Jeff riding Boone to Altoona. We stayed in Ames last night so I dropped Jeff off several miles east of Boone, picking up the crowd of riders still in the dark. I love watching the pack of riders setting out in the morning all nice and fresh. Watching them come in in the afternoon is another story-hot, exhausted, sweaty-much like myself. Again, I have nothing but praise for my air conditioned car.
Jeff rode into the meeting town and called way before I left the hotel. I did my treadmill miles in the proverbial "recreation center". The little tiny rec room was next to the pool and hot and humid, so I had worked up a sweat in five minutes. I was ready to give up, but then I remembered the 10,000 peddlers. My drive was short down to Altoona, so I took a nice detour, country roads lines with Queen Anne's Lace and Black Eyed Susans-nice Midwest wild flowers that are three feet tall here and maybe a foot tall in Colorado, and we need to purchase them.
After some of the dinky towns we've pulled into and overnighted in, Altoona (and our overnight in Alkeny) were urban sprawl. We complained in Denison of no restaurants, and now we find strip mall, after strip mall complete with nail salon, liquor store, & bank.
Nice Italian dinner in old town Alkeny, thought we might see a movie, back to the hotel, rearranged the furniture to watch the MLS Allstars/ManU soccer game in Spanish high def, and promptly fell asleep. Heat/humidity is killing us.
Trivia question of the day-name one of the first three American soldiers to die in WWI who is from Iowa. Bonus points-which city is this soldier now buried in?
GRAVE AND MEMORIAL OF MERLE D. HAY – GLIDDEN, IOWA The memorial is an open roadside memorial on Hwy. 30. This historical site is a memorial to Merle Hay, who was one of the first U.S. soldiers, and the first Iowan, killed in World War I. Merle Hay is buried at the Merle Hay Memorial cemetery.
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