RAGBRAI 2010

Saturday, July 24th, was a warm summer day, but not nearly as hot or humid as you might expect for Nebraska in July.  My wonderful girlfriend, Emily, drove me up to Omaha to meet up with my college buddy, Matt, and his friends from Kansas, who would be joining us for RAGBRAI.  Emily dropped me off at The Upstream and I met up with Matt.  Matt ate lunch and we killed some time walking around the old market as we waited for the guys from Kansas.  After a couple of hours they finally showed up.  They couldn't find a parking spot close to where we were, so they parked a few blocks away and Matt sent me ahead to screw with them.  I found them (Larry, Kyle, and Colin) milling about the car and took them for a ride, asking them if they were, "on some sort of racing team," and "if they had room in their car for me and my bike because I've always wanted to do RAGBRAI."  It was a magical first meeting.  They had a good laugh when I told them the truth and I knew they would be a good group of guys to spend RAGBRAI with.  We left  for Sioux City in two cars.

When we arrived we found a nice grassy knoll upon which to set up our tents and, once our campsite was established, we immediately started drinking.  We took a short break to check out the expo, where Matt and Colin (both bike mechanics), kept running into people working the tents that they knew.  We milled around for a bit, joked about missing the Smash Mouth concert, and headed back for more drinking until we called it a night.

RAGBRAI, for those of you who don't know, is a cycling event across Iowa.  It is the oldest, largest, and longest multi-day bicycle tour in the country.  There are about 15,000 people who do it and cyclists completely take over both lanes of the highway.  There is a start town and an end town each day, and in between we pass through little towns that are essentially shut down and turned into one big street festival.  The enormity of this event is nearly unfathomable and, unless you've done it before, there is no way to accurately describe it that would convey the true chaos of RAGBRAI.

This post has the potential for becoming excessively long, so I'm going to do the rest of the week like this...

Day 1:
Woke up too early (this was to be the theme for the week because insanely slow people get up at 5:00 to be obnoxious and get ready to start riding, since it's going to take them all day)
Beautiful weather
68.5 miles with 3,687 feet of climbing
Matt's drive day (one person had to drive each day to get our gear to the end town.  Matt rode a single speed, so he decided to drive the day with the most climbing)
Best thing that happened - found a party farm 5 miles from the end town with free beer and brats.  Also, free watermelon at one of the towns along the way.
Ended in Storm Lake.  That town is beautiful.

Day 2:
Woke up too early
Another beautiful day
100 miles with 1,416 feet of climbing
Colin's drive day since we were all doing the extra loop to make it a century ride and Colin thought that Idea was dumb.
Best thing that happened - stopped 10 miles from the end town and gorged on all-you-can-eat pasta and garlic bread (which was delicious), but then had too many beers and got WAY too full.  Also, was on the periphery of an accident and got stabbed in the Achilles tendon by my big chain ring.  Kyle and Larry were riding drunk the last 10 miles and were hilarious (and STILL way faster than us).

Day 3:
HOT AS HELL
59.9 miles with 1,068 feet of climbing
My drive day, since I figured I'd be sore from the longest ride of my life (I was right)
Best thing that happened - Went to the pool in the end town.  We all got sunburned and watched a (probably drunk) older lady with fake boobs have WAY too much fun

Day 4:
51.8 miles with 1,180 feet of climbing
Kyle's drive day
Best thing that happened - Stopped for Mr. Porkchop (delicious), took the wheels off of Colin's bike, and left while he was still in line for food.  "Really, guys?  Really?!"  It was priceless and would not be the only time his wheels got removed from his bike.

Day 5:
Larry's drive day
82 miles with 2,635 feet of climbing
Best thing that happened - I had a good ride and took some strong pulls (letting people draft off of you - at one time I had a train of 6-8 people following me.  I almost felt like a real cyclist for a second!)

Day 6:
Matt drives again (because he blew up the day before)
Rainy
Best thing that happened - being done with the ride.  The weather was crappy and I finally blew up and was unable to keep up with the guys.  We went to some crazy bars, I got Iced twice...about 30 seconds apart.  It was a good ending to a crap day.

Day 7:
I drive again since I blew up the day before
47.5 miles
2,591 feet of climb (I guess there were some killer hills on this day
Best thing that happened - being finished and saying goodbye to a new group of friends.  Matt and I stayed with Emily and her parents that night at their house near Des Moines.  We got to clean up in a real shower, ate a ton of awesome food, and I Iced Matt (finally).

RAGBRAI was twice as much cycling as I usually do in a week and 100 times more drinking than I usually do in a year.  We also had lots of, "fellowship," as Larry liked to call it, which was basically just us eating at a restaurant and hanging out.  Spending all of my time with these guys for an entire week sort of reminded me of being on tour, which was good; I miss that feeling.  There were plenty of other crazy and cool things that happened, but if you want to hear about them you'll have to drop by for a chat or give me a call.