Big Bird's Adventures

I have made it to Iowa in time for the start of this year’s Ragbrai. It will be the 52nd edition of the ride so Ragbrai LII. I can say now as I write this installment up that there were plenty of distractions during this phase of my trip and I didn’t keep decent daily logs as each day clicked away. Some of that was due to being part of a much larger event than my little jaunt across the country. What I found out was that rather than Ragbrai returning to the format prior to edition L (One L of a time!) which was 3-4 thousand cyclists, they had no cap on registration and the number was closer to twenty thousand cyclists. I joined the same group that I rode edition L with where there were some scratches, and some new editions. The main known protagonist being Pete Toohey whom I had been texting status all summer on my ride. We were to be joined by the Texas Meyers clan consisting of Robert, his son (name escapes me again) and daughter-in-law Amber and then the UVA clan (Amber is also UVA clan) that owes its Ragbrai attachment to one UVA alum, (K)Cat Rosenthal, who managed to convince a number of her VA girlfriends to “give Ragbrai a go”. The UVA girls are Cat, Amber, Heidi, and the other women whoose names escape me sadly including a new convert. There was also Ted the Diplomat who was riding with our group, doing his first Ragbrai before being deployed by the State Department to Somalia for his first assignment.

July 19, Day 33, Ragbrai Day 0 – I intended to do laundry first thing in the morning and then ride but the local atm in Le Mars wouldn’t dish out cash so after much frustration, I rode on to Orange City. Problem was I didn’t have my gloves or my sun hat on and I was baking in the humid sun already bright and hot. I stopped and dug them out of the laundry bag. Much much better. Because Orange City was NE of Le Mars, the route followed a R-L-R-L-R-L-R pattern on gravel before a final left onto county route 64 brought me straight into Orange City proper. As I was riding into town I passed a giant office building with the STAPLES logo on it. I think the STAPLES HQ is here. Seems like a nice town for the start of Ragbrai. Not a huge town but not a village either. A decent sized downtown is where all the festivities would be laid out. I found the Brancel camp at the local high school and got myself checked in and my camp setup before setting out to find a laundry mat. Guess what I found there? Other bike packers who had ridden to Ragbrai and were doing laundry. Who knew?

The gang didn’t arrive until 3-4 pm so I found some shade and hung out to await their arrival striking up conversations with other Brancel registered riders. A little about the format of Ragbrai. When you register for the event that includes a main campground as well as baggage hauling and showers and you get that all for about $290 for the week. Could be less if you register early. However there are charters that surround the event that get allocated their own space, and while they provide the same services, it is much smaller scale, and you find shorter lines at the showers, and you can camp closer to the luggage pickup/drop off. Brancel is one of these charters, and in addition they provide shaded tents, a massage tent, a liquid refreshement area that includes water, energy drinks, milk products as well as cheap American lagers like coors light, bud light etc and a couple of coolers of decent craft beers with a pay as you go honor system. I usually drop a $20 note into the can and that is good for 5 craft beers. They organize one laundry day, and usually arrange one pizza day as well as an ice cream day. They have lots of young folks to help with everything making for a fantastic event worth the extra charge. Another thing they provide as a full time bike mechanic whose labor is paid for, so you only have to cover the cost of materials, and it was this guy that I sought out as soon as he was set up. You may recall that I had a derailleur hanger shipped to this mechanic after arranging that back in Wyoming. Well he was looking for me and I was looking for him, and I was first in line when he opened up. It was a simple swap out for the hanger, but I had him replace my chain as well, and swap out my rear tire for my spare, so I owed him for the chain, and the sealant. He tuned the bike up and I was good to go.

The others arrived and found a place to setup camp. Looking back now, I wish I had just pulled up my stakes and moved my tent, but I left it was it lay and helped the others gather their stuff and setup their tents. I am meeting for the first time Cat, Larry’s daughter who thru-hiked the AT in 2022 with her Mom. They had video blogged their account, but I believe Cat has since deleted that account as I can no longer find it. I think the history here is that Pete, Larry, and Robert are Ragbrai regulars. Their kids have all ridden Ragbrai, and Amber was brought in by Cat. In 2023 the other UVA women joined in and now here we are all mostly reunited for Rag 52. Larry didn’t make it this year due to the failing health of his father-in-law, and if you remember Justin from 2023, well Justin decided at the end of Rag 50 “Been there now, done that!”.

With everyone’s tents setup, we all got on our bikes and rode into the city center where the Rag Expo was setup and going strong. The expo has food, entertainment, the beer tent, bike tents, gear tents and various “Iowa” related venues. I was able to secure a Rag 50 leftover Jersey for a reasonable price thus giving me a little bit of variety in my choice of tops. With 20,000 people in town, no restaurant tries to manage sit down service. Instead they setup large buffets and dish out food by the ladleful. It’s the only way to feed everyone. That and food trucks of course. When we had all eaten our fill and consumed a few beers wandered back to our camp, but not before I spotted Cat and her husband getting a random interview that was broadcast around the festival. Cat did all the talking :).

Back at camp we hung out for while before the sun went down and with an early start the next morning we all slowly retreated to our own tents for a good nights sleep. Day 33 Strava, Instagram, Relive.cc

July 20, Day 34, Ragbrai Day 1 – What a difference 18 to 20 thousand other riders make!!! The roads are basically shutdown so I don’t have a single worry about traffic other than the occasional local vehicle or emergency vehicles. Besides them it is simple all the other cyclists on the same closed route, and that isn’t really a worry.

It’s really tremendous how Iowans really come out to support Ragbrai and the riders. Sure you can argue “what choice do they have? They can’t get anywhere unless it’s an emergency so might as well grab a chair and cheer the endless stream of bicyclists going by.” But they aren’t just sitting out there. Some are trying to sell water, drinks, food, snacks. Others simply give water away or provide a cooling spray on a hot day and it was a hot afternoon once the sun finally came out. Many of them are simply happy if you stop and say hello, or even simpler. Wave.

We all turned in early last night as an evening Tshower moved in and dumped some wet for a couple of hours. By the time it was over everyone in camp was asleep and we all got a lot of rest for today’s 72 miles. All of it either North or East with winds out of the ENE so harder when going East.

I awoke around 3 and tried to charge my phone but even though I kept my phone out of the rain, the humidity was so intense that it set off the “Wet USB Connector” alarm and wouldn’t charge so I shut off the phone to preserve battery and wouldn’t charge try again in the morning. That didn’t work because it was still almost 95% humidity and the alarm still sounded. Eventually the phone died and it wasn’t until noon that I finally was able to get some juice to flow into the device. Arggg. Such is life. Really the solution is to have a wireless charging brick so no cables attached. I lost some tracking information and a lot images I could not take, but I did my best to catch up. It’s hard to stay together on a ride like this with so many people out there on bikes. A lot of unique looking folks, interesting bikes, even more interesting outfits. Rag also brings out Iowans who want to ride Ragbrai. All body types out here, people doing the ride. All healthy. Unfortunately there was a woman who took a spill fairly early and an ambulance was called in. Her Rag was over early. 😦

One “funny” beginning to my Ragbrai LII ride was right at the start. We had packed up and dropped off our bags at the luggage truck and we had been handed special Tees to wear on the ride today. Not technical fibers, but a cotton sleeveless top that one of the UVA ladies (or all the UVA ladies) arranged. Most of them had writing that was specific to the recipient. For example Amber was pregnant with her first child and so something about “Expectant Mother” or “Baby on Board” was written for her and something equally smart for the father. They had a shirt for me, but I don’t really have the kind of history with these girls that warrant anything more than just a simple Amber supporter. I believe all of the tops did have some kind of reference to us being Amber’s supporters. It was cute. Maybe I have a photo or two.

There is another thing I have noticed about Rag. They sell beer everywhere on this ride now and you can walk almost anywhere with it. They decided they weren’t going to hassle anyone about. Most people are pretty good about it but considering the number of places along a 72 mile route that you can get beer and still ride your bike, technically half the field is RUI or BUI. It’s true. I don’t know what to say about it, but I stopped at both craft beer stops and had a beer (or two) myself. Yummy yum yum they were. The second craft beer tent is usually less than 10 miles to the finish, so that isn’t too long to ride.

Chatted with a rider riding with the Powered By Plants group and if I do this again I will secure my meals through them. My friends won’t charter with them and I’d rather be with my friends but I will make the effort for their food which includes breakfast and a stop for lunch.

After the second craft beer stop I decided I was ready to be finished. One thing I didn’t mention was that Pete showed up with a brandy new set of bib tights so that I could retire, or at least have some choice, my darned up bib knickers. The issue with the full tights is these are a little warmer than the knickers, and with the heat and all, that was taking a toll. I just wanted to get to the destination, follow the signs to the campsite, setup camp, reserve a massage, get showered up and relax in my street clothes. All I still had to do was fight the (mostly) headwind all the way into town. That was where frustration then began as there were no signs to follow and I didn’t know where the camp was and there were enough people in the cell area that I couldn’t get any queries going on the phone. These towns have cell tower infrastructure that supports their needs, and when the poplulation of town increases as much as the thousands of cell phone lugging cyclists add in then that infrastructure is put under extreme load. You might have 5 bars, but there is no bandwidth. Uggg.

In the past, all the charters had signs to follow from the end of the route through town to their assigned location. The Red State legislature passed a new law, an important law that affects Iowans, banning those kinds of temporary markers from being put up in towns and so that is why you have to check with your charter hosts for camp locations before you leave the previous day’s camp. Take a picture of the map. Remember, you won’t have the bandwidth needed to even get directions.

After finally finding the Brancel campsite, I set up my tent next to a couple from South Jersey and a guy from Minn who also backpacks. Again I set up in an area different than my friends since they hadn’t arrived yet. This might be the last day I did that. In any case, I chatted with the other Jersey folks.

Oh, oh. Tomorrow’s route goes into Minnesota so

The others arrived and set themselves up. Everyone had a good day, and the newest of the UVA ladies got through the day just fine. When everyone was showered and dressed we caught the shuttle into the main part of town where the food trucks and entertainment facility was setup. We were setup in the town of Milford IA, not terribly far from the Northern border with Minnesota where tomorrow’s route takes us for a short time. I will get to click that state off my “Haven’t visited yet” list leaving only North Dakota and Wisconsin still to go. Day 34 Strava, Instagram, Relive.cc

July 21, Day 35, Ragbrai Day 2 – Today was a fairly short day because tomorrow’s day offers up an extra loop to make it a 103 mile day. I haven’t decided yet whether it 74 or 103 for me tomorrow. I have my share of 100 mile and near 100 mile days already so the need to add another just isn’t there however I am a team player and if the team says century then I will endure. Maybe not happily :).

Today was an exercise in how humid can it be without actually raining? It was never hot, and it never rained but just riding through that moisture was enough to soak you to the bone.

A short day means that the craft beer tents are closer together as are all the food stops and since I stated that there are unofficial food stops as well, there are a lot of reasons to stop and get off the bike.
I was chatting away with a Persian Emigre about his adventures on the various ACA routes he has done. He was wearing a Southern Tier Route jersey which is why I chatted him up but then the first beer tent came along and I had to drop off thinking I might run into him again. I was wrong. I neither saw him again that day nor the rest of the week. I got a laugh when I sent a picture I took of this Persian to my other Persian friend, The Persian Prince himself, Ali, who took one look at the image and wrote back that that dude looked like a Persian Porn Star. I told Ali I thought he was the Persian Porn star, but he only laughed rather than deny it.

Our day started at 5am at the Lutheran Church where they hosted an omelet station breakfast for $12, an iced cinnamon roll and as much coffee as you wanted to drink. I was there at 5:01 am and Pete and Robert wandered in 10 minutes later after I had pretty much finished up my meal. The agreement the night prior was to meet there at 5am. I need to learn to be more patient as I guess I am not as patient as I always tell everyone I am.

I checked Off Minnesota today!! The route went North and into the Gopher state before turning East for 10 miles and then it dropped back down into Iowa where it will stay for the rest of the ride. I wasn’t there long enough but I did see one (Loon) of the 10,000 lakes, it was big and it was beautiful. The route wound around the southern end of it before turning South to reenter Iowa.

We ended the day in Estherville, home to Iowa Lakes Community College and like the name says, Iowa does have some lakes of its own and we crossed a small section of land that divided two of them. We all came into town together so no one (me) got lost looking for our camp and for night three I have my tent set up with the rest of the crew. Yay!

I showered up and got a 30 minute upper body massage to go along with the 30 minute lower body I had yesterday. Since we are limited to 30 minutes I would have the therapist focus on upper or lower body where I think I decided that I would do 2 lower body massages and 3 upper. You can’t ignore the upper body when you spend so much time hunched over the handlebars of a bicycle.

I found out that the number of registered riders is close to 20,000 riders and that makes sense with the numbers that I see on the road. No matter how long I stop at any location there is always a shitload of riders coming and going. Everyone is having fun.

With the short day the younger folks among us grabbed their swim trunks and took the community pool that was open to all Ragbrai participants. It was kind of hot, so I am sure they enjoyed themselves. The rest of us relaxed and had a few beers and later we all wandered into the main food area to eat and take in some of the entertainment options. Rag has to be seen to be believed. Day 35 Strava, Instagram, Relive.cc

July 22, Day 36 – It would appear that I didn’t write anything for this day when I had completed it! Nothing! I will have to recreate it from memory, but perhaps I will keep it short. With it being a long day, and the wind gods not sending anything favorable to push us along, it didn’t take me long to realize/decide that I was not going to partake in the extra mileage loop to bring todays miles to 103. It was hotter than the previous day, and to be honest, I was questioning the rationale for wearing the full bib tights. They were hot, and I was missing the knickers no matter what their condition was, so I used that as an excuse to simply ride straight into town after first spending a fair amount of time at the last craft beer tent. I was in no hurry.

As I recall the non young among us all met up again at the final Craft Beer Stop, and the youngers all did the extra 30 miles. We finished the ride and setup our tents and eventually the others rolled into camp and got themselves setup. Forest City was in fact a city, a small one at that. I am pretty sure this was the stop where I wandered into town to find a bar which was crowded but I did manage an empty stool and sat down and soon found myself in a conversation with a fairly energetic mature woman who was also doing Ragbrai. We were chatting and the subject of my adventure came up and I started showing her some pictures from the trip when I came to the one I took after I shaved and she exclaimed rather loudly “Damn I would totally do that!” That took me by surprise for sure because my friend Terry O told me “If you want to get laid you will have to get rid of that beard.” Ha! No hanky panky here. We talked awhile longer and went our separate ways.

As I said in this post already there were no sit down operations to get food. Everything was a buffet or a food truck, so either find the buffet that best suits you, or get in line of your favorite food truck. While I had been trying to stay as Vegan as I could, the options were limited, and I don’t recall where I got food that night, but eventually I found my way back to camp where we all sat around chatting until bedtime. Day 36 Strava, Instagram, Relive.cc

July 23, Day 37 – Another day in which I failed to write anything up for the daily update. Lazy I was.

Today’s ride is a mostly South ride to the town/city of Iowa Falls. As I recall the wind was out of the SE so it was mostly hindering us all day, with few breaks if any. As I look at the route, I have to admit that nothing really causes me any recollection however I do remember that when we got to Iowa Falls the path we followed to get to our campsite took us over the Iowa River on a wooden suspension bridge. Most of us were together having ridden together since the last Craft Beer stop of the day and half way across we espied the “Falls” of Iowa Falls. Let me tell you now, impressed I was not. The falls weren’t in the Iowa River which might have had the potential for greatness, but was from a small creek that flows into the River off the bluff and hence the falls. To be perfectly honest I had no idea that was “The Falls” until someone mentioned it later.

Our campground was in Assembly Park where the park was just big enough to take care of the Brancel folks, and it wasn’t a very far walk into town. We got our gear, found a place for everyone to set up, me I chose a place by a lamp post, bad idea, because it could support my bike, but that light was on all night, which was a little bothersome. I had actually started to sleep better at night as a result of this trip, so having the light on was an annoyance, but I think I still slept well enough. That is until the storm came through.

When we were getting ready to retire there was word out that there was some weather headed our way and that IF it was determined to be “severe” then we would all be advised to evacuate to some local facility, so we all went to bed with that extra worry as well. While the storm did eventually come, and the winds did pick up, a typical leading edge gust front, there were no sirens in the night however the next morning when we were all up and about we noticed that one of the campers in the park was not so lucky as a large branch came down. Fortunately for them, their tent only caught the leafy end of the branch, but it was enough to scare the crap out of them and ruin their tent, thus ending their Ragbrai. They were too rattled to even think about riding further.

If you recall from one of my posts from the 2023 edition of Ragbrai we had a severe wind storm on the last night of that edition as well. With the humidity caused by all the corn sweating moisture into the Iowa atmosphere its no wonder they have so many afternoon thundershowers throughout the state. Have you heard the term “Corn Sweat”? It refers to the amount of moisture that corn emits into the atmosphere every day, and if you didn’t know, that amount is 4-6 thousand gallons of water per acre per day. Iowa grows 12.7 million acres of corn, and this isn’t your grandparent’s corn. This isn’t field of dreams corn. Stalks are planted every 4″ in a row and each row is 16-20″ across, and each stalk carries 1-2 more ears per stalk. Corn sweats out of each stalk and each ear on each stalk. That is why Iowa is so damned humid. That humidity drives the local weather and that weather was mostly kind to us this year, except for that one tent. Day 37 Strava, Instagram, Relive.cc

July 24, Day 38 – My post for this day was fairly minimal and related to the Cell Tower infrastructure of these small towns, so no need to repeat here. Today was a mild day, mileage wise as we moved from Iowa Falls (not so impressive falls) to Cedar Falls which at least references falls in the Iowa River and even though those falls don’t actually fall all that far, they do consititute falls and are natural. It didn’t become Cedar Falls because they built a water control device.

Today was mainly Eastern mile with a few North and South legs. I think the winds were still out of the SE so we had some sections with a bit of an aide but overall we rode into a quartering wind. I don’t remember anything special about the day that made it any different than any other Ragbrai day. Everyone wants to get onto the road early pearly and that may or may not include coffee at the Brancel camp where there are also some donuts you can purchase. Most people are happy to get on their bikes and make it to the first town where all the main breakfast fare is being put on by the town. The pancake guy is always in the first town, and this is the setup which is many long griddles strunk together with a batter conical device on rails that can run the whole length of the the griddle system and drop perfect proportioned pancakes 4 across. By the time he reaches the other end, it’s time to go back and start flipping, and by the time he flips all of them then the first of them are ready to come off the griddle. 4 to a plate they are and if you had already purchased and eaten a plate and come back for more you get greeted by flying pancakes as he flips em one by one from behind to griddle to your plate. Assuming you can catch them that is, and believe me that isn’t too hard. Sometimes he flips 2 or 3 as stack, and that is a little more impressive. With your cakes you move over to the syrup table where you can dump any amount of syrup from corn sugar onto your stack as you wish and the various butter products. All that is included. They have coffee as well, but if you are like me, being a coffee snob, then you might as well bypass the coffee because that coffee sucks. It’s awful! The pancakes are good, and that is all you really need.

There are other breakfast options as well, and if there are local businesses or fire stations, you can find plenty of already cooked and wrapped egg burritos with bacon, saugage or cheese are combinations thereof. There are pie places and yes, you can always find a Bloody Mary if you choose to start your day propertly with one.

Once you leave the first town then it’s out of town and along the roads there can be other distractions for food and drink. Some of the drink is free and in other cases locals have hit the costco and are selling bottled drinks. The hotter it is the better they do. I don’t know how well the make out. I imagine that the ones that are occupying a tent setup at a road intersection simply take their leftovers, add more ice and setup at another intersection down the road, or one the next day. Hopefully they don’t go home with a shitload of bottled drinks and having not made back their initial investment. Times are tough for Iowans and you know they voted for Trump, so they need the extra money.

The lunch town has the sandwich, taco, buritto and grilled cheese trucks as well as any number of burger options. Along the route at some point you will hit Mr Pork Chop, a pink School Bus operation on some local farm each day where using corncobs for fuel they cook up around 4-5 thousand pork chops a day. In some cases there is a corn-on-the-cob available as well making for a much beloved stop by many. The corn line was always too long for me and I don’t do Pork Chops. While I was off my Vegan diet for a lot of this trip I wasn’t going for a Pork Chop.

Let’s not forget the craft beer tents either. Those are an institution now, started by a couple of IU graduates who had an idea and started with one location on one day a number of years back, and they stocked themselves with kegs of Iowa Craft beer. They sold out that year, and an idea was born and it has grown into 2 stops per day, each stocked with different selections, as well as food. That makes for 13 stops over the course of the week, only 1 on the final Saturday and if your card gets punched 10 or more times you get a T-Shirt on the last day. They always pick a nice farm with some beautiful shade trees and hopefully they compensate the farmer well for that usage.

Beyond that there are all the locals who set out stuff either in front of their homes along the road that can include any number of items, but is usually just simple water and shade needs. Some of those families simply run a hose out to a table and you can fill your bottles from that as well as spray yourself down. Others will set up sprinklers near the road so you can ride through that and take the heat off for a moment. Others will hit Costco, or some box store and load up on plastic water bottles and sell them, or if they are generous, they give them away. In towns you will pass the various kid stationed lemonade stands. Maybe some icees in cooler as well.

There are two ice cream setups of note. One is set up like the craft beer and Mr Pork Chop where the outfit sets up on some farm along the route each day. The setup includes maybe four or five single piston John Deere engines driving a belt that translates that energy into an ice cream maker and they make all the ice cream they sell on the spot. It’s delicious. The other setup is advertised by a very mature man carrying a sign that says something to the effect of “My Grandkids Ice Cream” leading you to think that his grandkids have made ice cream for the event and are selling it, however that is an over thought. What you find is his grandkids are adults dishing out Breyers or Eddys that they purchased from a box store. The old man is dressed in overalls, so it is easy to get drawn in. Once. After my once, I saved my money for the homemade stuff.

Once you get into the final town and find the Brancel site, you find the others (if you aren’t the first) and then go retrieve your luggage bags from the luggage truck and get your tent setup. Me, I usually walked over to the Massage tent and put my name down along with the indicator that I will return after my shower, so that holds my place in line but doesn’t mean I have to hang there. I believe strongly that I should shower first and then get the massage rather than the other way around. The power stations are near by as well, so I plugin those things that need to be charged, and then I grab my dry clothing and head for the shower trucks. Brancel has their own trucks and the wait, I found, was never an issue. I was in and out. For me it was usually quick. I only washed my hair every few days, and I just wanted to get in and out. It was hot and humid in there so I didn’t find that to be too comfortable, though it always felt refreshing to get clean. After everyone had gotten in and followed through with the same routine we all headed into town to find food and entertainment. That could be a simple walk, we could jump on the bikes, or we could take the shuttles that are provided by the Ragbrai organization. It’s the same food trucks everywhere, but at least the entertainment changes every day.

With full tummies, and anxious to get rest before we do it all again, we all make our way back to our tents and maybe we circle around for awhile before turning in for the night. That is pretty much a typical Ragbrai day. Day 38 Strava, Instagram, Relive.cc

July 25, Day 39 – I described a typical day for Day 38. On day 39 we adhered to a once a Ragbrai tradition called “Beer Day”. This was established long before I was a part of this crowd and was run by the older generation until Ragbrai L in 2023 when the responsibility was handed off to the next generation to run. The idea on beer day is to pick the shortest mileage day (or a short mileage day) and stay together as a group, stopping when the “Leader” says we stop and “doing” whatever the leader tells us to do. That might be getting a Bloody Mary in the first town we come to, and usually the task at hand if it doesn’t involve some kind of beer or alcohol, then there might be a penalty that is associated with beer or alcohol.

This year, like we did in 2023, the leader, who I think was Amber, delegated at each stop the task for the group to follow. Here were the various tasks that I can remember:

• The first stop was a basic Beer or Bloody Mary stop
• At one stop we were all instructed to walk around like we were 9 months pregnant (Amber was 3 months pregnant at the time) To do this we leaned back like we had a big belly and we pretended to support our belly with our hands and say things like “This baby is killing me!”
• At one stop we each had to choose an animal, and before we took a sip from our beer (each sip that is) we had to loudly bleat out whatever sound that animal was known for. (I was a cow). When I say loudly I mean loudly. Others must turn and wonder “What the fuck is wrong with them?”
• Another stop we were instructed to refer to the delegator in an honorific way, always submissive. “Your Honor”, “Supreme Leader” when addressing him (That was Ted the diplomat), failure to do so means drink. You weren’t allowed to disagree with the supreme leader either.
• We couldn’t use our dominant hand at all at one stop. That meant always holding your beer, with the non-dominant hand, and using that hand to pay for the beer as well as to throw away the empty cup. Failure meant another beer penalty.
• We had to hop everywhere at one stop. Failure to hop was a penalty. We might have let Amber slide on this.

As you might expect, there is a good reason we choose a low mileage day as the amount of beer consumed is rather high for a cycling event. It’s all in good fun, and this year we got a lot of attention when we were bleating our animal calls at one of the craft beer stops.

Other than that, it was a normal day. Day 39 Strava, Instagram, Relive.cc (I didn’t make an IG post this day)

July 26, Day 40 – My final day in Iowa and I decided to call an audible. The reason was two fold. Firstly the end of Ragbrai was in a town called Guttenberg which does not have any access to crossing the Mississippi River. Secondly there was little doubt that there would be any available rooms there had I wanted to spend the night and thirdly the weather for the day was going to be dreadful during the morning with clearing in the afternoon. Now I had thought I would ride to the end town, and then simply double back after picking up my gear and ride down to Dubuque however when you look at the map you see that it’s an extra 30 miles on the day, and those 30 miles are very hilly. I just didn’t want to do that and so I did not lug my shit over to the luggage truck but rather returned the borrowed duffle that Pete had brought me, and I loaded up my bike with all my gear and knowing that I probably wouldn’t see most of my mates on the road when I turned off, said my goodbyes to the crew. I managed to stay with some of them, but then it started to rain, and I soon lost sight of everyone. I did stop at the one craft beer stop to both have one more craft beer, and to get my T-Shirt for having clocked in at least 10 of them.

When I got to Dundee the road turned North, and everyone but me went that way and I continued East. I actually ran into a rail trail at one point and was able too avoid almost all hills for the last 18 miles. Yee Haw!

Actually hit the rolling hills of Iowa today. They go on and on. They aren’t necessarily big but at the top of one you always see the next one. I won’t say I called it on the road, but I made a good decision in cutting East when Ragbrai went North and started its final push to Gutenberg. The only part of my plan that failed was the complete lack of food options between that cutoff point and Dubuque proper. The road less traveled is also the road with the fewest services and once I segued onto the Heritage Trail and committed to that, my serviceless fate was sealed. Such is life.

The end of Rag is a big deal in the end city, and if there was only a bridge across the river, I would have gone that way, but there isn’t and there was no place to stay and I wanted a bed.

Dubuque Iowa, “Where Iowa Starts” meaning, I believe that this is Iowa’s Eastern most point, and by start they must mean that as the sun arises in the East, Dubuque always grabs the first rays for itself. Port Dubuque that would be more specific.

The weather sucked into I rolled into Dubuque, so not a lot of images today. I hit the 7 Hills Brew Pub for lunch upon entry and had dinner at a neighborhood bar called Baraboos where a young woman was experiencing her 21st bday with a bunch of friends and for some reason I didn’t find out, all the dudes were in shirtless overalls. Not their normal choice of clothing according to Nolan who I chatted up. “Dude! I thought for sure you were maybe 51 cause my parents are in their late 50’s but they both look 80!” Bartender gave me a free beer for enduring all their celebratory antics for a couple of hours. I’ll take it.

Obviously I am on my own again. Pete, Robert and the rest of the gang (Those youngins) all finished and went their merry ways. Ted (the diplomat) is bound for an assignment in Somalia. Good luck Ted. Ally and Haley are driving to Seattle via Badlands and Yellowstone (I gave them my bear spray since they were camping). Nat and Garret home to Charlotte, Amber and Parker home to Dallas area, and finally Molly, who suffered a lot this week, home to Vermont. All the girls are UVA grads and a tight group still.
So, here we are now in Phase IV of my adventure. On my way to Chicago where I will get onto the ACA’s Chicago to NYC Route. I will be in Chicago on Tuesday and then down into Indiana. The plan there is to make a stop in Anderson to see my Aunt Lyn and stay at least 1 night. Maybe it’s time for another 0 day, we’ll see. I don’t want to be the pain in the ass stay 4-5 days I was in 1981. Troublemaker. Anyway we shall see.

Because the day was pretty awful in terms of weather, I didn’t take enough images to put together into a video so there is no embedded video for Day 40 Strava, Instagram, Relive.cc

Yes, now I have time to continue my travel log and in case I didn’t mention it this was my last day on the West side of the Mississippi River. That is a major milestone in a cross country trip. I see the Mississippi as the main divider between East and West here in the US of A. When people say “Midwest” what does that mean? I wouldn’t call Illinois and Indiana the East, but I wouldn’t call it the “Midwest” either. Maybe that is why there is a term called “The Heartland”. I have heard the “Heartland” referred to but know not its borders (if they’re defined at all), and if you asked me I would include Iowa in that designation in addition to it being part of the Midwest as well.

Tagged: adventure, Bike About 2025, Bike Packing, bike-touring, Bikepacking, biking, Camping, Cycling, Iowa, Travel