Almost done. With Iowa

Wow, my legs are feeling yesterday's 103 miles and today's 75miles--a bit heavy and sore and feeling like when I used to work pharmacy.
We finished in Ottumwa yesterday, the home of the fictional Radar O'Reilly on MASH and the real hometown of Tom Arnold,who was in town yesterday. Our wake-up call in CHariton (pop 4000) was a thunderstorm at 4 a.m. and then also had a t-storm come thru yesterday afternoon. Thankfully I was already in camp and set up when it hit.
I got up early and hit the road at 6 AM to ride w/a few friends--it was nice to be on the road in the coolness of the early morning. I'd been riding quite a bit by myself since a lot of my group seems to want to stop and linger in the pass through towns and it was good to ride with friends today.
Let's see--Mount Pleasant, population 8,000 is where we're camped tonight. It's our first cloudless day, so the temperature's noticebly warmer. No threat of storms as far as this Californian can tell :) I got some laundry donethis afternoon, since the long haul begins tomorrow--tho Dwight says we may get in the van instead of riding on after we finish RAGBRAI. We'll dip our front wheel in the Mississippi River only having to ride 43 miles to get there.
Stay tuned!