Day 01: Cedar Falls, IA to Bristow, IA
Friday May 25, 2012, 45 miles (72 km) - Total so far: 45 miles (72 km)
Sometimes the hardest part of any trip is getting out the door. Over the past month I have tried to get all my paperwork situated, moved out of the apartment, cleaned up the bike, gathered all my gear, planned out the first week of the trip, going to wing most of it from there, and made a sorry excuse at getting my lazy butt into shape. The result, today I carry my bike and gear out of the apartment at 10:00 (later than I would have liked) and head off on my way.
I took the pre-trip photos and headed north out of the town. For the Iowa portion of the trip I printed out some of google maps bicycle routes and will follow those as well as a state highway map. This worked out well at first since the google directions matched where I wanted to go. However, this changed when they put me on a 3.5 mile stretch of gravel roads. That is the problem with rural Iowa back roads, not many are paved. So I tossed the google directions and relied only on my state road map.
The riding was nice today, cool temperatures and off and on bits of rain (not really rain but just drops here and there). The route consisted of a lot of bike trails but also some roads and unfortunately gravel roads. The good part about those gravel roads are that the tires have proven vary effective on gravel. I am really glad I got the wider tires. When I reached Bristow, IA I stopped in the town part, under the pavilion for dinner.
Shortly after I started eating it began to rain. This was starting to look like I good place to call it a day and luckily for me they said I could camp the night in the park. They even let me into the restrooms.
Since I forgot to reset the mileage on the bike computer, I am going to follow google maps mileage for this first day. After today I will hopefully remember so that I can have more accurate measurements of the distance traveled. It should also be noted that I am starting with a good deal of food, I had most of it already and figured might as well eat it instead of letting it go bad.
