RAGBRAI 2007 Completed!

Right from the top of this post I have to say that RAGBRAI is a very interesting experience. It was fun meeting new people, fun testing the bicycle (and its load) and the various systems of my body. It was fun to be able to eat so much for so many days in a row. That said, I'm not sure that I'll be too hep on doing it again ... but I have an open mind on that. One reason I would is that I've already been working on how to reduce my pack load to see if I can get everything essential for camping/riding into two pannier bags and the (rear) rack bag. It would be fun to try that out.

As for food, there was certainly no lack of that. My favorite was the homemade ice cream (Beekman's) ... of which I had raspberry and vanilla flavors. I have to give vanilla the nod here. The roadside food stops were pretty light on cantaloupe (one of my favorites) but there was plenty of watermelon (although not always seedless). In Fairbank, there was one stop with "all you can eat" cantaloupe/watermelon for $1. That was such a good deal ... for me!

My total riding distance was 490 miles with 40.9 hours of actual riding time during the 7 day period. The route itself was pretty benign except for the last day, which was fairly hilly. Overall, the weather was excellent with rain occurring only one night (in Independence) and that was a night I got an indoor room/bed to sleep in. And I must say that it is nice to not have to take the time to setup/breakdown the tent.

I saw one guy (Jean Oliphant) that I'd last seen in 1979 when we both worked in the CSSD group at Collins in Cedar Rapids. That was the year that engineering moved to Aurora, IL (outside of Chicago) and I chose to move over to Government Avionics (now Government Systems) and work on GPS. It was a good choice for me. Anyway, this bike was in front of me with its little identification form on the back and I recognized Jean's name plus his hometown of Aurora, IL ... so I pulled up beside him and introduced myself. He remembered me right away and we talked for a few minutes. But almost all the folks he asked about did *not* work in my area and I don't know what happened to them (Jim Sawyer, Larry Akins, several others).

I also ended up riding beside Terry Smith (one of the original GPS engineers) for awhile and we talked. He's over in Commercial Avionics and said he was riding in his 8th consecutive RAGBRAI. Cool.

Although Theresa Jasa was riding, we started each day at different times (I found out that I was generally the earlier starter) and I never say her on the ride. I did see Paul Adam and got a picture of him. One of these days I'll update the website to put on some RAGBRAI pictures of mine as well as (perhaps) contributions from others.

Physically, this ride was not a problem and I'll probably do another century ride up to Waterloo in the near future as it's pretty easy to do when you're in shape. My butt was in very good shape but I will say that I used the Chamois Butt'r and it did feel good. Most of the time, the outstanding issue was that the ride got a bit boring ... even though you had to keep your eyes open and your wits about you from time to time to avoid getting into an accident. Mechanically, everything worked on the bike except the cadence sensor on the speedometer. I'm going to have to return that unit as it seems Specialized has a batch of bad sensors and I've been trying to get a replacement for 3 months. However, it had been working acceptably until the start of RAGBRAI (of course), when it completely failed. My goal is to get a unit with reliable wireless speed and cadence sensors.

Best town ... probably Eagle Grove. They had a ton of old cars and also a BatCycle, plus a Mayberry theme with tapes playing and a jail with Otis available for photo op (although I didn't get any pictures here). This town was very fun and made me feel the most welcome.

Overall, the experience rates a big smile and, of course, a big thank you to Carol and to Larry for taking me out to the start and picking me up at the end, respectively, of the ride. I suppose I'll know I'm *really* in shape when I ride the bicycle out to the start and then ride back to Cedar Rapids after RAGBRAI is done. Well, just so no one gets anxious about when this will happen, it is *not* one of my life's goals. All I have to say is that there doesn't seem to be enough time to get things done ... even meeting people and/or going out on dates ... but there's still enough time to smile. More later.