Day 5: Charles City to Cresco

THURSDAY – JULY 27, 2017
Charles City to Ionia – 13.0 miles
Ionia to New Hampton (Meeting) – 8.5 miles
New Hampton to Lawler – 8.3 miles
Lawler to Protivin – 12.7 miles
Protivin to Cresco – 12.1 miles
Total Mileage: 54.6 miles
Total Feet of Climb: 2,257 
Weather: 80/ 59, clear, wind NNE 10 mph

Well, the flat roads were behind us, and the rolling hills ahead. Today's ride was a series of long gentle climbs with what seemed like NO downhills in between. I would crest a hill and see two more in the distance. This went on for hours...

I slept well the night before, and my host had fruit and eggs for us! How thoughtful.

I biked the 1.5 miles along the river back to the campground to load my bags before an 8am departure. Weather was a little humid but beautiful! After 13 miles this morning, we arrived in Ionia. It's RAGBRAI jersey day, so I broke down and bought one to wear. What the hell. It's a bucket list adventure right? The town had plenty of bike parking for us, enabling us to get off and spend some time in the town rather than just walk our bikes through Main Street. Their goal is to raise $350k today for town projects! Let's hope they make it. The array of breakfast food and other vendors was great! I opted for a slice of cherry pie from the Amish stand.. $2!

It was a 9 mile jaunt to New Hampton, a RAGBRAI overnight town 40 years ago in 1977! Cattlemen served up ribeye sandwiches and there were 5 blocks of vendors. Karaoke and a steel drum band from the University of Iowa were memorable diversions. The town's Grand Marshall was Paul Hassman, 103, a former RAGBRAI rider until the late 1980s. Wow. The town had a huge aerial bike sculpture we passed under on arrival, along with bikes mounted on lamp posts. Pretty cool.

Eight miles up the road was Lawler, a first time RAGBRAI town. They host a summer Irishfest, and their theme for today is "Get lucky in Lawler, with t-shirts available. Hmm...  BBQ chicken,sweet corn, pork chops on a stick, pulled pork, and the Hole in the Wall's three kinds of pasta and "top 10 salad bars in the state" were some of the food offerings.There were also “nacho mamas” tacos, sub sandwiches, pie a la mode, bloody Marys, vodka lemonades, and bands. The Starlite Ballroom used to be called Chips and was a peer of the Surf Ballroom.

They drew all the best bands of the day including rock, country, polka, disco and more, tripling the town’s population each weekend. The Irish Fest had Irish music all day and there was once again a petting zoo sponsored by the local 4H. As always, the patriotic Iowa town had a Veterans memorial. Talk about Americana...

A few miles down the road, drawn in by their sign,  I stopped at a family farm for an ice cream sundae...

Thirteen miles ahead was the quaint town of Protivin that hosts Czech Days every August. Norman Borlaug was an American biologist and humanitarian who led initiatives worldwide that contributed to the extensive increases in agricultural production, termed the Green Revolution. He received the Nobel Peace Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the Congressional Gold Medal. He grew up on a 106-acre family farm, just west of town.

Visitors can tour his one-room schoolhouse, house, barn, chicken coop, and corn crib/grainery. A noteworthy quote of his: "I realize how fortunate I was to have been born, to have grown to manhood, and to have received my early education in rural Iowa. That heritage provided me with a set of values that has been an invaluable guide to me in my work around the world. These values have been of great strength in times of despair in my struggle to assist in improving the standards of living of rural people everywhere." There's definitely something about Iowa....

Protivin offered bike shops for repairs, Polka music, Bratwurst, kolaches (central European pastry seen below) and ribeye sandwiches. They also have a cattle processing plant right in town ;(
Early Czech settlers came to Protivin in the mid 1800s, and the Holy Trinity Catholic Church is a focal point in town. The cemetery has tombstones dating back to the mid 1800s. There is also a Czech heritage center here that documents immigration and settlement of  many Iowa communities.

Polashek’s Locker Service is a family owned locker and meat processing business whose family name has been in the business for generations. Andrew Zimmern from Bizarre Foods even visited! Polasheks are famous for their neon green t-shirts with the slogan “Got Jaternice? We Do!” Jaternice (pronounced Eeee-thur-neeet-suh). Jaternice is a bohemian style sausage that is typically made from pork parts. The town's RAGBRAI theme is Welcome to Protivin… Czech Us Out!

From here, it was another 12 miles to our overnight town of Cresco. I arrived around 4pm.  On the way into town, we were greeted by costumed ghouls, zombies, witches and vampires. Apparently, Cresco is known for some paranormal activity, especially in their 1915 Opera House where disembodied voices, feelings of being watched, footsteps, apparitions and object manipulations have been observed. A team of paranormal investigators even set up camp there in 2016 to document it! The town's theme for our visit is Pedal to the Paranormal.

The Chamber office Hall of Fame includes FIVE Navy Admirals from Cresco. Here's a great link to "meet them", all deceased now: http://www.howard-county.com/uploads/PDF_File_24427269.pdf

Also in the Hall of Fame is Ellen Church, the first Flight Attendant. Her story is noteworthy: In 1930, an American nurse and aviation graduate Ellen Church (born in 1904) came to Boeing Air Transport hoping to get a job as a pilot. The company refused to hire Ellen as a pilot, but offered her a position to work as an on-board nurse. 

Ellen was later asked to find 8 more stewardesses for her team, and they were referred to as sky girls and earned an impressive $125 a month. In the 1930s, a girl had to be between 100-118 pounds and 5’ and 5’ 4” tall, and 20-26 years old and to be a registered nurse. In addition to attending to the passengers, they were expected to, when necessary, help with hauling luggage, fueling and assisting pilots to push the aircraft into hangars. According to TIME’s 1938 analysis, the flight attendant jobs were highly competitive, and the hiring process was steeped in sexism. Other airlines followed Boeing's example over the next few years. When WWll began, all of the nurses were enlisted to help out in the war. My mother was an Eastern Airlines Stewardess in the late 1950s.

Enough about Cresco. I didn't have a host tonight, so it was back to camping. We were put up at the County Fairgrounds and it was interesting. Plenty of grass to camp, but our iptions for showering included swine showers with curtains, along with shower trucks.I opted for a $5 COLD swine shower... normally used to wash the pigs off before the fair I assume? 4H groups actually had animals on the premises! Kind of crazy...

I set up my tent close to the baggage trucks and fell asleep early. The ground was hard and the campground noisy, but once again, I was exhausted. Another long day was done!