NEBRASKA (Sioux City and Plainview)

First century ride I've ever done!

I rode most of that day with Jeff Hunt and Hannah Wagley. It was pretty hot, around 85 deg F, and around mile 60 or so, I think Wagley and I both became slightly delirious. She'd give these inspirational speeches about why we should look back over our shoulders after climbing hills so we knew just how much we've accomplished, and then she'd randomly interject with comments such as: "Fire is my FRIEND." We also had contests to see who could scream the longest while going up or down hills, which she won (out of Jeff Hunt, Brooke, Frannie, Mark, and myself). It sounded like Katherine and Michael, our sweeps, had an epic century ride as well. On multiples of 13 miles, they would stop to have dance parties DJ'd by Katherine herself, and they'd also chalk secrets on the road that none of us would read because we'd have passed by already, kind of like Post Secret.

That night, I was in my sleeping bag by 7pm, I kid you not. We were up by 5am!

Nebraska ... is about as boring as people have told me. Michael, Wagley and I whiled away the miles by playing this game: two people chose someone from Bike and Build, and the third person would try to guess who by asking questions such as: "If this person were a type of Starbucks drink, what would they be?" My favorite that I came up with was in answer to Wagley's question, if this person were an obstacle on the road, what would they be? It was Joe, and I replied, a dead moose.

Apparently, Nebraskans are very proud of their corn. At a gas station, someone asked Lisa what she thought of Nebraskan corn compared to Iowa corn, and it was a serious question. Indeed.

This state is also pretty hilly, but at least the climbs aren't that steep.

The church had some vegetables, fruit, and brownies as snacks when we got there, and I ate about 5 plums, they were so delicious.

A lot of us visited the Clown Doll Museum as well ... I've never been a huge fan of clowns because they scared me, and this museum was somewhat creepy as well. They were all these "keepsake" tchochskies that were pretty worthless, which I was never a huge fan of collecting (I'm a very functionally oriented person). Plus, the lady giving us the tour would rattle off these statistics about the number of clown dolls in the museum, and how much things cost, and it was pretty interesting to think that that's what she did as a job.