Tuesday, June 30, 2015

Never as Good as the First Time.


On Sunday, John did his first mountain bike race at a beautiful park just North of Ames, Iowa.


I'm still too chicken and I don't have the bike handling skills to race mountain bikes yet, so I went for support and since it was so gorgeous there, I decided to go for a run on some trails and gravel roads, while John warmed-up on his bike.

If you ever want a whole bunch of people to give you a hard time, go running around a bunch of bike racers. I got all kinds of grief. People told me that running was for felons, or asked me if I needed a bike to ride. My friend Katherine was going ot race, and she told me I shouldn't waste my time running, since riding bikes was so much more fun, but then halfway through her race, after she crashed and was covered in mud, she rode by me and told me that maybe I was the smart one. Ha ha.


John had a very muddy race. After he finished, he said that he thought he had made every beginner mistake in the book. I told him that that was how we all learned. He certainly wasn't first, but he wasn't last either. He actually got 3rd in his category. Pretty impressive for a first race. I think he's excited to do another one soon.


Since we were both covered in mud from our respective activities, we decided to jump in the lake. I love swimming in open water. I like spiders and bugs and the little fish I can feel swimming around my ankles, so I don't get grossed-out by any of that and this lake was so lovely. After a hot, sweaty run, it felt so nice to swim around sand get the worst of the mud off of us.


We decided to stop in Des Moines on the way home and go to El Bait Shop. It is a bar restaurant that on one side has really great craft beer and decent Mexican food and is connected to Miller High Life Lounge that is a 1970's themed place with bad 70's beer and embarrassingly good comfort food.


It was a little early in the day, so I wasn't going to have any beer, but then I started looking at their menu and they had a jalapeno flavored beer and the really cute and nice bartender told me it was her favorite beer and asked me if I wanted to try a sample. Oh, what the hell. I decided to get a beer flight of Iowa Craft beers. John helped me drink it and we both got to try stuff we may not have wanted an entire pint of. Luckily, no headache ensued.

We drove home to a huge rain deluge and heard it rained on and off all day in Iowa City. We felt pretty lucky to drive two hours and have perfect weather there all day.

2 comments:

A in Texas said...

Is that Ada Hayden Lake?

Churlita said...

It's called Peterson Pits? Have you been there before? It's off the Skunk River. It was really pretty.