Deep Dive Episode 41 ( Ragbrai 2026 Recap ) #Ragbrai #Ragbrai2026 #Iowa #Bicycle

Brad, John, and Tab rehash memories the 2026 Riding of the Idiots, ( Ragbrai 2026 ).

- Brad Becomes Deputy in Dunlap Iowa
- We visit Jan Jensen's family bar in Kimbleton Iowa
- Riding the High Trestle Bridge Trail
- Brad and Tab Exists In Parallel Universe 
- The absolutely amazing The Dig Inn in Reinbeck Iowa
- Team Solid is late for the party and the reek of disappointment 
- John Pulls a GREAT Ragbrai Prank on Brad
- John Carries a Lit Fire Pit 
- Field of Dreams
- Wrap Up

#Ragbrai #Ragbrai2026 #Iowa #Bicycle

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Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:01

Someone who uh rides with us, a member of Team Jackass, his wife's uncle or something had set up this welcome party for us just slightly off route. And of course, you know, as as can often happen with Team Solid, you know, people think that you're on reg ride. They think you're in the part of the ride. So we're gonna go we were told we gotta go see him, so we're not gonna miss it. Somehow I think we load it up on the Pearl, we drive in, we pull up. There's this huge Team Solid sign, they have this beautiful home with this nice front porch, they've got a big cooler full of beer, and as luck would have it, Jack Daniels version of Fireball, whatever that stuff is. Oh, interesting, yeah. In the cooler, all these beers, and of course, they've left. I mean, they they probably waited for us for nine or something. Right, they're like, screw this.

SPEAKER_05 0:46

We just feel the disappointment in the air. So we got off. Like waiting for the great pumpkin, except the pumpkins are fifteen people that are late and smell like beer.

SPEAKER_03 0:55

We felt like the the only insult to injury would be if we didn't like take we took the bottom. Of course. You took the most expensive thing we did. We took some we took some picks from uh from on top of the of the we tried to spell out solid in human bodies. It worked kind of.

SPEAKER_05 1:11

We took liberties with the w women and the and the livestock plugged up the toilet at the time.

SPEAKER_03 1:17

Yeah, right. So right on brand.

SPEAKER_05 1:20

Right on brand all right, boys. Here we are. Karas, Offenberger, Lamont. Well we're missing call. Yeah, missing call. Missing uh calling Karas and Openburger. Yeah, sorry. Doing a little ragbri recap here. We just got back. We're oh I don't know. Piecing it together. 72 hours out or something like that. But uh yeah, so we're gonna do a little we'll gonna do a little recap here and let you know what went down. It was I'll tell you, it was a good rag bri this year. I think Matt had said that uh when it initially started out, it was the shortest rag bri. Um it didn't end up being that way, but um but it was a challenging rag bri. Those first couple days, man. They were it was hot. Yeah. Matter of fact, uh, if you go back and listen to the Matt Phippen podcast, the 39, you know, we talked about what went into him evoking a super sag in the first two days were super sags, which is the weather is dangerous enough where they're worried that people will die, and they have to have school buses and they have to you know bring in semi-trailers to pull people off the route before they get, you know, sick or so.

SPEAKER_03 2:33

Yeah, yeah, there's like the three dead dreaded H's, right? There's heat, hills, and headwinds, and for sure it had the heat. Right. And for sure it had the hills, and there were occasional stretches of headwinds, not terrible, but the combo was was pretty brutal.

SPEAKER_05 2:48

So, for those of you that um don't know that are listening, what Ragbri is, it's a multi-day bike ride, seven-day bike ride, twenty some thousand people. Um we are part of this, the Ragbury is an acronym that stands for Registers Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa. Uh there are seven towns identified, and this uh horde of people, both cyclist and support vehicles, plot along together, and they all end up at the same place at every night. Um and also for those people that are not from Iowa that are they're asking what kind of hills, there's actually a series of pretty significant hills in western Iowa called the Los Hills, which are um sediment-based hills, so there's no bedrock core to them. And these are the same hills that uh Lewis and Clark transversed on the westward. Um so they're they're they're significant, and there's a lot of climbing involved in it. And uh so that was a couple tough days right out of the shoot. Uh Brad, you and I met each other and the first night on Ottawa.

SPEAKER_03 3:53

Right at the get-go.

SPEAKER_05 3:54

We were just kind of like walking down the street together, and there we were. It was kind of crazy.

SPEAKER_03 3:58

We got in. Natalie had her heart set on getting some Jorts cycling uh bibs. Right. So we went to the ragbry thing at the expo, which I'd never, I don't think I'd ever done like first day expo. Maybe maybe the first year I'd done it, but she she wanted to get her jorts, so uh we went in and got him, and I thought I could get my wristband there, and they said, no, you gotta go down to the main campground. And so I start wandering down there, and two things happened with with respect to like meeting up with people, which is not necessarily easy to do on rag bra. Um, I got a text from a colleague of ours, John, um Mike McVay, who was just riding the old school rag bra. They haul your stuff, you set up camp. He was at the main campground. He's texting me, and I'm literally getting ready to answer him, and I almost run into him. So that happened to you twice in a so yeah, immediately after that I get my wristband, and Ray's texting me, and I'm getting ready to answer him, and there's Ray crossing the street. So it was kind of like, whoa, the ragbri gods are shining on us. This is gonna be a good year.

SPEAKER_05 4:56

They just take their ragbrig hands and point you in a certain direction.

SPEAKER_03 5:00

So we connected early on, right at the beginning.

SPEAKER_05 5:03

It was uh it was kind of an unusual rag brai for me because my youngest, his baseball team was in the state playoffs. So um I had my vehicle with me.

SPEAKER_03 5:14

Yeah, it was an interesting way to do this.

SPEAKER_05 5:16

Right. So um buddy of mine, Craig, has some guys that shuttle, he has uh I think he has six kids all together and then a vehicle. And so what they do is they you drive to the next place, they will pick you up and you ride back halfway, or they take your vehicle, which is I did, they run it to the next town, and then they find a place for you to camp, which worked out splendidly because I think they probably did a better job at that than I would. Right, so right, that's not a bad service. So, um, and it was not terribly expensive, so but it gave me an opportunity to both ride and it gave me a chance to see my son play in Cedar Rapids for the state baseball tournament.

SPEAKER_03 5:56

I take my hat off to your dedication to continue to do your streak of rag rise, but also show up for uh that important event. That's it.

SPEAKER_05 6:04

Father's Day cards are earned, they're not given. Right.

SPEAKER_03 6:07

That's right.

SPEAKER_05 6:08

So anyway, so yeah, that first day, um, Brad, I know one of your goals was to pick up a Dunlap, City of Dunlap sanitation overall. What was your close?

SPEAKER_03 6:19

I got close. I did not get sanitation. First of all, I was riding with my daughter that that at the time when we rolled in. And there happened to be a um you had to cross train tracks to get into town, so there happened to be a a train coming by. There's a big welcome to Dunlap sign. So of course immediately we started with the cute picks. So we did cute picks by that. There was another sign, we did them there. Train goes by, we find a few more. Um and I was kind of searching around to see what kind of gear I might be able to find. The best I could do was I got two things from the um fire and rescue right on right across from the Dunlap City Hall where we did a cute pick. Right. Then I went in and told them um Did you take any average picks?

SPEAKER_04 7:00

Or are they all cute? No, they were cute.

SPEAKER_03 7:02

Yeah, there were some not so cute.

SPEAKER_05 7:04

You're talking about Brad and Natalie. Is there any other pick you can take?

SPEAKER_03 7:09

Um and so I wound up with a Dunlap police badge. Right. A police badge. And a Dunlap fire department badge. Right. Which I I was pretty happy with. Right.

SPEAKER_05 7:18

Oh no, that's a great pull.

SPEAKER_03 7:19

And then we went back to the bus. It was already kind of later in the day, not a lot going on.

SPEAKER_05 7:24

This kind of reminds me of like when uh Nixon gave Elvis uh a D badge. Here's a police badge, but don't abuse it.

SPEAKER_01 7:33

I won't. I promise I won't.

SPEAKER_05 7:36

Yeah. You could not get out of there fast enough.

SPEAKER_01 7:39

Citizens are run-assed. Citizens are run-ass.

SPEAKER_04 7:42

I assume these are patches, not not badges. I meant patch. Yeah, patch. So you weren't deputized.

SPEAKER_03 7:48

They were they were patches. Yeah. So so you're you're out of there. So So well, we then go to the bus. We spend a fair amount of time on the bus. Then Natalie and I decide we're gonna push on. And some of the some of the team solid guys were still going at it on the pearl, and we serendipitously leave town going kind of the wrong way, and we ride by uh Dunlap Golf Club. And my dad's a huge, huge golfer. And he had said to me, if you see anything with Dunlap on it and it's reasonable, get it. And you know, he wanted something. So like we now we gotta stop. We gotta go in. Of course, this was when the World Cup Um Argentina and Spain was Argentina and Spain. Is that who was playing that day? Yeah. So they had a whole crew of cyclists in there. There were buses in the parking lot, and it was mayhem inside.

SPEAKER_05 8:31

It's the first time soccer was ever on those television. Exactly.

SPEAKER_03 8:36

And I'm thinking, yeah, country club, perfect. I can get like a hat for him, that'll be super easy. They didn't have any merch except a double extra large black Dunlap golf course. So I wound up getting that. He can wear it as a sleep sleep gown or something like that.

SPEAKER_05 8:51

So just a pro tip next time, just go to the Lost and Found and say, Do you guys have Lost and Found? And then there's gonna be something else.

SPEAKER_03 8:59

That's a good that's a good one. Yeah. So anyway, we we did that, and that was I found that I thought that was successful. We got a few pieces of Dunlap merch and and on we went. So the next night was Harlan, Iowa.

SPEAKER_05 9:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 9:11

Harlan was um Harlan for us. Uh uh Ragbright, typically, for those who might not be super familiar with it, it's going through communities of 1,500, 2,000, sometimes even smaller, and overnighting. So there's obviously not facilities to put up and shower and and take care of all these cyclists. So most people have a camp scene. And early on with this group that I ride with, we kind of adopted the strategy of trying to find a host um in each town that would just give us floor space, airco, flushing toilet. That's really all we'd look for. Um we had a hookup in Harlan, I think it was Harlan, I'm pretty sure it was Harlan that was just off the route, which is great, because sometimes you've got to travel away from the overnight town to find someone that'll put you up. Um but this was a basically a machine shed. And so Natalie had kind of gotten there earlier and realized it was air conditioned, which was which was fantastic, but it was what you would expect a machine shed to be. It was kind of a dirty, dusty, yeah, you know, very utilitarian kind of united. Place to put machines. Yeah, yeah. So what was cool was the pearl could pull completely in it. It was air code, and a lot of the guys slept on the bus. Wow.

SPEAKER_05 10:24

So you slept in the air conditioned building?

SPEAKER_03 10:27

Yeah. Jesus. Yeah. Posh, right? Right. Pretty posh for a rag brice situation.

SPEAKER_05 10:32

I will tell you this, it is still unbelievably hot, and I I spent the night like in a tent with two fans on me and sweating.

SPEAKER_03 10:40

Well, that's what Natalie did. And um I woke up the next morning. I had seen a kind of dilapidated couch right outside the bathroom, and just in my exhausted state, after a hard day of riding, I plopped down with my cycling shoes on and my helmet and promptly conked out. So I slept that way all night. Natalie wakes up crack a dawn.

SPEAKER_05 11:02

I assume since it's a machine shed that there were like no windows in it. You didn't know it was so dark. It was you didn't know whether it was two o'clock in the afternoon or twelve o'clock at night.

SPEAKER_03 11:10

Right. And so Natalie wanted to get a good start on the day because we had big plans for the next day where we wanted to stop in um Kimbleton to go to Jan's uh brother. Jan Jensen's pub.

SPEAKER_05 11:22

Jan Jensen, uh women's Iowa head basketball coach, her brother has a bar in Kimbleton, Iowa, which was three miles away from Elkorn, which is an which is a pass-through town.

SPEAKER_03 11:34

So we got a great start. I was just still wearing my stuff from yesterday. And we we we rocked out of there, and the solids eventually caught up with us. But we rode to Elkorn, and I I I I'm sure you stopped there. One of the things that Natalie wanted to do, because one of her complaints with the pace that we ride at is a lot of times the towns are shutting down. But maybe we're there for the first town or the second, but towards the end of the day, town three and four, they're they're long closed. Like the vendors are closed, the stuff is gone. What did Vippen refer to? The lost dogs of Ragnarok. Yeah, exactly. So uh she was hell-bent that she wanted to get to Elkhorn, which has this um American Danish museum. Right. And they also had this um these trolls. These Danish trolls, yeah. There's this this Danish artist who's put up a few hundred around the world, and one of them's in Elkhorn. I I guess there's a couple in Sioux City. And so they had covered on Iowa Public Radio, and Natalie was definitely wanted to go see it. So we rolled down there. It was cool. It's cool to see. Did you see it? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 12:35

They're like multi-story, maybe two stories tall, and they're made with um sometimes found material, natural material. But yeah, this Danish artist makes these trolls, and then um he kind of makes them fit into their environment. Like if there's trees around, he'll incorporate the trees, and what if there's water. Um, so it's really cool. I mean, it's it's a really cool thing to have in the community.

SPEAKER_03 12:57

It was it was a it's an impressive thing. It was also a great stop for me because given what I described about how I spent the night, my phone was dead, and I did have a charger in my fanny pack. So we went into the Danish Museum, which had was air co you know, super nicely air conditioned, and I got a charge on. We had a cup of coffee, we talked to a lot of people about Jan Jensen, and and of course they all knew her. And we had a nice time in there, I got a full charge, then we decided we were gonna offer out and roll over to Kimbleton. Yeah. So that's what we did.

SPEAKER_05 13:26

To luggers. To luggers, man. So very nice. Um if you listen to the Jan Jensen interview, uh her brother has her brother had a world-class dive bar. I mean, it really was an honest to goodness great dive bar. Yeah. Her niece runs it now. Yep. Um I will say everything that she said about it was true and probably she undercut it. Yeah, she she or didn't she undersold it. There was, well, first of all, there was the the shrine that the nice uh acknowledged.

SPEAKER_03 13:58

Homage to Jan's career, which is cool for sure. And but it was very heavily Budweiser branded with some of the traditional kind of signage and the Clydesdales and things like that. Right. Um, I think it was uh Melanie and her mother were working the bar. I think they had two people, maybe maybe a third running the the back. We wound up getting uh frozen pizza. She says the only food program is the frozen pizza. We ordered three, and the guy, a local, comes up to me because there's it's off-route, so there's not a lot of there are a few writers in there who who took who off-route it over, but not many. It was mainly more locals, and the guy says, Now you know these are gonna come out one at a time. There's one there's space for one pizza. There's one. So it was we were the we we soaked it in. We were there for quite quite some time.

SPEAKER_05 14:40

We got three different pizzas and um well, Brad, there was actually something else on the food program that you were able to celebrate a little bit. There was something else on the food program that we were able to celebrate. They had munchos. Oh, they did have munchos. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, they had munchos. And Jan said, No, I don't imagine them having munchos. They didn't they had a lot of munchos. No, I don't know if the expiration date was good. It was the whole thing. How would you tell with a muncho, right? You had your pick of munchos. Styrofoam player.

SPEAKER_03 15:10

Is there a stale muncho? I think they make them that way. But yeah, it was it was the program that we've talked about. The food was hand, you know, the food program was written, they were frozen pizzas, or you could get something off of a chip clip. And then they had, you know, not I think Natalie asked for a do you have a blue moon? She's like, Is that something I make? Right. You know, Melanie's mom's like, Is that a mixer? And he's like, No, it's a fear, you know. Well, it was it really was a great experience. It was it was perfect, and we got to talk about Jan, and I wish she could have made it, and I know she wanted to be there, but took a good team picture and soaked it in really nicely at luggers and and had a good session. Unfortunately for Melanie, she was telling us this build it's like an a hundred and some year old building, and their whatever ton you know air co system goes out the night before. So they're trying to cool it off with fans, and it was but it was great. It was a it was a great, great stop, and they were super gracious, and and we had a we had a hell of a good time there.

SPEAKER_05 16:07

The next night we stayed, or that night we stayed in Guthrie Center. Yeah. I kind of that's when I peeled off because I had to be at Pep Cedar Rapids the next day. Yeah, uh, what was your experience like in Guthrie Center?

SPEAKER_03 16:18

Guthrie, we were hosted by um a guy who's big in the Iowa Corn Association, and so one of our one of the members of the team is close with a gal who does marketing for them, and so he was just like we didn't know him. He it was like a friend of a friend, and um he and his son were fantastic hosts. They had the most enormous dogs of all time. I don't know what breed these they were, but they were huge. Um aircoat up, um had a good time, good sleeping accommodations. We went into we went into town and and hit the bars, and it was a really nice overnight stop.

SPEAKER_05 16:50

The uh next day that Tuesday, Guthrie Center to Boone. There was a pass-through of Perry, Iowa. Perry's an interesting town. Um Perry's a super multicultural town. There's a lot of uh different influences. There's uh they have a meat packing plan, but they have some uh Croatian influences, they have some Hispanic influences, uh, and they have some old school people that have been in Perry for six generations. But did you stop in Perry?

SPEAKER_03 17:16

Um I'm trying to remember because I had uh we each stay, it's Perry's been in overnight before, and a friend of mine from college actually lives in the area, farms in the area. Um I'm trying to remember if we stopped in Perry. I'm sure we must have.

SPEAKER_05 17:30

So um if you are traveling and you bring your bicycles, Perry's a really great place to stay at. They have a hotel there called Hotel Pate, and it's kind of has a well, it hasn't it's been restored. It has an amazing Frank Lloyd Wright kind of environment to it. It's it's really cool little hotel. And down the basement they have a bowling alley. So you could go down there and bowl, also air conditioned, right? Uh great restaurant attached to it. I the rooms are themed, a lot of Iowa themes in the rooms. Um, but the other part of the reason you should visit Perry, Iowa with your bicycles is they just hooked up that line uh trail system, yeah. And it's hooked up to the high trail system now. So you can stay in Perry and then ride the high trestle and okay.

SPEAKER_03 18:19

That's what we did. We jumped on the that's what Team Solid did. We jumped on the high trestle trail and rode from Perry into uh into Boone.

SPEAKER_05 18:26

Which that's all railroad grade. I mean, that's flat. It's fantastic, you know. And the going that direction is downhill. Uh Boone, Iowa was one of our overnight stays, and it was uh pretty amazing too. It's a railroad town. You know, a lot of these um towns that we stayed in still have a a live railroad to them, so no matter where you put your tent at night, you you were getting, you know, a railroad horn at two o'clock in the morning and it was blowing, you know, if not one, maybe several of them. So I guess uh maybe a reflection of our economy. But all of these communities that uh used to be railroad towns, there's still some that are.

SPEAKER_04 19:04

Well, are Boone? We stayed at the year that we rode it to Ragbri road out from the east out to the west. And we stayed in Boone and we stayed at a hotel that had three queen beds in it. Right for the railroads. That's one of the railroad crews, you know. Very favorite, you don't see that option very often when you check into a courtyard. That's one of my favorite pictures. Double queen or triple queen. Right. Yeah, we had the triple queen.

SPEAKER_03 19:27

I'm I'm just consulting my phone so I can kind of piece together you know the sequence of things. One one place I didn't mention, and I don't know if you stopped there, but outside Penora, there was a farmer who had I don't know if he's a farmer, but he lived on the edge of town and set up that tiki bar. Did you stop there? Oh, I didn't stop there. That was insane. Right. Yeah. It was like right out of town, and we had a long stop there until the state patrol came in and shut it down. But they they put up a tiki bar and they had a full service, you know, they were doing mixed ranks. It wasn't just like a keg and you know everybody gets pushed light. It was like you could order what you wanted to. We had a really nice uh stop there.

SPEAKER_05 20:02

You know, a lot of times we talk about these the pass-through towns, you know, that and the overnight towns. The overnight towns are where you park your bike for the night and shower and eat and stuff. The pass-through towns are what gets you from one place to another, but really there are some pretty outstanding great Iowa experiences just in the front yard of these farmhouses where these people, you know, the rag bright, 20,000 people are passing the front of their house, and they're like, All right, today's our day. We're gonna get some beers, we're gonna make a water slide, we're gonna have mud volleyball, we're gonna, you know, and they really do a good job of being representatives for the state of Iowa for one day. And they're just families, they're farm families. That's great. Yep. Were you gonna say something else, Brad?

SPEAKER_03 20:47

No, I'm just going through this. Is this these are shots from the High Trestle Trail at night, which is really cool.

SPEAKER_05 20:51

So you were out on the High Trestle Trail at night. Yeah. Yeah. Fantastic. So the High Trestle Trail, um, High Trestle is a railroad trestle. There's a couple of them around that boon area, and uh the mid part of Iowa had made a conscious decision about 20 years ago to become the trail capital of the world. So if you do get to Des Moines, you can ride several hundred miles of trails all over. But kind of the crown jewel of this is a high trestle um bridge over the Des Moines River that they built. I don't know how many stories up you are, maybe eight stories, maybe more. Probably probably. And um so the the surface is a fine, it's a flat surface, it's smooth, it's great. Um but they also commissioned this artist to build this installation on the the trail system, and when you ride a certain way, I think it's towards Perry, it looks like you're going down a mineshaft. So that's kind of it's the illusion is as you're going at ten. Miles an hour, it looks like you're kind of going down a mine shaft. Um the artist also put illuminated it with LED. So if you do it at night, it's really cool. Really cool.

SPEAKER_03 22:10

So um Yeah, we made bar stops in woodwork. Or wood yeah, woodwork. Yeah. And then we went then the the the nice thing also about the Hyde Wrestle Trail is you know, people have figured out that like you got a lot of people passing by, so there's really good bars. There's nice bike-friendly bars set up along the way. So we spent a lot of time at the flat tire lounge, which I think is in Madrid. Madrid. All right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 22:33

And that's a great dive bar too. Yeah. I mean, that's it's a Kwanzaa hut. Yeah. It's I know what it is, what it is. It's a biker bar, but it's uh no, it's that's a good observation. I mean, a lot of these little towns like uh Jamaica and places like that were there just wasn't anything in it. There were some people that had some houses that you know they would commute into Ames or Boone or Des Moines. Um but when that bike trail opened up, these restaurants, I mean, there are restaurants and bars that the side of the bar opens up like a garage door, yeah, you know, because they want people to stop in. So it I've heard people say that cycling's kind of the new golf. Like people will bring their golf clubs and and go spend some money in a town and cycling is like that too. So well, that's kind of cool. You guys went off route like that. And I think that you know, when you're on Rag Bray and you hear about a trail or you hear about uh something special, I don't think there's anything wrong with getting off the route a little bit and it's not. Not at all.

SPEAKER_03 23:29

It was great. So boon, I'm doing I'm again I'm consulting my photos, and it's good to have these because then you remember some of the some of the hairbrained things that happened. So Team Solid was riding together, we've ridden together for many years. And we had this satellite team called the numbskulls, which are made up of some Cole boys. So Jason Cole, who's ridden with Solid for a long time. His um his uncle Tim has also been on Rag Bryant with Solid, but then he had two nephews that were gonna do it for the first time and they branded themselves. And so that morning, and boom, we wake up and we're gonna we're gonna get going. And Team Solid is John figured out. Doesn't roll. There's a whole process to get the program together, and it's a it's an hour and a half. Right. Right from the time that people start acting like they're ready to go to the time we're actually rubber down. So one of my biggest I don't know if I call it a mistake, but I I took my general philosophy on Ragbright is you don't need to really know exactly where you're going in terms of the route because there's a bunch of people and you just follow them where you should go. So I wasn't I didn't look at the map, and Bird Dog was going to lead us out. That morning we rode 12 miles of gravel. Yeah, he's got a nose for things. He's got a nose for things, right? I don't know. But directions is not it. Yeah, so so him and his uncle Tim and I rode. I said I kept saying so it's so peaceful this morning because we're out there on these unmaintained gravel roads. I'm on my stick bike with like not really gravel-friendly tires. Right. All of us were in that. Right. And we made it. So I mean, I guess the the upside is I I figured out that my my my bike is gravel capable. Now we 12 miles is a long way to be off route. It was a long extent of gravel.

SPEAKER_05 25:02

Was it at least kind of in the same direction as where you wanted to be?

SPEAKER_03 25:06

Yeah, we wound up. I don't know. If I think we did a few extra miles, but not a ton. So it's a story, it was good. We got it.

SPEAKER_05 25:12

No, that's all right. That's I mean, that's kind of what it is. But there's also no water out there, there's no food, there's no No, there's nothing.

SPEAKER_03 25:19

There's nobody, just big dogs. Right.

SPEAKER_05 25:21

It's kind of like when you're a kid, I'm just gonna ride out in a gravel road.

SPEAKER_03 25:24

Yeah, see what happens. So then we get to Gilbert, which was a good stop. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 25:28

So Marshalltown, I get a little surprise. Uh, when one of my friends, Brian Kaske, shows up, just like I I didn't have any idea he was going to show up, and so he kind of does exactly what I do. He's he's got a car and he's got a bike, and he just kind of uh gets in the slipstream. Yeah, figures out how to make that work. So we got a chance to ride with him. You know, the the funny thing is um I can't remember what movie is, but there's a movie where two people navigate in two parallel time contingencies, right? They're in the same place at the same time, but one's in 1984 and the other one's in 1987. I felt like that night in Marshalltown, that was you and I, like we were in the same place, but we were never in the same room. Yeah. But that was kind of interesting. That like we both told the same story. God, we had to see each other, but there was nobody there. Yeah, yeah. But Lucy's, yeah, so that was a decent dive bar. Yeah. And they would they have a mariachi band or something in the back.

SPEAKER_03 26:28

It was more of a like 80s rock, you know, like doing doing kind of the ragbry classics. So yeah, it was interesting. It was a it was an interesting mix of locals and and riders, and there were some kind of there was some goings on in terms of like uh almost fisticuffs. It got a little bit, right?

SPEAKER_05 26:47

And it didn't have to be ragbry riders versus.

SPEAKER_03 26:50

No, I think it was more locals looking for locals, yeah. Yeah. Um, but yeah, we had a good night there for sure.

SPEAKER_05 26:56

So, no, that was a good night. So then the next day, uh it's Marshalltown to Independence. Now, this John, you definitely hop on here.

SPEAKER_04 27:04

I did. I met the team at Grandy Center.

SPEAKER_05 27:06

So um I think probably my highlight for the day was in Ryanbeck, Iowa. And I stop out in front of this bar. I usually don't stop at the first bar on the left or the first bar on the right. Everybody always says that, but I always keep going. And so I turn to this corner because I had seen this bar, I'd seen what I thought was a bar, but I didn't know if it was open or not. And I get around the corner and there's a white tent out front, like, well, this is at least promising. And they were vending beers off the front end of this bar. And the beer selection wasn't bad. It was pretty decent beer. And so I um asked the guy, I said, So can we go in the bar? And he goes, Well, he goes, I'm kind of we're just vending off the front. He goes, if you want to sit down, we have a patio in the back. Is that something you want to do? And it's kind of mid-block, so if I would have wanted to go to the back, I would have had to walk half a block down, half a block over, half a block up. And um, so I said, Yeah, I'd I'd kind of like I've got buddies that are coming. I'm calling them in right now. And so he goes, All right, we'll just walk through the bar. They're just trying they didn't want a whole bunch of rag bra inside the bar. And when I got in there, I immediately saw why. This place is called the Dig In. It's in Rhinebach. If you go on Facebook, go look at it now. It stopped me in my tracks. Epic. It was an amazing bar on about four or five different levels. First of all, Ben, if you're listening, I apologize. It's a record story.

SPEAKER_03 28:29

I was gonna say, it's not, it's it's yeah, it's got a great vinyl collection. Yeah. And artifacts. It's a bar with vinyl. I mean, yeah, it was so good.

SPEAKER_05 28:39

So I walk in and they're playing The Dead 1968 at the Philmont. Okay. And the way the music program works there is they put an album on and it plays all the way through. I love it. It's it is really cool. I mean, there's no like I want to hear this song or anything like that. So there's probably I mean, I'm just kind of spitbone here, maybe 3,500 vinyl, you know, in there. He sells them. He also sells stands for vinyl that uh they're cut steel. Okay. And so he he does that, he makes that.

SPEAKER_03 29:16

But this bar the paraphernalia was amazing. It was amazing.

SPEAKER_05 29:19

He's got it set up. It's a lot of hams forward.

SPEAKER_04 29:22

Yeah, as I say, he had a lot of great 70s beer signage, yeah. Heavy on the hams, really cool stuff. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 29:28

Um, he had kind of like lounge type of seatings, very mid-century modern furniture.

SPEAKER_03 29:36

Very mid-mod stuff. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 29:38

And um man, it was such a great experience. And he had the AC clicked on. You're gonna if if you're not from if you haven't picked up on it yet, AC carries a lot of currency on Ragbri. Absolutely. But man, it just I just couldn't stop looking at everything.

SPEAKER_03 29:54

I think I told you this coming because that's another kind of experience you have if you've been out in the hot sun riding through the cornfields and on highways, and you get into these small towns and then you're overwhelmed with this place, it was like sensory overload. I like it, it was almost too much to take in and you had to like step back and kind of like, whoa, where like I stepped into a I stepped into this weird little time capsule kind of a vibe.

SPEAKER_05 30:17

If you need a day trip and you're in Des Moines or Ames or Marshalltown, or I'm trying to think what else is up around there, just listen, g get on the phone or ping um Ben and just say, Hey, I'm gonna make the trip, and just go and plan to be there four or five hours. There's just so much stuff to see, and it's such a a great place. I told him, like, if this was in Minneapolis, you would have to like charge admission at two o'clock in the afternoon. I mean, it was just uh a pretty amazing.

SPEAKER_04 30:48

Well, if you're listening to this and you feel like you want to double click on it, uh stay tuned because Ben wanted us to come record an episode. Right. And we promised him that.

SPEAKER_03 30:59

So you need to make that happen. We gotta do that. Yeah. Um I had my first, I didn't know it existed, Ryan, Ryan Becker, Ronbacher beer, which I didn't know was a thing. Right. And then we ran into um the cat from um Top Link Goliath, right? Yeah, uh Clint Wheatley.

SPEAKER_05 31:14

Clint Wheatley, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 31:15

Clint had a lot of insights. Yeah, if Clint's if Clint's hearing this, he was a great guy to chat with because in his line of work, he's gone around to a lot of places and he was giving us kind of his top ten list of or maybe not top ten, but his his top list of spots, and he has some pretty good things.

SPEAKER_04 31:36

Well, we'd be remiss if we didn't talk about the patio, then that ultimately you were being led to, which had some just great old lawn chair type seating, right? Variety of coolers. It was and then I know you and I were enjoying the beverages and stuff, and Brad being the mechanic that he is, they had an amazing kind of homemade recumbent bicycle. I think by the craftsmanship. Brad was looking for tools. He was getting yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 31:58

They had some Franken bikes out there. They were like two bikes welded together. So awesome. Some farmer had put together. Yeah, Brad Bike.

SPEAKER_03 32:05

Beautiful, glorious.

SPEAKER_05 32:06

So um, but yeah, that was such a highlight, definitely a ragbrat highlight. And there was a lot of good buddy time there. I felt like I was really I felt like I was soaking in you guys. I felt like it was a good sit down and we really had a good time there.

SPEAKER_04 32:19

So and true to Brad Form, the guy that had built the bike was there, and Brad's like, that's so cool. What inspired you to build it? Oh, my wife got hit by a boss and kidnapped. I had to build this so I could ride her around town.

SPEAKER_05 32:32

I'll show my way out.

SPEAKER_04 32:33

That's really pretty bike.

SPEAKER_05 32:36

So, yeah, be looking, uh we're gonna do a little field trip. I think we're gonna try to get to Des Moines and do something with the High Life and then do something at uh Ryanbeck. So be looking forward to that, friends, because that's gonna be a great trip. Yes. Uh spent the night in independence. Uh we should say by now the fever broke. That was a tolerable weather, and that was nice.

SPEAKER_03 32:55

Yeah. I was gonna just mention when when John John uh jumped in in Grundy, we had a long stop there, and I did not know this, but um a famous kind of French style, kind of you get it at your roadside taverns and your fish fries and where wherever you might go, your supper clubs was the western dressing, which I did not realize was made. I I don't know why, but I did not know that it was made in Grundy.

SPEAKER_05 33:18

So the place of origin is Grundy, like that's the formula was was was figured out. So in Grundy, Iowa. Yeah, Grundy Center first.

SPEAKER_03 33:27

And so we were invited. So again, we stayed a long time. Tom had a bunch of family, he wanted to meet up with some guys from school and and so forth, and we met a we met the local, what was the guy's name who wanted the tang bomb? Uh he was walking around with his walking stick and he was like a county supervisor. He was a county super Iowa. His last name was Pabst. Yes, his name was Pabst. Ben Pabst? Ben Papst, something like that. Yeah. So we had a long soak with him, and then we're getting ready to mount up, and then no, we're gonna stop at this place. One of one of uh Tom Schmatt's buddies um has has a joint, and they had been serving, but they were like officially closed. We go in the side door and you know, we get some beers, and then they come out with all this food that was.

SPEAKER_04 34:07

Well, I was gonna say, you talk about iconic, you know, some rag brave foods that are unique. These were pork tenderloin strips that everyone I think thought they were chicken tenders. It was unbelievable. And but they were pork tenderloin tenders. I'd never seen that before. They were great, though.

SPEAKER_03 34:21

They were fantastic. So we did our best to try to finish some of that off. And they had all this Grundy Center like memorabilia and pictures of you know the state champion team that some of these guys were that Tom Schmad was on, and his dad was a coach there. So yeah, we s we had a couple beers and a bunch of fried pork, which is what you need. Yeah. And then we eventually rambled. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 34:44

So Western dressing um is a sweet tomato-based French style. Uh salad dressings, but it it's uh it's made with savory spices, which I think there's a cayenne in a western, which makes it different than a the town would frequently smell like paprika.

SPEAKER_04 35:00

Oh, paprika, yeah. Yeah, that's right. That's right.

SPEAKER_05 35:03

So they didn't want to give away the recipe, but they definitely said but it does smell like paprika. So if you have any French laying around with some paprika, then good stuff.

SPEAKER_03 35:13

You too can be. Anyway, sorry. We were I took us back to Grundy, so then we we jumped to Rhine Beck and then we rolled into Independence.

SPEAKER_05 35:20

Yeah. So Independence was good. They had uh nice band. You know the bands for people that uh are from Iowa, it was um Almost Brothers, Hairball, the stakeholders spasmatics, and I can't remember who the other one was, but pork tornadoes, yeah. So all of the cylinders were hit. Yeah, but uh that's your vibe. Yep. We will get to the the ride between independence and Dyersville. Yeah, another wonderful day. Uh John is still with us on Rag Bride. Made it today, too. Are you riding with Brad? Or are you kind of Yeah?

SPEAKER_04 35:53

Well, remember we started that day. We tried to go get a beverage, a coffee, or whatever at the Casey's in Independence. That of all my years on Rag Bride, I've never seen a line to check out at like I have at this. It snaked all the way through the store and like back to the door. It was insane. So we ended up going to a little cafe that was down the road, and fortunately we were able to snag a couple coffees because Team Solid, as Brad already said, was taking their time to get on the road. And this would uh was Fireball Friday for Team Solid. Yeah, so but I was a little disappointed when we got back to the bus. It didn't seem like there was fireball to start the day, so I had to tap into my supply on my bike bag to get us started. Right. Yeah, so we started with coffee and fireball. It was deep in the cooler, you know, all the things.

SPEAKER_05 36:35

I ran into you guys early in the morning in independence, and you guys said you just walked down the road uh to get Casey's coffee. Uh yeah, and I ran into you guys. Yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 36:48

Yeah, you were driving, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 36:50

You guys were like a mile away. You just wasn't down the road.

SPEAKER_03 36:54

You guys like were a long way away. We knew there'd be plenty of time to get out of it.

SPEAKER_05 36:58

So I know that Independence has a lot of coffee shops. People that are from Independence goes like we've got 12 coffee shops. I know, but they're all like in the same block. If you get outside the downtown, it's Casey's, and that's it. It's that's what it was. It was a haul for you guys. Um, yeah, there is a terminology in urban engineering, civil engineering, called the rubber band effect, and it's what happens when you're at a stoplight and one car takes off from the stoplight, and then the other car slowly follows, and then by the time you get to the car number six, there's this really long delay. That's how I would explain what team solids like getting ready. You've got like one person that's like, all right, let's get going, and then you got another person, like, yeah, okay, I'm ready to go. And then the third person goes, well, I guess we should get going. And then by person six or seven, they're still like, I'm gonna put my pants on. Oh yeah, you gotta get it.

SPEAKER_03 37:51

The sunscreen, do I charge my things? Right. Is the music ready to go? Blah, blah, blah. Right. We have a whole litany of checklists that we go through, pump up the tires. It's it's a whole routine. But yeah, we eventually get there. Um, yeah, I was just the only other thing I'm seeing through my looking through trolling through my phone is someone who uh rides with us, a member of Team Jackass, his wife's uncle or something had set up this welcome party for us, just slightly off-route. And of course, you know, as as can often happen with Team Solid, you know, people think that you're on reg ride, they think you're in the heart of the ride. So we're gonna go, we were told we gotta go see him, so we're not gonna miss it. Somehow I think we load it up on the Pearl, we drive in, we pull up. There's this huge Team Solid sign, they have this beautiful home with this nice front porch, they've got a big cooler full of beer, and as luck would have it, Jack Daniels version of Fireball, whatever that's oh, interesting, yeah. In the cooler, all these beers, and of course, they've left. I mean, they they probably waited for us for nine or something. Right.

SPEAKER_05 38:56

They're like, screw this, we just can feel the disappointment in the air. So when you got off the phone, it's kind of like waiting for the great pumpkin, except the pumpkins are 15 people that are hurt late and smell like beer.

SPEAKER_03 39:06

We felt like the the only insult to injury would be if we didn't like take we took the box. Of course. First of all, you took the most expensive thing we didn't. We took some we took some pics from uh from on top of the of the we tried to spell out saw solid in human bodies. It did work kind of.

SPEAKER_05 39:22

And took liberties with the w women and and the livestock plugged up the toilet and left. Yeah. Right.

SPEAKER_03 39:29

So right on brand. Right on brand. Then we get to Manchester, which I think is what you really want to talk about.

SPEAKER_05 39:35

So when we get to Manchester, boy, I wish I could remember the name of the bar.

SPEAKER_03 39:39

We started off at uh there was the one on the river, which is where a lot of the team saw guys. You went to, I took a picture, it's right outside of a Chinese restaurant. It was called like blue collar. Blue collar bar. It's a good pull, Brad. Good code. Blue collar.

SPEAKER_05 39:53

And it was good. I'll tell you what, if you are in Manchester, Iowa, and you are thirsty for a high octane vodka lemonade. A four dollar vodka.

SPEAKER_03 40:03

Four dollar vodka lemonade, it will take paint off the wall. Right.

SPEAKER_05 40:06

They were not uh and it was an absolute vodka, too. So anyway, it was uh that was a nice stop. Yep, nice little Chinese restaurant. Uh Brad and his boys are at someplace on the river. I can't remember if Eddie's on the river or something like that.

SPEAKER_03 40:19

And uh this is a cool scene. People were getting in the water and that whole like Hams commercial on this.

SPEAKER_05 40:26

Uh if you are wanting to do a little day vacation, Manchester, Iowa has taken their river that runs through their town, and they have dropped um concrete barriers in their river, and they've created a water park. So um you can kayak and they have tubing. Yeah, tubing. They just have tubes there, they have some uh some life vests, and you can just go, it costs you nothing. It's just the river that runs through town, and there's it's really kind of a cool setup. You go down the river and then you just walk up and go down and begin. So uh so anyway, Brad rallies his dudes, and John and I are at American Legion Post 45, and we actually got to we knew how much time we had before Brad rallied his dudes.

SPEAKER_04 41:09

We debated going to Moana. Right. But we go to the Legion. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 41:15

So we actually got to see what it looked like to see a Legion Post open up, right? Turning on the lights, doing the money. It just came to life right in front of us. It was so good. Fabulous.

SPEAKER_03 41:26

And so good stuff. I think we got some pizza.

SPEAKER_04 41:30

The steak fry was the next night. Right. Yeah, it's all right. We got tombstone. We had Ray asked for what's on the menu. Tombstone. Right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 41:37

And it was the same thing as luggers. There was gonna be one tombstone made, and then there was going to be the second tombstone made after. Um Ray, what what's on the tombstone? Yeah. Yeah. That was the answer. Yeah. Yeah. We could have. Whatever they pulled out is what we got. There was no throwing a fit. Yeah. And so we're having a pretty okay time there. I want to say we were having a really good, and we were soaking each other. There were other teams that were there. That was kind of fun to hear their kind of aspect. Some dude brought in probably about 150 bucks worth of pizzas. Yeah. Holy crap. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 42:14

Team Balls, I think it was. Yeah. Maybe some of the lizards.

SPEAKER_05 42:16

Good good pizza. I can't remember what that was. I think it's called Joey's or Joe's or something like that. Good pizza. It was good pizza. Um, but the part of the story that begins right now is Brad starts manifesting. And that's the only thing I can say is Brad is manifesting, and he's holding court, and he goes, You know, I remember this time. And who are you?

SPEAKER_03 42:40

With my my my my dearly departed buddy uh Lude that we do the lewd ride for, Mark Liebek. We had this moment, I don't know, mid-eight, mid-90s, where we found a bowling alley on the edge of town, and we had this little game.

SPEAKER_05 42:52

So he goes, Okay, and uh we've got to be passing through a town that has a bowling alley. And Lude, when we get a strike, we don't have to do shots, and when somebody got a spare, we'd had to finish our beers. And you kind of like systematically kind of laid all this down. He goes, But we've got to have a bowling alley. And the guy goes, Well, Manchester has a bowling alley, and Brad's face just kind of I don't want to say lit up, but it just kind of resided in the fact that this is gonna happen. There we go. This is gonna happen. And I will tell you, when it's Brad trying to get things around, shit happens. Like it happened, they it might take them an hour to take off in the morning, but when Brad has a manifest destiny, it happens. Bowling was gonna happen. Yeah. So we we leave a half a pizza on the bar and maybe some beer in the thing, and we are going to bowl. Indeed. And so we all end up at this what was the name of the bowling alley? Alleycat.

SPEAKER_03 43:52

I'm not entirely sure. You might have receipts for it. Yeah, I don't know. Well, I'll let you tell the rest of that story. But yeah, so um so Or a credit card charge. I don't know.

SPEAKER_05 44:02

So we go to this bowling alley and Brad's greatest dreams come true. He manifested this. There's shots.

SPEAKER_03 44:09

We'll have it's cool in there. Not a lot of people. I was surprised it wasn't packed with rag mass. Yeah. But they were glad to see us. Buckets of beer. Buckets of beer.

SPEAKER_04 44:19

All the shots. Yeah, it was like an oasis, like a desert oasis.

SPEAKER_03 44:23

And so Bird Dog and Beachman start yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 44:29

Remember, it's Fireball Friday, so we're and they're into game number two. And Phipps, like frame three of game number two, Phipps gets up and he goes up and he's asking a question. And I'm like, why does he maybe he's gonna bowl? That's so that's what kind of what I resided to the fact that he was gonna come back with a set of shoes and he was gonna like put on a clinic. Yeah. But instead he comes back and he goes, You about done with your beer?

SPEAKER_03 44:57

That wrist thing that he carries when he rides.

SPEAKER_05 44:59

Right, he has case I either want to bowl or catch a falcon. Right. I'm always ready. So he goes, Are you about done with your beer? And I said, Uh yeah. And he I said, Are you ready to ride? And he goes, Yeah, I'm ready to go after you're finished with your beer. And so I finish off my beer and go to the bathroom. And John is walking out the door, and I'm like, Jesus, he's on a click. So I chase after him and he's getting in his bag and he's putting stuff in his bag.

SPEAKER_03 45:26

The Irish goodbyes me while I'm monkeying around. Right.

SPEAKER_05 45:29

I don't even say goodbye at all. So I guess I Irish good buyed you too. But um, so John's shoving stuff in his bike bag, and uh at this point he goes, We had to get out of there before Brad was done. And I said, Why? John, you want to pick it up from here?

SPEAKER_04 45:45

Well, what I was shoving in the bag was Brad's cycling slippers, his vintage leather bike shoes. Um so yeah, I figured as Brad was bowling, he looked comfortable in the shoes. They looked festive and suitable for yeah, uh red, white, and blue and all that. So I went up to the counter and told the lady that we were taking those shoes and offered her a fair price. Uh after a brief negotiation, we settled up, and so the shoes were paid in cash. And uh I let her know that I was taking Brad's shoes so he would have no option other than to take the shoes I paid for. I let Bird Dog know so he would be in on it. Yeah. And yeah, packed Brad's cycling shoes in the bag. You and I rode away, and that left Brad with no other option other than to take the slick and the racing slicks.

SPEAKER_03 46:30

The kindness was you must have somehow figured out because someone was asking me, what's your actual proper uh bowling shoe size? Because I was crushing the back of someone's tens, and I'm like, I'm like I'm I'm like an eleven and a half or twelve. Right. And if you would have just left me with those tens, and so the gal comes back, she goes, I think I think this should fit you or your your friend, these are for you. So I'm like, oh perfect.

SPEAKER_05 46:52

So the the funny part about this for those that are don't understand why it's so funny is um when you have cycling shoes, the pedals that you ride with on your bike are not flat. They're not like the pedals you had when you were an 11-year-old kid. These actually have couplings in it that are really similar to like ski boots. Yeah. So what you're riding on when you have cycling shoes is basically a one and a half inch by a one and a half inch platform that aren't flat. They are you know, they're meant to click in so you can um pull up on the pedal when you're pedaling. So uh it's really hard to ride on these pedals if you don't have cycling shoes.

SPEAKER_03 47:30

Now, lucky for me, mine are click-ins on one side, and I do have like a plastic stubby little plastic flat on the other side, so it was more manageable than if they were full egg beaters.

SPEAKER_05 47:42

Right. Yeah. Well, I will tell you, for whatever John paid, the reasonable price for your bowling shoes, part of that cost also went into the fact that she was her acting like when you went up there pointing at the sign, we're not responsible for any stolen items. I mean, she had to do a little bit of acting too for some of that money.

SPEAKER_04 48:03

So we rode with Brad's cycling shoes about seven and a half miles to where the Pearl was docked. Right. Uh and this is where Boz maybe kind of let you down. But I went in and took the shoes in because I did want to take care of these shoes, because these are kind of your pride and joy, these cycling shoes.

SPEAKER_03 48:18

They've done many a mile with me.

SPEAKER_04 48:19

Yeah, so I took him in, I told Boz, like, these are Brad's shoes. Let's leave them here so he has them when he gets here. My intention was really only for you to ride seven miles. We were 21 miles out. Yeah. I don't something got lost in translation either. You didn't look hard, Boz didn't clue you in, whatever happened, but Brad ended up tapping the whole 21 miles out in the red white shoes.

SPEAKER_03 48:37

Not to mention, I did. And we we survived. It was they were a little snug, but I'm not complaining. They're beautiful shoes. Yeah. Um, they also, it was one of those classic rag bride scenes along the side of a road. Somebody had tents put up and they were selling beers and they had done the old farm uh farm manufactured slip and slides. Water slide, yeah. So they had these giant sheets of clear plastic and they had the frothy uh you know, soapy water. And so of course, what do we you know? We pull in. We I I did it in the I they went down twice.

SPEAKER_04 49:07

Yeah, no, you could have surfed those upright. I know, those slicks, they were built for that. But anyway, yeah, a good time there. So you got them a little wet and soapy, but they still ride fine. Absolutely, just like cleaned them up a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. And then we got to Earlville, which ended up being kind of a fun little stop, and the Pearl reunited with us in Earlville.

SPEAKER_05 49:23

Right.

SPEAKER_04 49:23

Um, yeah. Yeah, and then kind of another stop, and then you tapped it out to Diresville in the dancing shoes. Yeah, John, I had a good ride with you. That was fun. That was great.

SPEAKER_05 49:31

We ended up riding into Dyersville together, and that was nice. It was the sun was going down, and it was a that was just kind of a nice ride you and I had.

SPEAKER_04 49:37

So and I gotta give her shout out to Mima Hager. Absolutely. Oh my god. She was uh super gracious. Yeah. Post uh moved the fire pit. Well, I'm a kid.

SPEAKER_05 49:47

John moved the fire pit. I'll tell you what, for being an Eagle Scout, I was just like, there's absolutely nothing safe for like four hours that night. We had a fire pit in the back, and John was in a solo stove, and John's like, we kind of need this out front. And I said, and there was like a hose like five feet away. I was like, let's douse this. And and John's response was, I'm worried about it, the fire licking my face, but I'm gonna give this a shot.

SPEAKER_04 50:12

Yeah, just give me a pair of oven mitts and let's make it. And we didn't even have oven mitts, I had to use hand towels.

SPEAKER_05 50:17

We had to go in and get like a couple silicone things, and John carries fire from the backyard in the front yard. I love it.

SPEAKER_03 50:24

It was a great Friday on to roll into. And yeah, and that was one of those where Nat Natalie was riding. We had stopped in Earl Roll, I think there were like maybe two bars adjoining one another. I'm not sure. Maybe there's just a one. Had a long, long stop there, and it's like Earlville into Dyersville was what, eight miles or something like that. And so somebody was like, Oh, I brought roadies. So like it's already the sun's going down. Then we stop, enjoy the roadies, take a bunch of roadside picks, and the sun's completely down. Now my phone's dead. Right. And so we're getting into town. I I think Natalie had the address. Somehow we had the address, but we didn't have any way of communicating with anyone. We're trying Natalie's phone's maybe not dead, but she can't get anybody on the phone, so we have to do the whole where where are we going. Yeah. And then we roll up and there's a raging fire, and it was just like I don't want to perfect the smirch you guys.

SPEAKER_05 51:13

But the one thing I noticed about you, because you guys came in in total darkness, yeah, was you all have front lights, but none of you have the red blinky lights. I had them, they might not have been worthy. Right. That's the other thing. It's good to have lights, but it's better to be. They're nice when they're there. They help when you turn them on. That's that's the part that you don't want hit, the back part. Right. The front part, nobody can see where they're going. The back part's what you want.

SPEAKER_04 51:37

So you did get in too late for the steak that Becky and Mima had made for us. Unbelievable. We took care of that for you. But then Mima gifted.

SPEAKER_03 51:45

We gave her we gave her clear instructions that we don't.

SPEAKER_04 51:47

Oh no, yeah, yeah. And quite frankly, I don't think there was a steak for you anyway. Oh, okay. We got there early enough that it had not all been consumed. But uh, and then we got the gift of Francis of Assissi for the prize.

SPEAKER_03 51:58

Hey, when you were doing that on our last pod, I was thinking, what was it? It was Francis of Assissi. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 52:03

So you came home with that? Oh yeah. Yeah. So we there was uh Mima has a bunch of uh lawn decorations. Yeah. And these were like solar-powered light-up saints and different things. Yeah, not the saint of like squeaky wheels or anything, but we had Francis of Assissi. Good intentions. Yeah, so we brought him up front with the fire pit just as a beacon, so Team Solid wouldn't miss us, and then my fault, but it ended up getting slightly damaged, the stick. So it wasn't much use anymore. Um, I was prepared as you were helping me on Amazon to see if we could replace it. But then she gifted it to the team with a story about Francis walking away from his family, stripping all of his clothes off and walking off into the hills, and it kind of I think hit with bird dog. He didn't do the same thing in '87. Stripped his clothes off and left with Washington's roof. That's all we needed to hear. Now that's memorialized on the boss.

SPEAKER_05 52:50

Dude leaves his family and he's made a saint. Right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 52:54

Didn't inherit the fortune, but it came out okay.

SPEAKER_05 52:57

Well it was a good ending. Yeah, and then you finished off with a great ride to the river. Yeah. So it was uh that last day was a nice ride. I left my car in Dyersville. Dubuque really went all out. They had people sitting outside. There's my wife is from Dubuque, and I had been up that s Pennsylvania street like a thousand times, and I had no idea how steep that was. I was probably one baby aspirin away from having a major coronary episode. But uh made it down to the river, celebrated, took a picture, and then uh got back on the I think gosh, I can't remember, Great River Trail. So it goes from Dubuque back to Dyersville. And uh oh, we should also point out the fact that Dyersville had the Field of Dreams.

SPEAKER_03 53:38

Yes, which I missed because that was on the way out of town, right?

SPEAKER_05 53:41

Yeah, so Field of Dreams, the movie Field of Dreams was shot in Dyersville, Iowa. Kevin Costner uh carved his name in the bleachers, and the Field of Dreams is still there, and they have these ghost players that uh come out and do picture things, and but there's also a very uh professional level field there too now.

SPEAKER_03 54:04

They've done the major league games, right?

SPEAKER_05 54:06

Cubs and Yankees have played there, and so but that was that was cool, and it that morning was super misty. It was kind of cool to be there when it's all misty. The the other one thing I want to bring up about Dyersville was John and I are sitting out having a really nice cup of coffee and kind of talking. Brad wakes up and like four minutes earlier, Brad was sleeping. Brad comes out the door and says, Boy, it'd be nice to have a fire.

SPEAKER_03 54:30

Yeah so well it was sitting right there, like why not blaze it?

SPEAKER_05 54:35

He goes from like a dead sleep to wanting fire in the morning. Yeah. So John has to kind of like they have to go in there's backyard and tears down part of the parking. Like a garage door opens up and Becky's mom's hauling wood out of the garage. Yeah, it's we don't ask much. Right. All all all a fellow wants is a nice fire. Maybe a morning fire. Right.

SPEAKER_04 55:03

So we got that.

SPEAKER_02 55:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 55:05

So it was a great stop. Yeah, I'll give you guys credit for doing an entire week of it. I was there for two nights. I woke up Sunday morning and my aura ring said I had the best night of sleep ever, according to my rig, highest sleep score. And that was only after 48 hours of rag bra. Oh yeah. Kudos to you guys for the whole week.

SPEAKER_03 55:19

My rag brain's this way. We get on the we get on the solid bus. We're gonna make a stop in Ely to drop off the Schmad Boys. We stop there for a little bit. His sister makes us chicken sandwiches and all the things. And then we pull into Coralville to drop me and Natalie. I get off the bus, Stephanie pulls up with the rig. She had just unloaded at Emma's Emma was in the process of moving, so I went from rag braye off the pearl into the car to go do three rounds of unpacking. Which is not the first time this has happened, and it's just like why do we have to why do we have to do the move on the day of Ragbry? But you're not gonna you're just gonna do it.

SPEAKER_05 56:04

No, but I will tell you that I have a rental property and we we shifted our you allow people to have a no, we've shifted our lease to the first of July. Yeah. So so I wouldn't misnead the back end of Ragbry. There you go. So yeah, our lease is we're probably one of the only leases like that in the eastern Iowa.

SPEAKER_03 56:24

But so we did that Saturday, then another round Sunday, and then I got the best night of sleep I ever had on Sunday night.

SPEAKER_05 56:30

No doubt. You're back to sleeping in a couch in a garage again. Exactly. All right. Well, hey, thanks everybody for sticking with us. We appreciate it. That's the uh recap of our bike ride. Uh it was a good rag Bri. Um, if you did not catch the Matt Phippen episode, I think that was episode 39. Um, he kind of talks about what goes into planning this multi-day bike ride. That uh, and um we'll add some photos, including the pictures of shots at uh and bowling ball at Alley Cats and Brad's shoes and a slip inside and some of the pictures from Ben at the dig in. So all right, boys, get it out of your system. Yes, yeah, bikes off. Good job. All right. Thank you everyone for joining us again this week. Make sure that you like and subscribe so you don't miss any new content. Uh, if you want to talk to other deep divers, you can do so and see our supplemental material at our Facebook group, Deep Dive Podcast. You can also email us at deepdivepod2025 at gmail.com until next time. Oh boy!