Steve’s World

7-23-04

Our second day of car travel was much better than the first – principally because it was our last.  Our route through Illinois was a long one and I don’t think we went through half of the state.

The highlight of our day was eating at the Woodhull Family Diner.  The jukebox was cranking out some great tunes that I had not heard since cruising around in my K Car.  In lieu of lunch, Ralph wanted to do a lunchtime 20 miler, because that’s what Ralph is programmed to do at lunchtime.  I hid in a cornfield (left), which was becoming the scenery of choice, to escape another round of torture.

Our final destination today was Roland, Iowa.  Jay is one of the travelers in our group and grew up in Iowa.  We’ll be staying with the Glasnapp’s from Roland, part of Jay’s extended family.

Our hosts, Gail and Judy Glassnapp were every bit of the classic Mid-westerners that we envision making up the “Heartland”.  Gentle, modest, disarming and kind.  They were both obviously proud of their children and grandchildren, some of whom we met and will ride with on RAGBRAI.

We were all of a little cagey from the travel.  Ralph and Pat must have forgotten the pain of the day’s early morning bike ride because they teamed up with Chris to ride another 20 miles around town.  Chris is a fellow neuroscience researcher with Jay.  Talking to either of them makes my brain hurt.

I asked Gail for a good running route and he directed me through town to the north end of some ball fields where he said would be the start of a trail.  I asked him how far the trail went and he said, “Oh, pretty far”.  I thought this was going to be a mile or two around the ball fields.  It turned out to be a 10.5-mile trail that went through farms, woods, and streams.  I had the whole trail to myself.  Back home, I run with headphones so I can block out the traffic, noise, heat and humidity.  This was the opposite.  I wanted to absorb everything.  The day was perfect weather-wise – mid 70’s, sunshine, and low humidity.  I ran through fields of corn, soybeans, and grasslands.  Wanting to take in as much as I could, I ran as fast as I could, covering about 9.5 miles in an hour by my estimate.  I’ve run nearly every day for the last 20 years.  That run was my nicest since 1989, when I ran 20 miles in an amazingly snowy night along the River Drives in Philadelphia.