The Final Miles

Saturday's Route

For our final ride we decided to start a little earlier then our usual ride time. It was a combination of the excitement of finishing our first RAGBRAI and just wanting to hammer out a ride that was better then the day before. We found many of our new friends & wished them well on this final day of riding & were excited that when we finished today we did not have to set up the tents!

Holding up the strawberry!

 The ride started out with a nice pace & great temperatures. We knew the beginning of the course would be the easy part & we took full advantage of that. We had breakfast in the first town that we stopped in (no pancakes today...that was usually our breakfast of choice for many great reasons). The towns we stopped in today were much more low key then the rest of the week. They know that riders don't spend a lot of time in towns on the last day but it was still fun. We ran into Andrew and Toby a few times, and saw Larry and Roger one last time along the route as well. When we got to Strawberry Point, about midway through the days mileage we had a hamburger and traded in pie for homemade Strawberry shortcake from the Methodist church....it was well worth the trade! We got our picture taken at the giant strawberry and we were on our way.

Posing with the Strawberry

Last stop in Garber!

After Strawberry Point, we knew the hills were going to come. We rode through some beautiful Amish country and started making longer and longer hill climbs. When we got to Garber the last town before the big hills, we and everyone else stopped for some hydration and fuel before making the big ascent. Now Garber on any other day would be a town you'd drive right by and not realize it was a town, but today it was flooded with cyclist. They didn't have much for food there, but it did provide a chance to shake out the legs before tackling the last 14.2 miles. Immediately after leaving Garber, we were climbing. They were long, steep hills, but honestly I would rather do that than anything we did the day before. Once we made it up that hill there was a little flat before we made the next long climb. This hill was steeper and much longer than the first....probably over 2 miles long. At one point I was feeling pretty defeated because I just felt like I wasn't making any progress, but then all of a sudden I could hear the "Rocky" theme song coming from up the hill. There was a cyclist on the side of the road who brought her trumpet and was playing music for people to help them up the hill. Of course everyone was in awe of the fact that this girl had enough energy to play the trumpet! One guy behind me who was struggling, said exasperatedly "is she playing Taps?, am I dead?" Which caused everyone around to start laughing. It definitely helped break up the hill and before we knew it, we had made it up!

View from top of one of the hills!

The hills were a struggle for most & everyone reacted differently to the challenge. Some people embrace it, others curse it, & some are just straight up angry. Pedaling up the hill there was one couple who had differing opinions on how to embrace the hill...as this guy was pedaling up he told his wife that he read somewhere that people who think positively while riding up hills do better then those with a bad attitude...she promptly told him to be quiet as he continued to talk she exclaimed she didn't want to hear it & just wanted him to be quiet....I thought she was going to kill him...well at least it provided some of us with a laugh. After every great climb up a hill was a fantastic "coast" downhill. The thing that gets me the most is passing the

View of riders coming up the hill

bigger rider while going up the hill only to have them vroom down the hill and half way up the next hill before needing to pedal again. These downhills were awesome, fast, and scary all at the same time. With so many people screaming down the hill it can be dangerous. We saw one bad wreck with a rider thrown off into the ditch. While we'd love to just let it roll down the hill we did have to brake some to make sure we were safe. My max speed was 36 mph down the hill, but there were others that said they were going 45 mph. That's real fast if you have a crash. It was also a far cry from the day before when we were going downhill into the wind and struggling to get to 10 mph while still pedaling!

Completing the last few blocks!

As we had already had some awesome downhills, we were approaching Guttenberg and Stacey looks over at me and says, do we have another last hill to climb? HECK NO....we are on downhill until we get to the river...2.5 more miles of coasting! It was awesome. As we got into town there was tons of traffic. Guttenberg is a small little town with one main road in and out, so imagine was 15,000 bikes and all the cars/support vehicles for that looks like. It was crowded! We finally made it to the side street and then we were back to only bike traffic on the way to the dip site. We spotted my parents along the route, and were able to wave at them as we rode by.

Waiting to dip our tires!

WE MADE IT! We were at the river, and had to wait to dip for awhile which allowed us to catch up with our friends Bob & Mary Anne. I also got to see my friend Laurie from Indiana as she dipped. We dipped our tires, and hoisted our bikes to recognize the feat we had just accomplished. It was a little surreal to be done, but we were! We really lucked out with the weather on Saturday because it was overcast for much of our ride, and as soon as we dipped the sun came out and it heated up quick.

Dorice Dipping

Both Dipping

Stacey Dipping

VICTORY!!!

After dipping our tires & hoisting our bikes in victory we had one last thing to do...retrieve our bags. Our charter's pick up site was only a few blocks from the dip site & was easy to find. We found our bags, took a quick "shower" using wet wipes & changed out of our biking clothes. We had about a 6 block walk to the car which on any other day, heck even yesterday, would've been fine but we had our 40 lbs. bags in tow...oh & it was HOT at this point! We loaded the car and were headed back to Dorice's parents house. On the way home we stopped for some food & finished our meals with a piece of pie! Even though this day of rest is nice we miss our bikes & may be having our first signs of post RAGBRAI depression.

451 miles later 

For the week we totaled 451 miles on our bike! The ride route was supposed to be 418, but apparently every RAGBRAI is significantly over the published mileage. We were extremely fortunate to have a safe ride for the week. We didn't have any bike issues as many people we know had significant problems, one person from our camp had his bike stolen in Mason City. We didn't have any falls, crashes, or medical issues. We know a few people who had to be taken to the hospital by ambulance. We didn't get struck by lightning or have major amounts of water in our tent. Unfortunately two people died on this years' ride and these were the first deaths since 2010. One person had a heart attack going up one of the hills earlier in the week and another was found in their tent one morning. It makes us realize how fortunate we were to have a safe and fun ride. Thanks for all of your support and thoughts during the week. We still have more to write about in the upcoming days, and more pictures to share, so keep coming back. But now it's time to finish laundry and take a nap!