Take a Minute to Concentrate and She Opens Up Her Eyes.

 Okay. Now that I've finally finished the RAGBRAI post and I am finally done with all of the vacation entries, it's time to catch you all up from the last couple of weeks.

I think I mentioned that we didn't ride the last day of RAGBRAI. Instead a few of us rode to Kalona Brewery and back. It's 50 miles of paved and dirt roads in the middle of Amish/Mennonite country.

The Amish boys who are photobombing in the background were intrigued by our funny outifts.

We had a nice ride in, but on the way back, it started to pour down rain and we were on a dirt road. We looked over and saw an Amish or Mennonite run store. We decided to pull over and seek shelter and wait out the storm. While we were standing under the eaves, I noticed a "puppies for sale" sign. It was like Kizmet! I ran into the store and asked the girl where the puppies were. She said they were in a house up the street. My friend Tim asked her if she at least had a picture of them. I've been teasing him ever since. Amish don't believe in cameras. I keep telling him he should have asked her if she could pull up her Facebook page on her smart phone and show us. Ha ha ha ha.

Two other of the Amish boys had to go out and show us that the rain wouldn't melt us and made a big point to push their cart out and get some real work done. Okay. We were shamed and the storm was passing anyway, so we headed back home. I know I say this almost every post, but I love bike adventures.

The Sunday after RAGBRAI, Coadster and my grand puppy came to visit. Coadster is moving back in with us this week to start her job, so she stopped by to hang out with us for a few days and start moving her things in upstairs.

Archie and Bailey are getting along a lot better. Archie gets scared when Bailey stands over him, hopping on one foot to the other because she is so excited to play with him, so he has learned to elevate himself somewhere safe, so he can observe the dog thing for squirrely behavior. Maybe Archie isn't so dumb after all...

My garden is winding down now. Sigh. I am still planning on making as much pesto as I can before the basil starts getting frost bit in the next month or two.

I took the first week after our vacation off from doing much of anything. John's sister was in town visiting, so that made it easy, but mostly I was fried. During our trip we had ridden, run, hiked, and rock climbed 433 miles in 41.17 hours.

Last week, I felt much better and ended up riding 5 of my 6 bikes. I rode my Cannondale Lefty Flash 29'er on the MTB trails once, I rode my Cervelo P1 time trial bike once, I rode my Guerciotti cyclocross bike on gravel once, my Cannondale Caad 10 twice, and my steel frame Handsome Devil bike 5 times for commuting. It was a good week.