DAY 20 Colfax Iowa to Mount Pleasant Iowa....A DAY TO REMEMBER.....

Distance 141 miles
total miles to date: 2450
1200 more miles to go
Climbing 5303
total climbing To date 80,000 feet
Avg speed today 15.9


After having said that yesterday was BORING. God must have listened because today was a DOOZY.

Our riding began at six thirty am and right from the start it began to rain. The first twenty miles lightly showering, then the wind picked up turning into a torrential downpour. Or maybe I should say side pour because the rain was literally coming down sideways. The wind was in excess of twenty miles per hour, straight into our faces, we had a hard time keeping our speed above 16 mph. There were several points where we had to walk our bikes through valleys of mud, over 1 ft deep. The riding groups were kept small today for safety reasons; only 2 to 3 per group.

Finally at the 100 mile point the rain and wind subsided and we were thrilled thinking we would just cruise in the last 40 miles, unfortunately then my riding partner Greg took a very bad spill on his bike. He was banged up and Both of his wheels were bent to the point that he could not ride his bike. We waited for help from one of the sag trucks which took awhile as they had to replace both of his wheels. At that point we were wet, tired, bloody and dirty. we were Finally Relieved to see the hotel at 5:00 pm, making it a a ten hour bike day! Greg limped into his hotel room to recover; hopefully he will be ok tomorrow .

Mount Pleasant is the largest town we have been in the last week, complete with a wall mart! woo hoo! So that is where I went tonight to stock up on supplies; baby powder for my butt and candy for my gut. :) I finished the day with a big Mexican dinner. It's ten o clock now, I'm very tired and and have to get ready for tomorrow as we go 140 miles - AGAIN! onward to Pekin, Illinois. A new state! ...... eleven days to go.....

So far I have raised $18,508 for JDRF. A phenomenal accomplishment, thank you so much to all who have donated! (you can still donate at http://ride.jdrf.org/) That equals about $7.55/mile ridden so far. Not to shabby an hourly rate, so with that in mind I'll keep on pedalin....... hoping that I reach my goal of $20,000 and the first ever to ride across America for this cause in honor of my granddaughter, Casey! good night!