Cedar Rapids – the town, not the movie

Today had its small challenges, but it was all around a good day – with Cedar Rapids as a somewhat surprising highlight.

Cedar Rapids – The City of Five Seasons. Not quite sure what that means exactly, but apparently years ago locals re-dubbed it The City of Five Smells.

Quaker Oats is based in Cedar Rapids, along with some other cereal and animal feed type businesses. And I guess they used to stink pretty bad. 

We saw the Quaker Oats sign across the river (the Cedar River – thus, Cedar Rapids), but we didn’t detect any smells. Instead, we observed a nice, clean town, with friendly people, nice bike paths along the river, and the town even had a big mound that was somewhat evocative of the hill overlooking Hollywood. It just needs CEDAR RAPIDS spelled out in big stones or something . . . (And Diana reminded me that there is a movie based in Cedar Rapids – so it is kind of the Hollywood of Iowa).

I have to admit it was pretty nice to experience some civilization that didn’t involve corn, Casey’s gas stations, or Dollar General. We went to two bike shops (I’ll get to the reasons for that . . .), a cool food hall 4 lunch, Czech Village, New Bohemia, and Hyvee. And we biked through their downtown. All in all a very nice experience. Even saw some Harris/Walz signs – probably the first we have seen in Iowa. 

And then this afternoon we headed to our campsite – a corps of engineers campground on Coralville Lake – a reservoir shaped something like what I imagine a dragon’s tail to look like. The campground has a nice view of the lake. 

The lake itself? Hmm. We heard from our camp neighbor, Jane, that the Corps had advised against swimming because of e.coli. I guess there are so many migratory birds right now that all their pooping has caused the yucky stuff levels to go up.

And boy, the migratory bird thing seems to be real. Hundreds of pelicans kept flying around the campsite – and then tonight at sunset there was a huge cacophony of noise as what must have been thousands of them landed on the lake at one time. Pretty cool. I don’t know how they seem to all think together . . .

Anyway, Diana had spent the whole day excited to go for a swim – so she was not super deterred by Jane’s e.coli warning. 

“I can just shower right away after and I’ll be fine, right?” she asked, hopefully.

I don’t know anything about e.coli, and there is no dissuading Diana from something she wants to do anyway, so I just shrugged. 

At that point I was still planning to jump in myself; I’m not that discerning about stuff like this. 

But when we arrived at the lake I quickly came to a different conclusion. There was a small dock; when I walked out onto it and looked at the water I was a little dismayed. It just looked dirty – murky and full of suspended stuff that didn’t give you a great sense of comfort. And then I looked toward shore – where neon green waves kept lapping up on the sad beach.

Even I have limits . . .

Diana had spent the whole day looking forward to this swim, so she was not so easily persuaded. But after a few minutes of sadly surveying the situation Diana also succumbed to the sad reality. 

So no swimming for us today. At least there was a nice shower . . .

But the other good thing that goes along with trees and lakes and boating and stuff? Tourism. Which means Ice cream.

Ely – no, not that Ely – the town closest to the campground and the lake, has an amazing dairy: Dan & Debbie’s Creamery. First ice cream cone we’ve had on the whole trip. (There is something really wrong about that.) I had, of course, sweet corn ice cream. Iowa knows how to stick to a theme . . .

Okay, the challenge for the day. When we started riding this morning I noticed that I couldn’t get my bike into the smallest chain rings in back. Figured it was my derailleur cable, but I’m not a good enough bike mechanic to know for sure. We just kept going and it wasn’t really that big of a deal. We rarely go fast enough to employ those gears anyway . . .

But eventually my suspicion was confirmed – the cable finally broke and I was now stuck in the smallest gear in back – meaning that any hill was more or less impossible – what with the bike fully loaded. (Brad Skillicorn – I tried the ‘’single speed stand-up’ on one hill and then quickly pulled over before I blew a gasket . . .)

When we pulled over I think Diana thought we would be there for hours – with lots of gratuitous swearing happening. Stranded along a road 10 miles outside of Cedar Rapids . . . With me saying things like “I got it, just give me a few more minutes . . .”

I guess I wasn’t confident that Diana was wrong about how long we might be there . . .

But sometimes you just need to pat yourself on the back. Good job me! 

Over the past year – with the help of many of my more bike savvy friends and neighbors – I have tried to do all my own mechanic work – so that we wouldn’t end up on the side of a road in Mexico with a flat tire we couldn’t fix . . . having to call Pablo Escobar for some help:

”Yes, I can help you with your tire. I just need this one small favor. You can carry this one small package to Nicaragua for me . . .”

Sidebar . . . There’s probably a reason my bike repair skills have been so stunted through my life . . .

When I was about 14 or 15 I went out to a bike shop in Richfield – Penn Cycle. My plan was to get a job there. I ended up talking to Elmer – the founder of Penn Cycle, who was, by that time, a pretty old man. 

“Umm, I was wondering if you have any positions available?” I stammered.

Elmer, gruffly: “Do you know how to fix a flat tire?”

“Umm, yeah, I think so.” (I will say that I had definitely fixed flat tires at that point because I had gone on a few bike trips with friends and we seemed to have bikes that had flats all the time . . .)

Elmer, with disgust and contempt and anger all rolled into one quick sentence: “You don’t know how to fix a flat tire!”

I turned tail and and ran. I don’t think I ever went back to that bike shop again. Though I did get to know Elmer’s kids, Pat and Jim, much later because Penn Cycle sponsored the Ice-Cycle Loppet. Nice people. (I think they were afraid of their dad as well . . .)

But back to our story ….

Where were we? Oh, yes. Pablo Escobar has to help us . . . Except, miracle of miracles, (a) we had derailleur cables in our repair kit, and (b) I remembered how to replace my cable without even consulting YouTube. 

I think Diana is more impressed with my manliness today than she usually is. Which is saying a lot, because she has a pretty manly husband . . . 

Anyway, that’s how we ended up at the bike store. Because it turned out I didn’t have a tool that I could cut the cable with, and we needed a new cable for the repair kit anyway . . .

The small obstacles of a life on the road . . .

But a good day all around. Culture. Ice cream. Bike repairs. Campsite overlooking a (greenish) lake. Burgers with sautéed mushrooms and onions for dinner. What’s not to like?