Sioux Center - Cherokee - End of Day 2

We began the day drying out from a rainy night. Today's theme "Bug Day". Each day has a theme with a special drink at the end celebrating the end of the day. The team had spiders adorning their helmets and upon arrival enjoyed the "mosquito".

After a quick camp tear down and a group departure (see group picture), the support vehicles headed for Granville.

OMG the amount of people that are on this ride is absolutely amazing. (see pix with riders coming into Granville population - 325)

We found our rest spot. It was 9:30 and Joan assured me that it would be a couple hours so I headed for a sandwich and pie and she took off for the 2nd leg. I stood in line, dodged the bikers to cross a street, and arrived back thinking I would sit, eat, and read. But Wade had another idea - he was waiting for me. I snarffed my sandwich and we headed to Cherokee.

Arrived in Cherokee - sweaty and swampy (we are now calling it swass - swamp ass) to sit up tents and throw all the items off the vehicles, and take a shower.

The support person is in charge of ice and refilling the coolers. So off to Hy-Vee I go. I walked into the store and there were 3 pallets of ice sitting inside the door. By the time I was done and leaving the store, there was a half a pallet left.

As the bikers arrived one or two by one or two, they faired pretty well but pretty exhausted. After a clean up, we headed to the "spagetti" dinner (see Meghan's correction in the pictures). Headed back to the B & B and hung out on their fabulous porch.

Tomorrow we head to Lake View. Another hotter day. Oh boy! Lots of water and not many bathroom stops.

First stop of RAGBRAI - Sioux Center

Here we are in the town of Sioux Center. Camp is established on a grassy part of the campus of Dordt College sandwiched between the dorms and rec center. The grass is amazingly green. (see pictures of Team Nelson aka Fellow campers)

We ventured to vendor city and partook of some food. Had a great slice of veggie pizza and a bottle of water. There is an amazing breeze so the heat really is not unbearable.

Gearing up for the big day tomorrow. Away we go!

RAGBRAI Day One

Forgive me first of all because I am posting this on my iPhone app. Decided to leave my laptop at home and bring my phone and iPad. So I have a teeny keyboard and fat fingers. I will proof but no guarantees.

Woke up at 6:00 am to finish up last minute packing. And run to the store to replace an inverter that I didn't check til last minute and was broken. Menards saved me at 7:00 am.

Everything is packed except for one cooler that I can't fit in anywhere. The journey has begun. I know you are all going to get tired of my blah blah but hang in there. You will experience this right along beside and it will make all of you want to camp in 100 degree weather, not take a shower and ride 50+ miles a day on your bike (yeah saddle sores).

But the one question I have this early morning is --- if I am a support vehicle - where is everybody else putting their stuff? Hmm. Good question

Cool beverage start of my vacation Saturday night!

Hello folks.........Guess what?  My vacation has started!  I need it like no other right now.  Hoping to get a little R & R but I am headed out on my ROOKIE year of RAGBRAI.  If you have never heard of it, please check out the link to their website.  Yep......seriously.......RAGBRAI!  I am not riding - thank God - but I am a support vehicle.  My little red car -- we are calling her Claire the Red Headed Stepchild - will be hauling people and some things from town to town on the route this year.

We are a team of 10 (9 riders and myself) that are converging from Des Moines, Kansas City, Iowa City, and Seattle.  We are the Nelson Team -- every one else on the team is related to each other through blood or marriage -- I am just the tag-a-long.  Tomorrow morning I pick up two from the airport coming in from Seattle - Kelly and Corwin.  We then drive to Sioux Rapids to pick up Miles who has been in Okoboji for the past week with his dad.  We drive on over to Sioux Center and set up camp for the night.   Yep - camp.....tent camping, port-a-potty (I hope), no shower, camping.  I have vowed to wear no makeup for the whole week, but I think I may be too vain not to have something on my face.  We will see.

How have I prepared?  Well if this gives you any idea, I tried to set our tent up by myself last night in the back yard.  It was 400 degrees outside, I started the process when I was in my work clothes (a skirt no less) and I got it, but was drenched with sweat and the neighbor was laughing at me.  So.......Yeah........

Ready for the heat?  I am not sure.  I bought a battery operated fan for the tent.  I have a cooling towel that is pretty amazing.  But I have hit a couple bumps in the road.  I thought I had a DC Inverter.  It is this cool little tool that you plug in to your cigarette lighter and it generates amperage for electricity.  I am going to use it to power the pump for my air mattress.  Went to pack it tonight - thought I should test it and no go.  So, not sure what I am going to do.  A run to Menard's in the early morning might be the only trick.  I do not have a hand pump or a battery air pump......so it looks like I am going to need that.

And then I learn today that we are going to experience the hottest week yet.  Temps 100+ in Central Iowa.  I am hoping that we are cooler up north.  I know between the heat and the crowds, I am not sure what to expect.  But away we go any way.

So my plan is to blog daily.  I haven't decided if I am taking my laptop or my iPad.  I think that I want to take both, but not sure I can justify dealing with them in the heat.  There will be a daily blog about my RAGBRAI rookie experience but it may not get posted daily if I can't find wifi.

Check back and see if I melt like the Wicked Witch of the West.  I'm MELTING!!!!!!!

Inspired to Spray Paint

I am attempting to be crafty this year.  I am working on adding the "jewelry" to my living room.  You may all remember that I have designed the colors around a painting I received from Haiti.

As you can see the colors are vivid and really cool.  

So I had this cream colored cylindrical pot at my Spencer house.  It hasn't found a home yet in the new home because the color doesn't work.  So my blog buddy and repurposer extraordinairre, Dawn Garbes, check her out Making Home Blog by Dawn, does amazing things with spray paint.

So I decided to go for it.

I thought RED, I want it RED! 

I started with setting it up in the grass area - so what if I get paint on the grass, it will grow right?  Well only if we get some much needed rain -- looks like a pasture right now.

So I started the spraying process.  Quickly realized that this is truly an art form because it was hard not to get it too thick or leave it too thin and have to do a second coat.

I think I need to practice.

Here is the first coat of paint.

So the project worked.......but note to self -- don't mow right before painting - had a few clippings blow in to the fresh paint dang it -- but otherwise things turned out.

I am putting the original sticks back in here, but am looking for some bright green ones.  Found some at the Farmer's Market, but they are spendy and I think fresh so not sure they would last.  I will have to watch garage sales and junk stores for something.  

So here it is.

An Ode to my Spray Painting Queen - DAWN!!!!!  

Now to tackle the lawn furniture - OH BOY!111

Farmer's Market finds

Thank you Keetah for cooking our finds at the Farmer's Market. We are having an amazing supper with caprese salad, bread and some Cab. Yummo!!!!

Saturday Morning HOT HOT HOT Coffee Ponderings

It's been a while y'all.  I have no excuses at all other than my BUSY, BUSY Saturday mornings.  If I am not running off somewhere I am sleeping in  - more of the first and not enough of the last - OR I just didn't have anything to say - important or otherwise.  It has been an entire month since I have posted and I know I have missed you all.

I find myself up early this morning.  I am venturing off to the Farmer's Market later this morning, but the dogs woke me up wanting to eat and go outside.  So.......here I am

My days, nights and weekends have been filled up so far this late Spring and early Summer.  I find myself on the road, watching the ICubs, or working.  It seems like this Summer, besides being the hottest I can remember for a long time, it is FLYING by.  Not enough time to get everything done.  This is my second Summer in central Iowa and find myself trying to experience all the activities that are available to me such as the Des Moines Farmer's Market (Best in the Midwest in my opinion), Minor League Baseball - and I am not even a Cubs fan (I am a little obsessed with it), or entertaining overnight visitors to enjoy all of the great offerings in DSM.

Many things have happened since I last posted that I wanted to give my opinion about from the Sandusky verdict to the health care Supreme Court opinion to a book club find.  So here we go --

SANDUSKY GUILTY!  WOW -- that was a complete and utter shock to me.  Those that I have talked to since the guilty verdict came in said to me - "why are you surprised?" And my answer to that is that I have seen too many times that a serial pedophile get the sympathy from jury members.  The media portrays the perpetrator as somehow guiltless and the victims as somehow "asking for it".  So I was shocked and elated when the jury did the right thing in this case.  But I want to "rant" on something else surrounding this and it is the silence of those that knew it was happening:  The people that were involved in this monster's "non-profit" which really was a recruiting tool for him to find the most vulnerable of victims; his fellow coaches on the Penn State team who spent endless hours with this man and had to know what he was doing; to (and this for me is the most heinous) Mrs. Sandusky.  Her guilt surrounding the young boys that she "sacrificed" to her husband should be brought in front of a jury as well.  What goes through her mind on a daily basis?  How many young boys needed to be sacrificed for the lifestyle that she lived?  How many lives tragically altered for power and prestige?  How many silences and turned heads for living "the dream"?  YOU are just as big of a monster Mrs. Sandusky.  I hope in light of this if there are other women out there that suspect their husbands are doing this are able to speak up and out about it?  My training, teachings and personal experience tell me that it is very likely that Mr. Sandusky was also a perpetrator of domestic violence.  Of course we will never know this unless she speaks out about her experiences.  But those things go together.  A perpetrator of domestic violence uses the same tactics for power and control in that relationship as a serial pedophile uses when grooming and assaulting their victims.  I admit, this is a hot button issue for me.  While I understand the dynamics, I don't understand how a mother can look away while their child, any child, is repeatedly victimized.  In this case the child was the adopted foster child.  Does that somehow make this better because he wasn't a blood relative?  I think not!  It is ALL children that are victimized.  SOMEBODY needs to respond!  Besides the verdict, my anger surrounding the silence came to the forefront after reading this Blog - Why Didn't You Say Something yesterday.  Please take a moment to read it!  It is very poignant.

HEALTH CARE SUPREME COURT RULING!  AGAIN - WOW - another very happy shocking event.  The fear that has been hyped around the health care reform act is amazing to me.  The lies and exaggerations get more and more ridiculous.  I am glad that the supreme court (especially John Roberts - who I will add was a Bush appointee to the court NOT Obama) looked at the constitutional LAW of it and not the politics of it (aside from Thomas and Scalia) and ruled accordingly.  Since the changes have been implemented, my children have been able to be covered by health care NOT costing the tax payers any money only me and my premiums.  They all three work full time and until very recently none of their employers offered health insurance.  This would mean that my daughters $300 a month (really?) maintenance medicine for a rare bladder condition would not be covered and she would have to pay for it herself.  It would also mean that my sons ADHD medicine would not be covered and he would have an out of pocket much more than $10.00 per month of his co-pay.  So thank you Justice Roberts, thank you House and Senate for passing this legislation.  Now let's see how it goes form here.

And last but certainly not least is the latest book club find - Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Coast Trail.  It is a poignant and real look at a woman's journey through her life after the tragic death of her mother.  I don't read parts of books out loud to people - I think they would be annoyed by that -- but I found this book so compelling that I had to.  One particular passage is her processing and discovery of  some wounds she needed to heal and it was raw and emotional and amazing.  I hope you download and read it this Summer.  It is worth the time.







Okay - that's it.  I have set my brain into BLOG mode again.  I leave you with an amazing fireworks display that we saw after an ICubs Game on July 4th (YEP, baseball again).  We were fortunate enough to be right by the fireworks in the parking lot and enjoyed their grandeur.  Make it a great week!