Day 23: Estherville, IA to Larchwood, IA: Day 24: Early Morning Sioux Falls (J's Version)

Tornado Shelter?! We're not in CT anymore!

Good morning!!! I took a day off from blogging yesterday because my internet service was stinky, and the hotel made you pay $10 for wi-fi!! Forget it.

Wifi is just part of our lives now and shouldn't

No WI-FI for YOU

be an extra fee. The hotel itself was beautiful, and the room even had curtains that you can control from a remote, but they can't give you Wi-Fi? #Whateves.

Before I catch you up on the past 2 days, I have to share that I just got the results to my Connecticut Administrator's Test Part 1 and passed both modules! I'm so pumped! You sit in a room for 5 hours and watch two 11 min videos (Elementary/Secondary) of teaching and read through the teachers' materials/reflections on the lesson. Then, you have to write several responses on how you would evaluate the teachers based on certain criteria, and you're timed, so by the end of the 5 hours your hand and not too mention mental state is ready to die. I won't be taking Part 2 until March. When you're an adult and employed, very rarely do you have to take "tests" like this. Not knowing can be refreshing because your future is uncertain, but as soon as you type in that username and password for the site the results come up. Your fate is either yay or nay in 1 second.

Did I mention we are in SOUTH DAKOTA???!!! #farfromhome

I was disappointed there wasn't any "Welcome to South Dakota" signs coming from Larchwood, Iowa. G already posted some really cool road pics from this morning of buffalo. Yesterday, he actually ran into another guy on the road who was TRAVELING CROSS COUNTRY! 

Dueling cross country cyclists. East VS West

SEE, he's not the only crazy one out there, folks! lol I love that G and I take the same routes, so we can compare notes. For example, I passed G at one point and refreshed him with beverages then left, and 10 miles ahead I drove by a guy riding a bike with many panniers, and his friend had nothing on the bike. I was thinking "someone must of lost a bet." Turns out, G of course ended up talking with them as they past each other.

The guy with the panniers is Ken, and he is riding from Seattle to I think New Jersey? Somewhere on the east coast. Apparently, when you ride from West to East it's better because you get more wind blowing with you not against you. OH, well for us. A few of his friends flew out to Iowa and are each riding an hour with him before leaving Iowa. Pretty cool!!!

#hottiehusband

Aside from that, he's on his own. No roadie support crew. He, too, has a blog: Cross Country Ken's Blog: West to East  His subtitle is: My Midlife Crisis. Interesting. G and I were even mentioned:
"Today I passed a guy, from CT biking west from Portland Maine to Portland Oregon. He wasn’t carrying any gear. It turns out his wife drives ahead and finds a hotel for them, and he bikes all day. Interesting!"

Yes, very interesting. #truelove

Bike Statue made out of bike gears etc

Last time I blogged I was at Cabin Coffee. After I left, I walked around Clear Lake, and the town was getting ready for a.........bike
race! lol Vendors were being set up, and they put up a really cool statue of a bicycle that's made out of bicycle parts. Unfortunately, soon after, it started pouring. Fortunately for us, this is only the 2nd time it has majorly rained for G. Remember the first time I nearly died and tried saving him, but he refused?

He was still a trooper and made good time despite the rain. It did let up for the last 2 hours of that ride, BUT then the sun came out and was wicked hot which wasn't fun at all. We spent that night in Estherville, IA. The next day, we set out for Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

There was a whole lot of nothing. Then, some more nothing. I did pass G and refreshed him. Thank the lord the timing worked out because after that, he didn't have another stop for 40 miles! That's about 4 hours bike time without a gas station to refresh. He just made it on his water bottles until that gas station. So there I am driving and driving and almost out of nowhere pops up a

casino!

Don't mind if I do! (We love the casino atmosphere). There's nothing like losing 20 bucks in a blink of an eye to a slot machine. The Grand Falls Resort and Casino is 5 miles shy of the SD border. I ate lunch there. Found out that there's no free alcohol even if you're gambling. If you do buy a drink, you have to wait 20 minutes before they will give you another one. It's like the complete opposite at our CT casinos. They want you liquored up, so you gamble more! Apparently, Iowa is pretty strict on their rules or at least that's what the lady working there told me. There's guards at every entrance with big signs saying you can't be under 21. I did play with $20 bucks and that lasted me about an hour and a half going from machine to machine. It was funny because I sent G a picture of the casino, and he said, "Go put a 20 in a machine. Seriously. I bet you'll win." I was already 2 steps ahead of him. He called me a little bit after that and said book a room there. It was another hot day, and it was only 10 miles short of our original destination. We even got to relax in the pool and hot tub for a bit. Finally got to break out my Avengers boogie board! haha

The last time I went to Target (yesterday! My friend K jokes with me that she's keeping track of

Whoa! SUPER Target!

all the Targets and Walmart's I go to. Honestly, if there IS a Target or Walmart around I'm grateful) I decided to get some new books to read despite the stack of books in the truck that I brought with me that still need to be read. My friend J who's also an English teacher gave me some good recommendations, so I started Where'd you go, Bernadette? So far, it's very entertaining.

I moved to the fire place because a fly kept bugging me.

This morning was our earliest. G left at 6 am on the dot!!! Currently, I'm at Dunn Bros Coffee in Sioux Falls. It's definitely a cool, low key coffee shop. Nothing too interesting that stands out about it aside from all the workers casually flirting with each other. haha

Oh, I can't remember if I shared this with you or not. G ended up switching out the new seat I got him. He liked it for about two days. It turns out the spongee wonder he had on Jenard or was it Rootbeer? was the one intended for my bike, so it was smaller aka that's why he had a harder time on it. He switched it back out to the bigger sized spongee wonder and fixed the angle again, and so far so good.

I didn't buy it, but I thought the title was funny.