Eagle or Bust!

It took me three tries to leave Iowa, and I still forgot the rye whiskey. Attempt number one occurred about 3pm on Saturday after spending the morning packing and filling out documents for the government. After about 30 minutes of driving north, I hung a hard left into that famous Iowa wind and the metal rack that fit over my truck started swaying back and forth. I pulled over to investigate, and it appeared that in attaching the rack to the truck we had overlooked two important points: one, the significant amount of weight and drag of the bikes and the rocket box. Two, we failed to anchor the front of the rack to the cab of the truck.

It felt like I was at a critical juncture; I was headed to Alaska, the frontier state of rugged, self sufficient individuals, I needed to be able fix this on my own. But, I had 3100 more miles of headwind in front of me, the last thing I wanted to was to find the entire rack, gas can and all, back down the highway after the duct tape wore off and the welds failed.

The decision to turn around pretty much made itself and I headed back to the farm, quite relieved. I was tired and didn’t really feel starting a road trip that day anyways. Wendell and I used some cross bars from the bike rack from the Camry and huge wood block to secure the rack to the cab of the truck. Wendell had just finished planting corn for the season, so we went out for pizza and beer to celebrate the combined victories.

The next morning I made it a quarter mile down the road before I realized I had left all the food and beer that Wendell had given me in the fridge. I turned around and loaded up the cooler, and on attempt number three, made it all the way to North Dakota before stopping for the evening, and remembering I had forgotten the whiskey.