RAGBRAI 2009 Day 7

Our last day of riding started extra early, and went by exceedingly fast. When the horse can smell the oats in the barn, and all that. Here's a picture Barney took as we were already well on our way with the sun still low in the sky:

I decided that before we ended the trip I wanted to contribute to the country's ethanol production by peeing in a cornfield, so I jumped off the bike at some point and started just walking into the rows of 10-foot-high corn. It's a pretty surreal experience, and I tried snapping a picture - people with claustrophobia would probably want to avoid Iowa cornfields:

From there we just blasted on into the final destination town of Burlington Iowa, with one really fun downhill on the way which let me set my new personal speed record on a non-motorized two-wheel vehicle:

Note that the 80 number is my heartrate, not the max speed. When we got into Burlington they threw one final twist at us of having an optional pedal up a really windy steep road called Snake Alley that required my lowest gear and some serious grunting. Once again I wasn't really planning to take the option, but then Barney charged up it and left me little choice. We then rode down to the riverfront and did the ceremonial tire dip into the Mississippi:

We then sat down and had a couple beers (which made me realize it's been quite a while since I've had beer before 11:00am) and a bite to eat, but it was the same vendors we had seen all week serving food and the area was quickly becoming a mob scene as more and more bikers rode in, so we decided to go ahead and clear out. Plus they weren't serving any ice cream (inexcuseable), which left my week-long tally at 18:

Barney and I rode our bikes west for the first time all week to get to the hotel parking lot where we had stashed our car and then spent an hour or so getting everything all packed up and our bikes broken down. Bill and Debbie and Dave and Tina came by and we got to thank them for all the fun riding of the week and the tremendous support from Tina and Debbie and then they hit the road for St. Louis. Barney and I packed his little Accord to its bursting point and then hit the road ourselves:

We drove for a couple hours then decided that skipping our post-ride nap was leading to unsafe driving sleepiness, so we pulled over at a rest stop and stretched out on the grass for a two-hour nap before continuing to our campground for the night. Getting to sleep beyond 6am and then not having to mount a bike seat this morning was a treat we both enjoyed as we rolled east through Indiana and then to the airport in Cincinatti, where we parted ways and I flew back here to San Fran as Barney drove on to Roanoke.

The final day's stats:

Total mileage - 48.6

Average rolling speed - 17.4mph

Max speed - 46.0mph

Butt soreness, scale of 1 (sitting in a comfy office chair for a week) to 10 (riding across Iowa on a hatchet-head-sized bike seat for a week) - 4

Final thoughts - it was a tremendous experience and a great way to get introduced to the basics of bike touring. Overall the physical demands weren't as bad as I was expecting - the miles seem to slip by pretty quickly when there isn't traffic to worry about and there are entertaining stops every dozen miles or so. I have new-found respect for people like my friend Deana who have made entire trips across the country by bicycle, or my friend Gracie who did it on a unicycle and is now riding one wheel from Canada to Mexico through the Rockies (http://divideby1.blogspot.com/) I think I'd like to try a self-supported trip sometime for a slightly more non-scripted experience, but feel like I'd really geek out on lightweight gear before I did it to make hill-climbing still tolerable.

So tonight I get to sign off from a comfortable chair in front of my desk and then climb into my comfortable bed and get up and drive my (sort of) comfortable truck to work (yay fossil fuels!). The novelty will no doubt wear off quickly, but for now I'm going to enjoy it.

Good night from San Francisco,

Chuck