Home Iowa Des Moines, IA: Cumming with Corndog

Des Moines, IA: Cumming with Corndog

Two women on motorcycles pulled up to the stop sign after spending the afternoon riding through the farm fields of Central Iowa.

Corndog turned to look at Sash and asked, "Do you feel it?"

"Do I feel what?" Sash answered.

Corndog answered back with, "Uhh, Ahh, Uhh, Ahh", as she bounced up and down on her Dyna Super Glide.

"We're in Cumming!" she added.

Cumming, IA was just a tiny town, located southwest of Des Moines, and you wouldn't have known you were going through "Cumming" if not for the banners hanging from the street lights. I mean, there were only 351 residents as of the 2010 Census.

Most of the day was a blast. Corndog and Sash, along with a handful of other riders, rode through the countryside, seeing the sights and having laughs with new friends. Towards the end of the day, by the time they got to Cumming, it somehow just came and went.

And after having finished Cumming, the entourage rode a few more miles to the town of Norwalk to recouperate at a Casey's General Store, thanking each other for the day and giving hugs goodbye.

Corndog, aka, "Janet Green" is the publisher of Biker Chick News, a website of news, opinions, and features in the world of female motorcycle riders, mostly from the perspective of Corndog herself. Sash and I had been following her on Twitter and Facebook for some time. As Road Pickle was heading its way through Iowa, we wanted to meet her.

It turns out Corndog is quite the rider and navigator. She handles her Twin Cam 96 with authority, and seems to know the roads around Central Iowa like an Indian Scout. She's also a member of Chrome Divas, a women motorcyclist group.

She and her husband Steve showed up at our hotel on a Sunday morning with their two Harleys. Sash had asked her to take her through the cornfields of Iowa. Hence, the plan was to do just that, but not before we had lunch at Nite Hawks Bar & Grill in Slater.

Iowa turned out to be a surprise like the other Midwest States we had ridden through. Where we had once associated it with flat lands and straight roads, we come to find that it's actually beautiful and picturesque. There are some curvy and winding roads in Iowa, and it's not all farm fields either. There's quite a few trees and canyons too.

Corndog gave Sash plenty of cornfield, perhaps more than she could handle, yet took it all in with wonder and amazement. For some reason, the weather was ideal too, mild and dry, not at all like the hot and humid conditions this time of year usually sees. Sash and I happily followed behind, along with a few other of Corndog's riding buddies, as she lead us on a tour of the Hawkeye State.

At the Nite Hawk Bar & Grill, Corndog was surprised to find a few of her biker chick friends were waiting for us. Susan and Janet (another Janet), had arrived earlier with Susan's husband Paul, eager to meet Sash after having read all about her thoughts and antics.

Turns out Nite Hawk Bar & Grill was quite the biker bar, but more of the human-powered kind of bike. 30 or 40 bicyclists were there chewing on burgers and sucking down beer after a long day's ride. We didn't realize the greater Des Moines area had paved hundreds of miles of bicycle trails. The city is a mecca for Spandex-clad weekend warriors.

Along the route we stopped at a Casey's General Store in Winterset for a butt break. A guy named Shane pulled up on his homemade custom. He put an S&S engine on a hard tail frame with a chain drive. The thing was loud, and he had been riding 400 miles that day on dirt roads. He builds bikes for people, but otherwise just loves to tinker with motorcycles and ride all day long.

Moving along the ride, Corndog took us to John Wayne's birth place, a tiny house in Winterset, for a few photos.

As for Cumming, IA, there isn't really much there. If you don't pay attention, you may not even know you had been through it. Even though it was the end point of our ride, Cumming really wasn't the climax. It was everything before that, the riding, the lunch, the camaraderie, the new friends, and the memories that made that last bit of "ooh and ahh" all the more cute.