Greetings from Lake Mills, IA
Jul. 27th, 2005 02:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ninevirtuesI am in Lake Mills, IA, on RAGBRAI.... rolling through green countryside with freshly painted red and white barns, endless corn and soybean fields, and tiny cute towns with a huge courthouse in the town square, old houses, and beaming Midwestern church ladies who have apparently been told that all cyclists are starving for cookies and pie. (Maybe they are; there are about 10,000 other cyclists here, and this is a rolling example of people, insanity, and bicycles-- from the leathery-looking old guys on recumbents to the freshly-scrubbed midwesterners on tandems, to the team of people riding around with rolls of toilet paper strapped to their helmets, to the approximately 2,000 guys with fuzzy legs and USPS jerseys. One BMW-Bianchi rider doesn't even begin to dent the insanity here. But hey... I believe we'd all be better off if everyone rode bikes to get places, so I had better not quibble about the hairy legs they sport when they do it. Not everyone is temperamentally equipped to race bikes. ;-)
Yesterday was the 100-mile loop day, so at mile 40, we stopped in Rystaad (a heavily Danish-accented town four miles from the Minnesota border). Towns clean up and dress up for this, and Rystaad had mermaid statues, gazillions of Danish flags, people wearing traditional Danish costume... and a lady blaring "DANISH FOOD THIS WAY!!!!" through a bullhorn.
Danish food? Danish food? Sold! I'm a sucker for that, and I was already starving. My friends went off in search of a bratwurst, or something equally forgettable. I headed into the neatly painted American Legion hall to find... mountains of neatly wrapped pastries and aebelskiver (Danish pancakes, and Danish heritage or not, I am probably not spelling that right). Mmmmmm. Okay, I'll take one of these, and one of those, and several of...
Then my mental voice of calm and reason spoke up. "So let's review. You are allergic to wheat, and these are made of what, again? Yeah, that's right, wheat. Danish genetics will only get you so far, here." Uh.... yeah. I walked out with about a quarter of what I'd like to eat. I ate slowly, enjoying it, and set off again, propelled by the illicit aebelskivers.
(The 100-mile loop involved a stiff headwind, and yes, the aebelskivers returned to haunt me. But they were goooood.
Yesterday was the 100-mile loop day, so at mile 40, we stopped in Rystaad (a heavily Danish-accented town four miles from the Minnesota border). Towns clean up and dress up for this, and Rystaad had mermaid statues, gazillions of Danish flags, people wearing traditional Danish costume... and a lady blaring "DANISH FOOD THIS WAY!!!!" through a bullhorn.
Danish food? Danish food? Sold! I'm a sucker for that, and I was already starving. My friends went off in search of a bratwurst, or something equally forgettable. I headed into the neatly painted American Legion hall to find... mountains of neatly wrapped pastries and aebelskiver (Danish pancakes, and Danish heritage or not, I am probably not spelling that right). Mmmmmm. Okay, I'll take one of these, and one of those, and several of...
Then my mental voice of calm and reason spoke up. "So let's review. You are allergic to wheat, and these are made of what, again? Yeah, that's right, wheat. Danish genetics will only get you so far, here." Uh.... yeah. I walked out with about a quarter of what I'd like to eat. I ate slowly, enjoying it, and set off again, propelled by the illicit aebelskivers.
(The 100-mile loop involved a stiff headwind, and yes, the aebelskivers returned to haunt me. But they were goooood.
