From the Park I hear Rhythms

Remember how last weekend I felt like I was being thwarted at every turn? Well, this weekend was the opposite.

Last week when John and I were talking about the fact that we had absolutely  no plans for the three day weekend, John said, "We can get a lot of projects done around the house..." at the same time I said, "We can go on so many fun bike rides!" Guess who won that one...

That's right. I did.

On Saturday, we met a bunch of our friends we do RAGBRAI with. Many of them have ridden very little this year, and RAGBRAI is coming right up. We thought we could ride to Cedar Rapids and get about 65 miles in that day.

We decided to go to Czech Village in Cedar Rapids, because we would be able to take the bike path for part of it.

We rode to Ely, where the path begins and it is crazy (read: wonderful) how much bike traffic there is in that little town. The bar Odie's has tons of business because of the bike path. We stopped at Odie's on our way to Cedar Rapids. I can't drink like many of the others in my group, so I had a Coke and we watched some "Shark Week" before we headed off for the last part of our journey.

We hit Cedar Rapids and they were having Freedom Fest there. It seemed like the whole town was out and playing and there were still tons of cyclists. Yea! We stopped to play some frisbee and we found out our friend Marco had never thrown a frisbee before. What?! We soon rectified that and he said he thought it was a lot of fun.

Cedar Rapids is a lot like Des Moines in the fact that they have changed their town so much for the better. It used to just be the city of 5 smells but now they are known for better culture and bike paths and new and interesting places to eat and drink.

We chose the New Bo Ale House to eat lunch. It used to be a bank, so the building itself was really cute. We checked out the outdoor eating space and there were many tables open. It seemed perfect. Sadly, the service was HORRIBLE. I have talked to other people since then, and they said they had the same experience. it's too bad, because it could be such a great place.

When we got there, they told us there would be a 30 minute wait to be seated. I'm sure I looked a little puzzled, because the hostess then said, " I know it looks like there are a lot of open tables, but we have a group of 11 coming." Okay, that accounts for 2 tables....The other, nicer hostess told us we could wait in the beer garden and have a drink until we got seated. The original hostess told us that we could NOT sit down at the bar, even though there were plenty of seats. We sat down at the bar anyway. What the hell? Why did we have to stand when there were plenty of places to sit and we were going to be spending plenty of money there. It was bizarre. I can't imagine that any of us will ever go there again. It took us over 2 hours to get seated and get our food. Sigh.

The ride back was more than fine. The high for the day was 69 degrees. In Iowa? On July 4th weekend? I have never seen that before.

We stopped at Big Grove on the way home. I had a lemonade and we all had a good talk.

My friend, Burne told me I had to go up and imitate the Rosie the Riveter chalk drawing So, even though I looked plenty the worse for wear after our long ride, I made the weird face she was making and put my arm up. Super dork!

We got home and had leftover stuffed zucchini for dinner and after being outside for about 10 hours, we basically passed-out on the couch by about 9 o'clock. Whew! We still had two days of holiday weekend left...