Day 4 complete!

49.9 miles (actually 55 miles), 2,920 ft of climb from Des Moines to Knoxville.  Beautiful day and we all made it safely.

As soon as I crawled out of my tent at 5:15am, I could see my breath.  It was freezing.  I started out the day in my regular shorts and jersey, but then added some tights, socks, a long sleeve dri-fit shirt and a light jacket.  (I would have put on more, but you have to have room in your back pockets or your bike bags to put everything when the day warms up).  We had camped at Water Works Park which was pretty crowded.  We were near the front by the park entrance, right by the shuttle stop which seemed at first convenient, but later were awakened by the loud late night arrivals from downtown.

The route out of camp today was pretty obscure, so we followed another bunch out on the bike trail.  East we went for miles down the path with intentional temporary lighting for the RAGBRAI riders.  We thought "Wow!  This is great!  They thought ahead and anticipated us needing light in the early morning."  So we passed a few other locals running, walking, and particularly remembered a guy walking with a lunch pail.  We reached a crossroads and all of the bikers stopped.  No one knew where to go.  One guy was on the phone to determine the route.  He said we needed to go back 3 blocks and head south.  So we did... getting weird looks from other oncoming RAGBRAI-ers as well as the locals.  That temporary lighting must have been still set up for the riders last night!  Long story not any shorter, we basically went back to our camp site and started the ride again.

As we were biking through downtown Des Moines, muffling under our breath how upset we were at ourselves for having to do those extra miles and hill, we turned north on a street leading to the State Capitol and who do we see?  The guy with his lunch pail walking his same pace up the road to work.  Good grief!!  If we would have just stopped to ask him instead of following the other riders, we would have saved a lot of time, miles and energy.  So morning is off to a rough start...

More pics to follow.  Our day did improve...