Day 1: Missouri Valley to Harlan

Sun rising as we begin our Day 1 ride.



Josh Damm and Jamie Hoover in the town of Shelby. More pics are on the way!

Harlan, Iowa -- Right now our group is sitting in the Harlan campgrounds. More hot than tired after today's ride, we just thoroughly enjoyed our cold showers and are excited for dinner.

Before we go grab our big, carb-heavy evening meal, here's a recap of yesterday and today:

Saturday, July 19 - Making our way to Missouri Valley

We left the Campus Center at Waldorf at 8:00 a.m. on Saturday morning. The team that is starting the ride is comprised of:

- Seth Miner '03, Admissions Counselor
- Jim Amelsberg, Director of Counseling Services
- Jamie Hoover '07
- Josh Damm '06, Communications Director/Men's Golf Coach
- Jennifer Turner, Technical Services Coordinator
- Sarah Leichsenring '10, Waldorf student from Clarion, Iowa (support vehicle driver)

We arrived in Missouri Valley (a very hilly town!) around 1 pm. Finding a camping spot was surprisingly easy, but avoiding the heat became the battle of the day. It was hot! 95 degrees, can't avoid the sun, find me any shade possible, heat!

A few of us found the Gyros at the food vendor area to be very tasty and we then waited around for Sarah and Jamie to attend a 4 pm safety course for support vehicle drivers.

Jennifer, Seth, Jim and I ended up taking a shuttle at 3:50 pm and didn't get to the campground until about 4:40. Of course, Sarah and Jamie ended up attending the meeting and then walking back to the campground and arriving before we did. Live and learn.

The highlight of the day was the amount of Waldorf connections we made. We ran into Barb Benett '80 who played softball at Waldorf and now lives in Dallas, Texas. She was excited to wear her Catch the Fire jersey after purchasing one from Seth earlier in July. Her sister from Alaska was suffering from some heat stroke and had to go to the medical tent so we all hope she is now doing okay.

We also met Bob, brother of Chris Reisz (sorry, not sure of the spelling!). Chris evidentally played baseball at Waldorf College. Bob was running one of the food vendor stations in Mo' Valley.

As we walked to eat spaghetti at a church in town, we also ran across Ruth '77 who had sang in the Waldorf Choir. We didn't catch her last name but had a good time telling her about our blog and discussing how great the Waldorf Choir is.

The stormy evening (heavy winds, dark clouds, thunderstorms, oh my!) matched my nervous mood as we went to sleep on Saturday night.

But we were all excited to get up at 5:30 am and begin our RAGBRAI journey.

Sunday, July 20 - RAGBRAI begins

We took off on our bikes at about 6:15 am and the cool, morning wind could not have felt any better. The ride was so nice -- a little hilly, but nice -- that we ended up riding almost 25 miles before we stopped for pancakes in Underwood.

Underwood turned out to be an excellent place to hand out many of our Waldorf t-shirts, bags and Catch the Fire tatoos. Most of the kids said, "COOL!" as we tossed them a Waldorf t-shirt or bag and the little kids are loving the tatoos.

Our alumni have been excited to hear about our blog and I've been amazed about how many people have either said "Go Waldorf!" and let us know their connection, or have said "Where's Waldorf?" and we've been able to tell them about the great college we either work for or have graduated from.

RAGBRAI is turning out to be a great opportunity to spread the word about Waldorf College.

With plenty of pancakes, coffee and orange juice in our stomach, we continued our day's journey and came across even more people with Waldorf connections: the father of Sam Plegenkhul of Sumner, Iowa (Sam is a Communications major at Waldorf right now), Dave Teeling -- an alum from Sumner who played golf at Waldorf and has also played in the last few Waldorf Warrior Booster Golf Tournaments, the principal from West Hancock who is camping next to us and asked about our Waldorf College campground sign, a teammate of Eric Prins from Central College -- Eric is the Offensive Coordinator for Waldorf's football team, and a few prospective students from around Forest City.

Lunch for the day came in the form of smoothies and ribeye steaks on a stick in Shelby! Wow, this guy in Shelby can grill a mean ribeye.

The 58.9 mile day ended in Harlan and we immediately found our campsite in the fairgrounds. Sarah did a great job parking the van/trailer and saving our space.

It was an incredible day with wonderful food, great people and a few too many hills.

The extremely long (82.9 mile) Day 2 is ahead as we ride to Jefferson -- home of the famous Bohnets.

Look for more posts and pictures in the days ahead.

-- Josh Damm '06