RAGBRAI 2008 Day 7

The last day of RAGBRAI XXXVI arrived on Saturday, July 26. This ride covered territory from Tipton to the Mississippi River at LeClaire. The day dawned clear and seasonal with mild winds. This last day of riding was also light on the amount of hills to cover and, as a consequence, I covered the distance at an average speed of 15.2 mph. Subsequent in town riding and a 7 mile ride out to meet my trip home driver lowered my average to 14 mph on a total of 59.02 miles and 2099 miles on the odometer. So the total distance covered by this rider in RAGBRAI was 504 miles in a riding time of 40h 3minutes (12.58 mph average).

And what a welcome sight was the last town of the ride ... it really was "all there in LeClaire" ...


With such a quick ride on this last day, I didn't stop for much in the way of pictures, but the dip site at the Mississippi was very interesting. Riders lined up in a steady stream under a balloon archway to get to the river:


The occasion in the town brought a very festive atmosphere with many spectators lining the streets as well as milling around the dipping site. I did finally get my turn to dip my front tire in the Mississippi ...


Completing RAGBRAI for the second time gave me a great feeling of satisfaction and accomplishment and sharp eyed readers will note that I'm wearing my Cubs hat in the photo above (go Cubbies!). The person of the day today would have to be Sandra, who drove all the way down from Cedar Falls to give me a ride home. Of course the route I chose to ride out to meet her (away from the madness of 10,000+ riders) involved about 4 miles of gravel road, to my surprise and chagrin. But it is a lesson well learned and I'll review options more carefully next time as riding on gravel with full speed car and truck traffic is not safe and I would not wish it on anyone. Needless to say, I did eat a lot of dust in the course of this lesson ... hehe.

Well, that's it for my notes on RAGBRAI XXXVI, hope you've enjoyed them as much as I enjoyed the ride. I did miss seeing several people, but after returning home last Saturday I took 2 days off from riding but now have more than 100 miles in over the past 5 days. And it feels good.

Later ...