The Curse of Iowa

I really don’t think Iowa likes me. Since I’ve arrived, here’s what’s happened:

1) Hit by a truck
2) Broke a window and cut my hand
3) Got bad personal news
4) Got bad professional news
5) Gotten lost

But yesterday was the cream of the crop. I left Iowa City, and it was cool and beautiful. I was a bit nervous after the truck incident, but I’m a grown man, and I can handle it. Well, I had barely gone 20 miles when I hit so many potholes that my front tire went way out of whack and I had to stop for a half hour to fix it.

I then hit the state highway. Every other state puts nice, paved shoulders on its highway, but not Iowa. It goes directly from pavement to dirt, or worse, from pavement to grooved pavement to dirt. So I took side roads.

That didn’t work much better. Look at these roads!

You’d be on a paved road, and then suddenly it’d be unpaved and muddy. And this is mud unlike any other I’ve ever seen. It gunked up my bike something fierce, caking on like cement. Eventually, I was trudging along on six-inch platforms of mud and grit, barely getting out alive. Ever see the Neverending Story? It was like Atreyu in the swamp of endless sadness, where if you stop, you sink, but there’s no end in sight to keep you going.

But I got out. And then, at night, my new rack broke and started riding on the wheel. Fantastic. So I got stuck in Winfield, Iowa, a sweet little town where I slept behind a tractor. In the morning, I found a mechanic who was able to fix it.

Now I’m horribly behind schedule. I have to be in Denver by Sunday for reasons I’ll explain later. So, I’m going to have to take a Greyhound in a few days. Sorry, Nebraska, but Iowa ruined the fun for you.

I’m having trouble discerning whether God doesn’t want me to go to Nauvoo, or whether He’s testing me to see how much I’ll put up with to get there. I’m starting to reach the end of my rope. At least there’s been no real bodily harm. Yet.