Previous entry: "RAGBRAI: Marshalltown, Iowa" | Next entry: "Rochester, MN" 07/25/2004 Entry: "Maquoketa (or something)" I'm in the Iowa Telecom trailer in Maquoketa after sagging another day. Unfortunately my knee started acting up yesterday morning and got worse throughout the day. I probably could have ridden today but I don't have a lot of desire to make it worse than it already is. It was raining anyway. Click read more to hear my perspective on the past few days. As Seager mentioned, on Monday night we did a show in Fort Dodge with a great crowd and made a little money. On Tuesday I remembered why I ride (after forgetting on Sunday). It was a beautiful day and the riding went very well. There was a bit of a sidewind most of the day which became a tailwind when we turned south, but I drafted off other people pretty much the whole day anyway. Yes, I am a lazy jerk. Wednesday was a very difficult day of riding. We had a strong headwind almost the entire day. I rode with Mike and Thew, and we took turns pulling so that helped a little. I think I probably pushed a little too hard and injured my knee on Wednesday, but it didn't really show up until yesterday. Conan drove us around town and let us use his showers, which was nice for a change. We went to a Chinese buffet for dinner and then watched Dean Franzen's show. The show was good, but it was a little bit tough for us to do a show after that. He was in Iowa Falls on Tuesday as well. Yesterday was a long day (85 miles), but it was pretty easy riding except for rainy conditions in the morning. As I mentioned earlier, my knee got worse thoughout the day. I made it to town, but that's about all I can say for it. Last night we tried to get a show going but we couldn't really find a good location. We ended up on a street corner with a lot of bike/car traffic and not many pedestrians. We did a show for about 5 kids and then just passed around for a while. Doug and Addison from Cedar Rapids showed up after a little bit and said that they had been kicked out of the entertainment area for panhandling, even though they weren't trying to collect money (people were giving them money anyway, however). Apparently they were supposed to buy a booth from the city if they wanted to perform. Way to go overzealous RAGBRAI organizers. We juggled with them for a while and then got some sleep. We're just hanging out in Maquoketa at the moment. The campsite here is soaked and very muddy. People were trying to pull their buses in with pickups and having limited success. We hadn't seen any of our riders when we left there, but they might be in by now.

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