HALF WAY THRU.....

 I am writing this while sitting in a tent in the front yard of a typically generous and gracious Iowa host and I thought I would update the blog to talk a little bit about the experience so far. Tonight’s host has allowed us to park our RV in his driveway and also allowed about 25 others to set up tents in his yard. All of us can use his showers, toilets, laundry and small pool while whiling away the hours after todays ride. The way people treat us here is amazing; but first, a little about the ride:

There are 10,000 people with ‘weekly passes’ that are allowed to ride each day. The organizing committee sells anywhere between 5,000 and 8,000 ‘daily passes’ for each day AND there are tons of local people that just join in the fun daily. All that totals to an amazing 19,000 plus as we left Sioux City on Day One and 16,000 on our third day. It is difficult to imagine seeing that many people all heading in the same direction at the same time on bikes but it is a crazy and spectacular site. We have started the ride each day about 6:00AM and ridden as fast as we could to clear as many people as possible so that we can get into a much less crowded group of riders. The crowd was so large today that we rode faster than most of them for about an hour and still did not see the front of the crowd. Once we get into the less crowded areas of the ride we generally spread out and the faster riders go ahead and the slower riders fall back to just in front of the big crowd. (I usually fall in to the category of ‘slower riders’). We then stop at the first “Iowa Craft Beer Tent” sponsored by Backpocket Brewing for our first beer of the day and then at one of the pass through towns for a little bit of breakfast. Once that is over it’s ‘Every Man for Himself” until the end of the ride when we all try to find where our RV is parked for the day and clean up. We usually end up riding sometime between noon and 2:00PM which leaves plenty of time for cleaning up, eating a very early dinner followed by 'next day preperation' and an early bed time. 

This afternoon on the way back from dinner, my bike odometer went to 400 miles. It’s funny how that does not seem like a lot of miles, even for a bike, but it represents a very large portion of this ride – it is ‘almost over’ and while I will be glad to finally dip my tire into the Mississippi River, my legs will be glad that there are no more miles in Iowa.

Almost all of the Iowa people I have met this week are very generous and gracious. They all seem to be very happy to have this rolling party come through their town, even if it’s just for a few hours as we all pedal / walk through their main streets looking at the vendors, stores, fire departments, parks and other amenities that they want to share with us. This is a truly amazing event and it is difficult to put in to words how happy people are to see all of us come into their towns. They sit and stand on the side of the street and offer encouragement and ask us “Where you from?” I have taken to asking them the same or encouraging them to “Come Visit South Carolina” in return. The farmers will have their tractors and other machinery sitting out by the road and some have their kids standing there handing out free water bottles. I have seen numerous home made slip and slides using plastic sheeting laid into a grassy ditch and other examples of ‘Farm Made Fun” each day.

Friday is “College Jersey Day” and I will of course be sporting my Clemson Cycling jersey. It should be fun to see how many different schools are represented in this large crowd. Saturday is our last day of riding and we will ride into Davenport and then have to begin the process of trying to find all our stuff that is scattered throughout this RV. It is quite a mess despite our ‘best effort’ in keeping it clean and organized.

The internet access has been spotty at best so I have not been able to post nearly as much as I would have liked. I hope you have been able to see all the photos I have put on the “James’s Ride to RAGBRAI” FaceBook page (you don’t even need to be my ‘friend’) and been able to follow me on “MapMyRide”. I will probably make one more post here and be done with this blog. It’s been fun and I hope you have learned a little something about bikes, riding and group rides. Thanks!

Thanks for reading and pray for the continuing great weather we have had all week! ! !