Home from RAGBRAI

That was a good vacation!

My vacation, in a quantifiable way:

-510 miles riding (I think; definitely over 500) in 7 days
-7 miles of dirt road
-6 pieces of homemade or amish-made pie (mmmmmm!)
-12 cookies
-1 nap in a meadow by a farmhouse
-2 bike crashes, not serious
-1 computer repair
-50 different Iowa towns, some old and cute, some new and modern
-20,000 other cyclists
-about a zillion very friendly Iowans

Things I can't quantify:

- Hey, I can do sports massage. School has really made a difference in my ability to treat people and my overall confidence that I can do it. Partly it's anatomy class, so I know what's going on under the skin, and partly it's the "trained eye" for movement dysfunction that we're getting. No one teaches us that; it sneaks in, I think.

- Watching a tribe of older guys (average age in the motorhome, including me, was 55) get their acts together and get out of town was interesting. Watching them was pretty interesting.(I live in a small town with maybe 50 cyclists in it. You have to get along.)

- I was able to find a vacation where the point was to be social, but the venue was a bicycle and a challenge. Perfect.