We knocked off 50 miles quickly by noon and stopped for lunch in the outskirts of Omaha. It felt like we had only done 30 and that was pretty nice.

As we went back to the main road, we were in a left turn lane. A man in a pickup truck pulled up next to us. He had his window down and smiled at us. I gave him a good ‘ole “Howdy” so he asked where we were riding. That's my favorite question. “New Jersey” is what I always say since that is where we are going. He just gave me a little nod, pointed left and said “Then I'd go that way.”

So we did. We went through more outskirts, learned some Spanish and found ourselves on a rather busy, narrow, two-lane bridge over the Missouri River. The rush of the traffic and the wind made the ride harrowing but we landed safely in Iowa.

We learned a couple of things quickly about Iowa. They don't have any paved shoulders on their roads. Cross over the white line and it is gravel. Thankfully local motorists seem pretty OK with the idea of waiting to pass farm machinery and bicyclists.

We also learned western Iowa is anything but flat. In fact, it is constant hills. Go up one, go down and the next one is starting. There is no nice flat area in between. Up, down, get ready for the next one. All afternoon.

Dan had discovered another broken spoke, so we put the spare wheel back on. (You remember the spare wheel, it was loaned to me by Mike, the great guy at High Gear Cyclery in Sterling. Go buy things from them.) The wheel and Dan's bike aren't a perfect match but it gets us through a crisis. Unfortunately, one of the problems is Dan's bike won't shift the spare wheel into the lowest gear, making going up hills difficult.

After stopping in a small town, Nicole was done for the day and Dan realized he wasn't going to make 100 miles today and urged me to forge ahead. So I took off, knowing I only had a couple of hours to go another 30 miles. I came to the van after a while, told them what I was doing and headed on. After a while they got concerned because Dan hadn't arrived yet and headed back to find him. Dan was pedaling away but got delayed because he laid down in the grass after I left and fell asleep for a few minutes. He got his 80 miles in with gear problems and all.

Today was our last day with Dan's mother Dottie as our driver. She has been with us since we left San Francisco 17 days ago and we really appreciate her effort and putting up with us. Thanks Dottie.

To make the driver switch, we had to get to Des Moines to pick up Jeff Macaulay, who is the Executive Director of the Adult Day Center of Somerset County, one of the organizations we are raising money for. Jeff took the bus from Newark and has plenty of stories to tell about that.

We needed to be off the bikes by 4:30 p.m. so we could drive 100 miles to Des Moines to meet Jeff. At 4:00 p.m. I was at 82 miles and still going up and down good size hills. For the past couple of hours I was going at a pretty good pace, averaging about 16 miles per hour, but I was starting to tire. I hit the town of Griswold at 5 p.m. and had done 95 miles and called it a day.

Dan and his mother Dottie on her last day on the road..

The lighthouse between Lincoln and Omaha helps the ships that made a wrong turn in Atlantic City.

If your tanning bed is just running on regular, come to Iowa and get one that runs on diesel.