Iowa- Snake Alley, Melon City & Quad Cities criteriums
Iowa cringes beneath the weight of summertime. In the cracks on the buildings, the gaps in the asphalt, in the people themselves are tinted with the reminder of winter. Towns sprout from the freeway. Grow tall but not rich. Signs shout from stilts to be seen from highway at the curve of the earth, an island, an oasis, from miles and miles of fields. Swaying, crashing against each other, competing for space when nothing is so abundant. Iowa.
What better place to go in Iowa than a Target?
I don’t mean to brag, but I doubt anyone has a caffeine tolerance as high as mine. A pot of coffee- the norm. Add a redbull? No problem. Espresso IV? Needed. So I thought nothing of an energy drink, coffee, 5 hr energy (found it) and a 2x caffeine gu prerace.
I felt awesome.
Then I thought I was going to puke.
And then the race started.
This really neither helped nor hurt me in the race. Just made me feel like an idiot for having the caffeine jitters at 11:30 pm. The race was fun, as snake alley always is. It’s ironic that the winner gets a brick. Because if you’re a mortal that doesn't float up those bricks, you’ve turned into a brick. And you know what you get if you become a brick? The pity clap. I got lots of pity claps.
Muscatine.
After some storms that put those at the super 8 in the tornado shelter (the basement of a super 8 is something I never want to see. I want to remain disease free), the races went off with a slight delay. I got away early and kept it till the finish. It was a lot of luck, I heard it was an odd race in the field, but it felt good to see an effort pay off. The next day- Quad Cities- I felt that effort again. I was useless, the course was hot, wahwahwah.
Drove home to wisconsin, then the next day drove 14 hours straight down to Boone, North Carolina. I think I became crazy. Celine Dion and I became girls. But still, I’m beginning to love that drive. It forces you to breathe, to slow down, to watch one mile at a time, to see the light between the leaves and how the rolling hills grow till they scrape the sky. The mountains. The radio turns to static before I run out of road. I’ll trade you dollars for roadside peaches.
Poisoned kudzu claws and chokes the life out of these southern states. So green and lush, foolishly native looking, I don’t know what to think. But I do like the drive. I like the road name- Daniel Boone Trail- as though this drive is something more. I like the dusty, heat worn towns with their paint chipped porches and beauty queens.
The day after driving down we left for Roan Mountain to camp out for a couple races. Two nights of camping/hiking the Appalachian Trail. Beautiful. I’ll put up pictures once I find my camera’s usb cable.
After the long weekend, we back up to Kentucky to visit friends, then back down to Boone for a couple days. Then I left, made the drive to wisconsin, then onto Minnesota for NVGP.
I don’t care what people say- I’ve seen the sun rise in the south and set in the north. And everywhere has become home. They say when you go back you can see how much you’ve grown and changed. But it isn’t like that. Each place holds within it a part of you. Some moment or memory that comes flooding back. Or of the people frozen there, so woven within those memories that it’s easy to pretend they still exist there. That they haven’t grown or changed or passed away. And then, once again, it’s hard to leave.
Everywhere I go, I want to stay forever.
Expect for Iowa.
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