Heading to the RAGBRAI Expo

Posted by on Jul 25 in RAGBRAI

We flew into Sioux City last night and grabbed a pizza at the local pizza shop which was, fantastic! Great thin crust with all the toppings. Uncle Mike and Cousin Michael pulled the 30’ RV in at about 2:00 a.m., so the team is coming together! We spent the morning getting equipment for the RV (including those all-important water nerf guns).

We are excited for the bike ride to begin. It is amazing how many donations and pledges have come in so far and we really thank all of our donors for helping both support Build Our Ballpark and put their faith in our efforts.

Ironically there is a youth baseball team here in the hotel from Des Moines playing in their state tournament. It is really cool to see how excited those kids are as they headed out for their games this morning – and how much fun they have together. It gives me a sense of how the kids feel when they have access to sports opportunities – like we’re trying to provide through Build Our Ballpark.

We’ve had some of our supporters offer to double their pledges if we:

a)     finish; or
b)    wear a Stanford wrestling singlet on part of our ride.

What is your opinion on this?

The organization in downtown Sioux City was amazing. There are so many people, tents, RVs and bikers, and everything seemed to come together really nicely. I’m just bummed that the midget bowling was for 18 and older only.

We’re up and off at 5:30 in the morning – too early. We’re riding 65 miles to Storm Lake on Sunday morning which is the first morning.

We’ll be sending along a picture of our RV with the huge Build Our Ballpark sticker on each side and our matching team jerseys. Special thanks to everyone at Grandpa’s office for all their help. A lot of the folks on this ride don’t have that kind of support and its amazing!

-Robert Hellman III