RAGBRAI 2008 Day 4

Day 4 of RAGBRAI XXXVI took place on Wednesday, July 23. The ride was from Ames to Tama-Toledo with a distance of about 78 miles and almost 2900 feet of climb. This ride featured many fun towns but one of the best was Nevada, where I met the Wicked Witch of the West and Miss Piggy.


And thank goodness for those much needed rest areas, like the one as we approached the halfway town for the day, Albion:


I found a great place for the hammock in Tama in the wooded acreage backyard of Don and Marian. One note of interest on hammock accessories here is that the "tree hugger" straps that are supplied by Hennessey are only about 45" long. That means they only work for trees that are approximately 45/pi or 14" in diameter. This is fine for the most part but I picked up some 1" wide nylon webbing and made a 10 foot strap just in case I had to use a larger tree. In the camping area at Tama there were more choices for trees but for the two I *really* wanted to use, one of them was much larger than 14" in diameter. Check it out:


If you look closely you can see on the nearer tree that the (longer) strap is orange in color (the standard straps from the manufacturer are black, one of which I used on the far tree). So strap length is an important consideration and I would recommend that anyone with a Hennessey Hammock get some longer straps made. In this case I stopped at a shoe repair shop to get the ends stitched up as loops, matching the original strap design.

The ride today covered 78.99 miles with an odometer reading of 1896 and an average speed of 11.7 mph (6h 43m). Tama was a fun town with a very nice swimming pool. I ate "supper" at the Dairy Queen for some nice air conditioned relaxation. Finally, the hammock was extremely comfortable on this night ... with light rain to fall asleep by.