all sorts of fun snacks with her. Also, a 2007 alumni, Vern Katzung, who lives nearby, rode along with us for 40 miles today. (I know that my commas in the previous sentences have been out of control – I couldn’t sort out what else to do with them!) Anyhow, Vern is now 70 and did the Big Ride when he was 66. However, he said that the year he did the ride, a 78 year old also did the trip. I’m going to have to think about this whenever I feel like throwing a fit and giving up. Surely if a 78-year-old can do this, I can get my act together enough to! Also, an 80 year old who some of the riders met in New Ulm, rode along with us for part of the day. He said that, at 80, he and his wife still start the day with cycle rides. I hope I do that when I’m 80 too. :o)

As today’s ride wasn’t too long, we arrived at the campgrounds quite early in the afternoon, and had some spare time on our hands and not too many places to escape the heat. So I looked up water parks and found that there was one only 3 miles away. I rounded up a group and convinced Rich to drive us over there. They had a couple of water slides, a lazy river, a rock climbing wall over the pool, and a volleyball court. It was the perfect way to spend a hot afternoon. :o) Interestingly though, I did manage to scrape the top of my foot on the bottom of the pool – all of my injuries on the trip so far seem to be non-cycling related. :o)

For dinner, we went to an all you can eat buffet at Hyvee, and I think poor Hyvee didn’t know what had hit them when a swarm of hungry bicyclers descended upon their buffet like flies on a carcus. The amount of food we eat to keep fuelling our bodies is truly amazing. Geena and Caitlin are particularly uninhibited in seeking out fuel. They have made it routine to wander around restaurants and kindly keep food from other people’s plates from being wasted. :o)

As night time fell, the temperature unfortunately did not follow suit. It was really just too hot to sleep outside, so we all sat around brainstorming about what to do. We have more or less turned into the reverse of heat-seeking missiles. Geena and Caitlin decided to go sleep at the Hyvee as it was open 24 hours a day. Several people went to a hotel. There was a sports facility with an ice skating rink nearby, and we thought that would be the perfect place to escape the heat, so we went there and begged to sleep indoors. While letting strangers sleep inside was against their policy (I can’t imagine why!), one of the employees had sympathy for us, and invited us to sleep at his home. His wife kindly drove over to pick a load of us up and took us to their house where we slept in the basement. It was really nice to be in a real (air conditioned nonetheless) home and we got to chat with their children and play with their dogs. The generosity and hospitality that people have showed us throughout the trip has been amazing.