Blue Skies

Day 37: Sergeant Bluff to Sioux Center / Dordt College

August 12, 2008 on 4:52 am | In C2C Celebration, On Tour |

My sleeping area in the gym ended up being under one of the big lights they left on overnight, which was somewhat unfortunate. I ended up not getting much quality sleep. Since Barb had gone home for the night with Eritia, she had a fun little Suburu that needed to be driven back to Sioux Center. Even thought it was a short day, we loaded up some water jugs into the back and I took it as an extra support vehicle. Ultimately there wasn’t much point, I only had one person stop to fill his water bottle.

My stop was right by a water tower, and a second water tower was under construction there. I talked to the foreman to get permission to set up my water stop there, and he told me about the project. If he had the proper number of workmen, the tower would take 80 work days to put up. Huge sections of shaped steel were on the ground, waiting to be lifted into position. A welder was at work on the scaffolding, securing the latest section. The current water tower was just for a few farms and for the ethanol plant down the road. These went through the full capacity of the current tower 6 times in a day, and the ethanol plant alone used 2 volumes worth of water.

Being a short day, most of the cyclists were in early, especially since Dordt College was the destination. I arrived fairly early, and checked in - Dordt was providing us with dorm rooms, so we got to have a mattress to sleep on that night! They provided us with an excellent information package listing what was happening and where things were in town. Justin and I hopped into town in the Subaru, stopping first at the Dutch shop in town. Some droppies, pastries, and stroopwaffels later, we moved on to the bike shop in town.

The bike shop was swamped with cyclists. It was run out of someone’s garage, and didn’t have quite the selection that many cyclists were looking for, but several cyclists needed some repair work done so the owner was quite busy.

Supper was donated by two shops in town, and was my first taste of pizza while on tour. They even had taco pizza, and several people in line were surprised that I hadn’t heard of such a thing before. It was quite enjoyable, but I don’t see much point in eating that instead of actual tacos.

That evening there was a short celebration service, which was a bit different since it was the first one that we’ve had during the week. It was followed by our group meeting and a ministry fair with local ministries and the ministries represented by Sea to Sea.

I ended up getting to bed fairly late, but the mattress provided an incredibly comfortable rest. The next three days would be over 100 miles each, so people needed the rest.