A Knight in the Pews (Spencer Day 1)

What a great ride today!! We stayed at Immanuel Lutheran Church last night in Rock Rapids and half of the team stayed inside -- many actually slept in the pews, and a few of my teammates said that was a highlight. Some of the team got up really early (i.e. before 5:30 when I finally opened my eyes) and headed out for the day. We were just 4 miles outside of Rock Rapids when I got a phone call from a friend/teammate who said her peddle fell off. I think my response was "your what fell off?" It's too bad to have a mechanical failure that early in the ride, especially since it was her first RAGBRAI. She ended up getting a ride back into town with a guy named Henry that had his pickup truck parked on the side of a gravel road, and was able to reconnect with one of our support driver so she could get her bike fixed at one of the passthrough towns.

For me, the morning flew by, and we were blessed with cloudy skies and a fairly breezy wind. Ok, so I don't think wind was a blessing. :) That was real fun as we were heading south out of Melvin, the half-way town. I pulled in to Spencer around 2 pm and we went to Pizza Ranch to take our team photo later on this afternoon. Now the team is checking out Spencer, and getting ready for tomorrow. I have lots of stories, but very limited time, so I guess those are the only stories of the day for now.

We are staying at a '97 alum's house today, and we are so thankful that they are able to house us! They have two cute girls who want to send everyone reading our blog a message. Here is from Makenna, who is 3.

Makenna: sacv3
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

And here's something from Aria:
good luck bike riders. love aria.

We've got the longest day tomorrow (not by much--a couple of miles). Hope the wind is on our backs!

See you in Humboldt!!

Kendra

P.S. The ride today was pretty quiet, not much Lance talk. Once we got into Spencer, we found out he is staying at a mansion here in town, but I have yet to see him. I also haven't had a piece of pie, a pork chop, Tender Tom's turkey OR Gelato -- 4 staple food items that are very popular on RAGBRAI. Maybe tomorrow I will get adventurous. ;)