Jenny’s Journey: Day 3

By Jenny Morgan

Washington resident Jenny Morgan is celebrating her 40th birthday by riding RAGBRAI for the first time. Morgan is providing The Washington Evening Journal with her firsthand account of her ride.

Tuesday, July 23

Today we had 39.9 miles (but) only 1,300 feet of climb. It was pretty flat; however, there were a few hills that were steep that we crawled up, literally. We stayed on our bikes, though, but they were steep.

We had a good day, though. We stopped at Howell's Greenhouse and Pumpkin Patch and it was completely full. I think there was 10,000 people there. They had a bunch of vendors, a lot of fun things for RAGBRAIers, they had a bathtub train. They had old porcelain bathtubs pulling behind a mower and people were going for rides and then they converted a tractor into a pedal bar.

All these people would sit around the tractor and pedal and that would make the tractor go, which was pretty entertaining to watch. So, we started in Winterset, and had a long ride into Cumming, and then we only stopped at Norwalk and then down to Indianola. So all in all, it was a pretty easy day, besides those couple of steep hills, but we're gearing up for the big day tomorrow.

Tomorrow is going to be the biggest day we have at 84.3 miles, so just kind of going to chill this afternoon. My mom came up tonight to spend a couple days with us, so I was really looking forward to that, and all in all, it's been fun. We've talked to some great people and we've had beautiful weather. We couldn't ask for better weather.