Blue Skies

Day 39: Algona to New Hampton

August 13, 2008 on 6:50 pm | In On Tour |

The second long day of the week was just under 113 miles. Betsy and I headed out in the morning to mark the second half of the route, which took us a large chunk of the morning due to the distances involved. Once we were done, we headed back to a town we had passed called Rockford, which proudly boasts that it is the home of Devonian fossils. I’ll leave it to you to read more about those.

We stopped at a great park in town, which had a smal river running along one side, and waited there for the inevitable phone calls. I had time to do some stretches for my legs, and I started on a short walk, but then we got a phone call, so that was cut short.

A long section of road was technically closed to traffic. It was all nicely newly paved, and one of our SAG drivers had checked with the construction crew there and found that the cyclists were allowed to continue along the closed road section. The only hassle was that the cyclists and support staff had to dodge the machinery that was marking the center line down the road.

We ended up having to drive back through this section to pick up a cyclist that had three flat tires in short order, and happened to have a non-standard tire size. The cyclist also wasn’t feeling too great, so we just loaded up the bike instead of worrying about helping fix it right there.

After a bit we ended up in town again, but by this time most of the cyclists had passed through and all we had to do was wait for a few people who had indicated that they wanted a ride in from Rockford. The day was pretty rough on a lot of cyclists as it was warmer than the previous day and the winds came in a stiff crosswind that didn’t help matters much.

We finally came into the high school where we were staying at, and I had time to set up my tent and to get some supper. At about 7 PM we headed out again because a number of cyclists were still out. We wanted to take our usual van, but the kids at the school had parked in three rows and our van was blocked in, stuck in the center row. Fortunately the other van with the portolet was accessible, so we headed out to check on people with a toilet in tow. We ended up picking up one cyclist and letting the sweep team ride in themselves.