The last day is always bittersweet...you know you will miss the people and being carefree on your bike but a part of you is ready to be home. We had discussed the night before that we wanted to stick together as much as possible for the last day and to be rolling out of camp no later than 6:30 since we knew not only did we have the 70 miles of the planned route but estimated that we would get about 10 bonus miles that day due to where our campsite was and where our cars were parked!
We made some food time and had a good pace line going as we made our way out of Iowa City. One lady was being a real jerk and she was mad at us but we just laughed as we climbed past her on every hill. Our first stopping town was about 20 miles out. When we rolled into town we were in need of food and with so many short stops between our next long stretch we also knew it was our best bet to get breakfast here. As we wandered the streets deciding what to eat...we made friends and took a picture with a giant turkey, then we spotted a sign for pancakes at the church 2 blocks off of the main drag....so we thought this would be a good place to go and as we set out to see if we could find the boys they were eating breakfast sandwiches but were game for pancakes as well. Free will donation, no line, and pancakes made with love...it was just what we needed! And aMethodist Church no less...our faithful readers know our history with the Methodists! They did us well this year!
As we walked to breakfast though we had a near disaster...Jamie had a banana in his back pocket and he took it out as we were walking down the street and was so proud that he had a banana but he dropped it and just as we were finishing saying banana down...Pauly steps on it squashing it like a bug and almost falling. It was a straight out of the cartoons type moment and we were all dying laughing! We were just glad that Jamie didn’t also get his hand squashed reaching for his banana! Luckily the Methodists were giving away back up bananas so Jamie was able to replace his banana!!
After we left West Liberty we headed towards Wilton. We went through a few other small towns but we didn’t stop. In Wilton we had some pie. I had raspberry and I think that brought my total to six pieces for the week. At this point our group had split a bit. Ed headed out first, Ray and Vince were together and then the rest of us stay together. As we left Wilton guess who jumps right on Stacey’s wheel??? Matthew! The kid from the other day. He stuck with us for quite awhile, but he’s kind of a free loader! He never took any turns pulling his own weight! I’m pretty sure Matthew has a crush on Stacey as he saw her again later in the day and yelled to her!
Stacey and I split from the boys when they stopped for Beekman’s ice cream. We weren’t really hungry and just ready to keep rolling. We knew we could catch up with them later. We stopped about 15 miles from the end to get some watermelon and just take a little break. Little did we know this break was right before a big hill. We wouldn’t have stopped had we known we’d have to climb this hill from a dead stop. Oh well...only adds to the challenge! We stopped in Blue Grass to get some food and wait for the boys to arrive. They all showed up and we got some food and had some good laughs again. Jamie still had his banana!!! As we left Blue Grass we knew we only had 10 miles left!!
The best part of the day was riding the last 10 miles of RAGBRAI together. Flying V formation of badasses! Part of the ending miles were on the highway which made it really important to stay in the right lane as if you wandered into the left lane you would be road kill! Most riders were respectful of this except for this one guy who was yelling that he was pulling a "trailer" and that it was hard to stop...first it was a freaking hand truck ghetto rigged to his bike and second dude what are you thinking! So he made a comment as he rode by us and Vince gave him a little salute and then the same guy struggled to get going after he stopped on the bottom of the hill...karma maybe?! It’s always cool to have people cheering as you ride into the finishing town! As we came to the dip site the line was super long and since no one really wanted to wait that long we went down the road some more to another spot that we could dip our tires as this is an important RAGBRAI tradition and especially for the new guys in the group.
After we dipped our tires we rode the few more miles to our meeting point and had officially eneded our ride. We grabbed our bags, packed our cars, said our see ya laters, and said we needed a reunion during the year and it looks like Pittsburgh just may be the spot! We’ll add a bonus blog of stories we forgot to tell admins pics we didn’t get uploaded in a couple days!
For the week I rode 488.8 miles and Stacey did around 452. We really lucked out with weather this year as there weren’t any unbearably hot days! It’s always sad to see this come to an end. Until next time RAGBRAI....
No comments:
Post a Comment