Tuesday's Gone...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ApuQ5x4tHM

Laurens' Hawaiian mayor and his daugher were out to greet us.

Army Brass Quintet

... and so is Monday. No information blogged from Monday as radio contact with the team was lost. It is now early Wednesday, so we will try to squeeze two days of riding in briefly. The tandem picked up speed on Tuesday (apparently clocking a stretch at 23MPH) as it was the first day of tailwinds after two days of riding against the win. They are also excited by weather which has helped out in the morning by being overcast each day to avoid warming up immediately. The duo are bunked down on a historic farm for this evening where they cashed in their one-per-week massage which is part of the event.

Monday brought a Dutch Bingo bullseye as Mother's shower for the day was taken at the home of the aunt of Chris H. from Holland who served as my rec basketball coach eons ago and whose mother was also responsible for trying to teach the younger son of tandem to play the violin. Concerts are apparently staged in the towns where the riders bunk down each night, Tuesday's offering was by an Army brass band, who are actually a subset of the Army bike team. Apparently each military branch is represented amongst the pack of riders. Food has been worth bragging about based on the reactions being reported, though I will not attempt to reconstruct the order in which the varies meals were described.

The historic bike has apparently had its first mechanical failure and repair. The rear handlebars were apparently mis-aligned (not that any steering occurs there) and in the process of straightening those, a bolt was broken on the front seat to which those handlebars attach. Fortunately, this occurred near one of the towns passed through on Tuesday so a bike shop was relatively nearby. It sounds as if the towns on the route will sometimes stage themselves for the riders, one community was given a Mayberry makeover and sported lookalikes for some of the Andy Griffith characters. In addition, I have been told to inform the reader that Tuesday included the best sight-seeing opportunity of the journey thus far, but that details will not be released until the photo evidence can be properly posted. It is sweeps-week in Iowa apparently, so you may all now dangle waiting for this revelation...