Editor’s note: Muscatine Journal editor Chris Steinbach is riding RAGBRAI this week and sending stories during his stops along the way.

GREENFIELD, Iowa — A tent, an air mattress and a sleeping bag never looked better than mine did Monday night in Greenfield at the end of the second day of the Des Moines Register’s Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa.

The ride from Red Oak to Greenfield wasn’t all bad in spite of the rain and hills, but it was still bad.

How bad was it?

It was so bad that the first sign proclaiming Corning as the birthplace of Johnny Carson was 7.5 miles outside of the Adams County seat of about 2,000 people. Another sign said: “9 more hills to Corning.”

“They must not have been counting the little hills,” said Julie Rose, 50, of Fruitland.

Instead of, “Here’s Johnny,” at least some RAGBRAI riders were left asking, “Where’s Corning?”

After making the 36-mile ride from Red Oak to Corning, those riders were left to deal with another 36 miles of hills to Greenfield.

For months, Dave Matthews, a retired Muscatine Community School District teacher and coach who is riding on the 37th annual RAGBRAI, had been bragging about the hills leading into Corning, where he grew up.

Anyone who knows Matthews knows not to believe everything he says. He wasn’t exaggerating, however, about the hills from Nodaway to Greenfield. Riders worked their way up and down hill after hill – one after another after another after another. Officially, according to ride organizers, Monday’s route included 5,096 feet — a little under a mile — of climbing.

But for anyone who left Red Oak at a leisurely time Monday morning, half of the ride turned into a test of will with the hills and drizzle that later turned to rain. That was the case with me and my riding partners, Rose and her brother, Joe Iverson, 45, of West Salem, Wis., and Marne Acker, 41 of Muscatine. According to my bike computer, we rode 76 miles in six hours. But we rode almost entirely in rain after we left Corning at mid-afternoon.

For us, Monday’s highlights included Corning, which really put on a great show. And the ladies of the town’s Presbyterian Church baked the best pie so far of the ride.

What was interesting about Corning was how few of the residents said they remembered Matthews, who graduated from Corning High School in the early 1960s before going on to play football at what is now the University of Northern Iowa. The only one who said he remembered Matthews as a stellar high school athlete was Louis Kennedy, 76, a retired truck driver.

“You bet I knew him,” Kennedy said. He said he also knew Matthews’ parents and grandparents.

But to Nick Wetzel, 26, of Corning, a 2001 Corning High School graduate, Dave Matthews is a popular singer and not a one-time star athlete from the southwest Iowa town.

Maybe he’s pulling your leg, Wetzel said of Matthews with a laugh.