In the summer of 2017 we did our first RAGBRAI, a ride that spans the state of Iowa, starting at the Missouri River and ending at the Mississippi. It was quite a thrill to ride with 10,000 other people through cornfields and small towns and to have people wave and cheer us on, and feed us pancakes and pie, and it was sort of like a week of summer camp on bikes.

We heard about some other long distance, supported rides on that trip; it turns out that many other states have rides across their states. And this morning we are starting on the Big BAM, which is typically a ride across Missouri and now is sort of a ride around Missouri.

Our drive to Columbia MO yesterday took us through many of the places we biked last summer on our way to New Orleans. We had a very pleasant and too-short stop at the home of my college roommate, Lynne, where we ate a delicious brunch that she cooked for us while we caught up on her upcoming gigs (next one: a tribute to Bette Midler), and then drove south where we could see lots of flooded farm fields and arrived here just before 6 on a perfect summer night.

Our campsite is on the lawn of the Bass Pro Shop on the edge of town where we had a chorus of frogs outside of our tent all night. The group spent the evening at the Broadway Brewery listening to live music and chatting with other cyclists about the trip. Columbia seems like a very nice college town and we will spend another night here at the end of the ride.

It is 5:56 am as I am writing this, and I am cozy and warm in my sleeping bag, listening to the sounds of others starting to take down their tents as Dan is slowly waking up. Today we will ride 62 miles to Perry and it looks like it’s going to be a beautiful day.