RAGBRAI - Day 7 - Washington to Muscatine - (49.7 miles, 1314 feet of climb) - End of Ride (+420)

Day 7, the last day.  Washington to Muscatine.  Our goal was to finish before noon.  The only downside to that was we beat the truck set up in again and Ming didn't get to experience what the end of the ride is like when there's a crush of thousands (or at least hundreds at a time) of people trying to dip their tire in the river.  That's something to be experienced, if only once.



One more picture of packing in the dark - I think we were on the road by 5:15 a.m.on the last day.  Adam looks like he's packed fissionable materials.  He had a new tent this time, so he didn't have to worry about trying to pack up a jumbled collection of busted poles.  Ming, however, had a fiberglass pole tent that didn't survive.  He was generally patching it together with duct tape and sticks until Tun loaned him a pole repair kit.  At which point Adam remembered he had a kit as well, he'd just been reserving it in case his own pole broke before loaning it to Ming (actually, he forgot he had it).


My sandals.  Pictured solely to remember they gave their life.  During the trek to the laundromat, one of them lost the grip on the bottom.  Only an issue on the slippery morning baggage truck ramp and when trying to walk evenly on two shoes of different heights.  I pulled the bottom off the other one.  And then it's strap broke.  However, I could velcro the straps together which kept them functional for an hour or two at a time before re-jiggering. Farewell, sweet princes.  May you rest in the Washington landfill peaceably.


Time lapse photo of a bunch of riders.  Adam makes an appearance and there's a fun rider who gives me the peace sign and a big smile.  Made me wish I'd had her on regular speed filming.  That was someone who was certainly happy to have done the ride.

The Columbus Junction swinging bridge.


Ming on the bridge.  He accused me of shaking it on purpose.


Another view of the bridge - total strangers.


Here's me crossing the bridge with some wobbling only to find Wisconsonites on the other side.


More bridge video, just because I had it.  Filming was sort of dubious - I was worried I'd tip over a side or drop my phone.  Those people in clipped shoes crossing the bridge - very daring.

When we pulled into Muscatine, this was taped to the ground  Must be a bicycling team - I just hadn't heard of them before.  Yep - looked 'em up.  25 members.  But no one I know.  I was familiar with Team Roadkill and Team Loon.


End of the ride - tire dip in the Mississippi River.


Ming took this nice action shot of me within a few dozen feet of the finish line.


The three of us dipping our tires.


The luggage as Jen came to pick us up.  I didn't take a picture of it, but my bag, which I've had since RAGBRAI 2007, took a beating getting dumped off the truck each evening.  This reminded me of it because it was one of the first bags on that morning, but we had a hard time finding it as it had rolled down the time scale.  I used Adam's duct tape liberally to patch up four big new holes, not including one that ripped through the handle area and bent the handle.  It lived a good life.


And that's all he wrote.  2016 RAGBRAI come and gone.  Ming's looking at another non-Iowa location next year.  I'm conflicted.  I like the every-town-has-something nature of RAGBRAI and the 8500 week riders + day riders aspect.  You're never far from trouble.  You're never far from a fix.  You're never far from food.  You're never far from another bicyclist, even if you lose track of your own team.  I figure in another few years another friend will ask me to go again and I'll reassess then.  In the meantime I'm going to take a look at one of the mountain rides and get a taste of something different.

Bicycling Has Started

I went out both Thursday and Saturday last week.  While the rides wouldn't qualify as sprints, I would say they were "aggressive" for early spring for me.  I did 17.75 on Thursday, biking down to the St. Paul Yacht Club, and then climbing back out of the valley to home.  And on Saturday, I did almost 36 miles, biking into Minneapolis to meet Ming at Hell's Kitchen, and then bicycling home.  That was a lot of hills.  I was running a bit ragged by the time I got home and I don't think I really recovered even by Sunday.  Erik felt bad that my wife had to wake me up to answer his page about whether I could drive him to Code Camp on Sunday.

The St. Paul Yacht Club. Most of the time I bike under the bridge and along the river.  Not exactly possible this year.  I noticed on Saturday that the trail that goes down around the base of Fort Snelling was flooded as well, which I've never seen.  I usually take the trail that doesn't take me down a big hill and back up, but I've been down there enough that it was surprising.

Thursday.  The snow was not yet gone.  On the way back, I saw a couple of co-workers at Lucky's.  I waved and yelled hello, but I don't think they quite identified me as the crazy cyclist out so early in the spring.  Note the orange Specialized bicycle!  I've had it out twice in the potholes without destroying the rims.  The new rims and weight loss are working well.  I'm 50# under my heaviest at the moment and 40# under what I was sometime around Christmas.  That's a lot less stress on a back wheel.  The ride on Saturday burned over 2000 calories, so it's exciting to go into the bicycling season with a low enough weight that I can drink 10-20 beers a week without so much as a blip on my calorie counting.

Saturday morning by the river.  Very high.  It might have been on the banks if not for the cement barriers.  Right after this a particularly attractive woman was dragging a "road closed" sign across the shallower road out of the river valley, so I had to take the steep path up to Carlson School of Management (after stopping to watch her drag the sign.  I didn't want to get in her way).  The people who are jogging, dragging road closed signs, and helping staff early morning marathon training booths, at 7:30 a.m. on Saturday morning are a somewhat attractive lot overall.  I never thought to ride around the river early, when I was single, to find someone who fit my early morning habits.  If I had, I would have never met Pooteewheet unless I was looking across the river through her window (her dorm was almost exactly across the river from here, and that fairly open grassy field you can see is where she dumped me while we sat on a picnic table and bunnies frolicked, or something similar starting with the letter f, nearby).

This really surprised me.  Grandma's!  It's a big hole in the ground full of concrete.  There are pictures on this blog of me standing on the far edge of that parking ramp taking pictures of the collapsed I35 bridge.  And I think there are stories of Kyle and I getting absolutely ill on Special Export at Grandma's, and how I was too hungover to stay awake during class, but had to go because they were giving out the info for the final test, and that I stopped by Hardee's (also gone) on the way back, bumped into Mike R. from high school (whose sister lived with Kim W., my high school crush, in an apartment below Kyle and I when we lived in Cedar Riverside, crack towers as the complex is sometimes known), got a whole bag of roast beef sandwiches and, to the best of my memory, nearly made Kyle heave by repeatedly offering him multiple roast beef sandwiches while he tried to clear his system of the Special Export dregs I'd voided several hours earlier.  Of course, I haven't been back there in forever as Town Hall is only a few hundred feet away.