Day 37 -- Cedar Rapids, IA

Nothing like going 6 miles off course first thing in the morning. I was in the sweep group today and our project manager forgot to verbalize some directions to us as we left (assuming we’d heard it) and we ended up missing a turn. We followed a main road all the way to a closed off bridge before we realized something was wrong. After that, one of our teammates had to rack at the first stop because he has seriously sick (probably a stomach virus). Around midday, we were pulled over with another group because of a flat when a news crew for the local channel 9 asked us some questions and decided to do an impromptu interview of our group for their station. They had just finished doing a report on a triple homicide at the store we just stopped in front of and then followed us for a couple miles taking shots of our group cycling. What a bizarre day.

We arrived at the city of Cedar Rapids after a few more detours and a 10-mile rack because of bad roads. The local Arc sponsored a friendship visit and dinner as well as opened their doors for the night. We are sleeping in the cafeteria. They told us all about the infamous floods of June 2008 in which a 10 mile block of the downtown part of the city was inundated with 10 feet of water. I took a picture of the flood line in the arc. When we went out to the local piano bar that night, they also had a flood line on their wall to mark the event.

PS. One of our teammates got us cycling caps (a week ago) for the entirety of the north JOH team. I took a picture of myself with it.