RAGBRAI. rewired.

At some point, I’ll go back and fill in all the days leading to this end, but for now, I need to switch to small pieces.

I’m in Team Zippy bus, headed west, back towards the heart of Iowa. The ride is over. We took the pictures, then took showers one more time in the portabke shower. Then pack up, load up. And go.

Yeah, I realize home is the other way, but my car is in Mason City.

Quit some time later, we pulled into a town for gas, and I looked out the window to see a familiar mural painted on the side of a two story building.

I yelled out – I know that. We’ve been here. I took a pic of this mural two days before. It was hard to get a picture with the porta potties in the way, so I let AI remove them. (See blurry nondescript lower right corner)

We biked thru here, 2 days ago? I remember because….

Trying to attach the mural to another memory. I cannot. I need something else.

So I whip my neck side to side scanning for signs and markers in other places along the road, anything to confirm a spot of this tiny town.

None. No signs or banners. No vendor tents. Certainly no crowds, not even a soul outside.

You know the scene in the TV show or movie – the one where con men use a place as a front, taking a barren place and converting it into an office or shop?. And the protagonist returns with the authorities at the end of the movie saying “Here, it was here, just open the door and look inside…”

And it’s all gone.

“We got to be ourselves. Our best selves. Among our people. All nonsense stripped away. Just left with what really matters… and the moment.”

Maybe that’s just it. Why that there was nothing else my eyes could grasp onto to prove to me I’d been here just days before.

Always more,

DC