Mosqutioes,
Here it is, the last letter before we meet and journey across the state. We have a few things to touch on before the beer starts to flow, er..uh I mean the riding starts! First of all, Go Lance. Armstrong starts today for his sixth title in the Tour De France. Hopefully that dumb German doesn’t get in his way! No, I’m not talking about Stephan!
If you haven’t paid me for your RAGBRAI fee, please get it to me and don’t bring it with you to the party, because I don’t want to have to organize anything that Friday. $120 for the week or $20 per day. I previously said $15, but was wrong. So, Matt, you can consider yourself a bargain shopper. Isn’t that just like people on your team! Anyway, it looks like we are going to have a lot of room on the bus. I haven’t received info from a lot of people that I expected to be traveling with us. Send me an e-mail even if you aren’t going, so I can pass the word along to others. It isn’t about quantity, but about quality, except maybe for the beer!
We are having trouble getting the bus painted, due to the weather. It is either too rainy, or too cold to get it done. I don’t know how much will be done, but I hope it is at least a new yellow. We did get $600 of paint from Arnold Motor Supply to help us out, but since we can’t get it inside anywhere, the weather is key. Speaking of the bus, we have a situation with it. The actual owner of the bus is Rich Lorenzen, for insurance reasons. He is moving out to Colorado and will no longer be able to help us out this way. So, what we need is to have someone put the bus in their name so that we can get private insurance from somewhere. You don’t have to pay for anything, just have it in your name. As a bonus for doing this, we give you all of the Mosquito stuff you want, which mostly includes no dues for RAGBRAI. If anyone is interested please let me know asap. Another option is to incorporate, which could cost us quite a bit of money, and have the corporation own the bus. We could also get rid of the bus and all go self contained! I think the last option sucks. Let me know if you are interested or want more info.
Go Hawks!
I am having a party here the night before we leave and I hope everyone comes to help kick this thing off. I don’t want to sit around and watch movies that night. I will have my daughters, so I would probably get stuck watching Sleeping Beauty. Don’t let this happen after all the work I put in on this thing! We will be leaving at 10:00am on Sat and making a stop in Des Moines for a break and to get whoever we need to get there.
There should be a sketch of our shirt, and a map on how to get to my house enclosed with this. If you need better directions, let me know. Good luck and ride on!
Blaine McLaughlin
Mosquito Man
