16 September 2011

The day's ride was no sweat. Literally. I started at 0830 with the temperature sitting at 45; it topped out at 56 in mid Iowa. The good news was that although there looked to be a huge storm heading east across my projected path, I barely got any sprinkles out of the totally overcast day.

I headed for LaCrosse, where I crossed the Mississippi on several bridges; it wasn't until the last one that I finally made it into Minnesota. I cut across its southeast corner on SR44, down into Iowa on US52.

As I headed out of Decorah, there was a sign saying something like "Bridge work on US52, local traffic only" with a detour sign and something about 24 miles. Ok, I can deal with that, except the detour went east. First mistake, I went with it. Second mistake, I stayed with it--but I had no idea where that bridge was out, and didn't want to head back west until I was sure the route would take me past it.

What I didn't know was that US52 was headed mostly east, and my route had only followed it south until it turned. (Yea, I know--paper maps. But you have to stop to read them.) So I stayed on the detour until it hooked up with 52 again, at which point it was obviously the wrong road--I was almost back to the Mississippi, less than 10 miles from Praire du Chein. A quick edit of the GPS route got me pointed in the right direction, with a waste of about 50 miles--not good on a day that was projected at half the distance to Bixby.

A couple of interstate pieces made up some time and eventually got me back to my original route, through Sigourney (a long, slow town for its size), down through Ottumwa and finally into Missouri.

The first town of any size was Kirksville, where the GPS said there was a Wal*Mart right across the road from a Comfort Inn. It was approaching 1800 as I got there, as late as I like to stop, so I was happy to find they still had a couple of rooms left, even if it was going to cost me upwards of $80. 'Dinner' from Wal*Mart was less than $12, though, and there's a pretty good breakfast bar.

It's raining as I type, but this cell is projected to pass through by 0800, so I should be ok to start. There's threats all day, though, so I'll keep my rain gloves and boot gaiters handy, just in case.

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