RAGRBAI stands for the Register’s Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa. It started in 1973 when two feature writers for the Des Moines Register decided to bike across Iowa, and invited readers to join them. The ride has grown ever since and is now in its forty-seventh year. The route always starts on the west side of Iowa, and ends on the Mississippi River on the east side of Iowa, and takes the last full week of July to do – but the course changes every year! You can register for the whole week, or for a single day, which is what I’ve done the last five years (2014 – Day 7, 2015 – Day 4 and 5, 2016 – Day 7, 2017 – Day 7, 2018 – Day 7).

Gah, this is what I get for starting this draft NINETEEN days ago. It’s taken me forever to make the time to sit down and write! BLAH! But here we go. Let’s do this.

We rode Day 7 of RAGRAI this year, which started in Burlington, and ended in Keokuk. The route ended up being over seventy miles.

image from here

Pay close attention to that “Area Shown” map above. That will come in to play, later!

[Really long logistics info you can skip]

Logistically, RAGBRAI is tricky. How do you get there, with all your stuff, and how do you get home? You can’t leave your car at the start! For the past five RAGBRAIs, we’ve had a crew (our families) helping us out with transportation. This year though, it was just me and Dad.

So here’s what we did – on Friday July 26th, the day before the ride, we drove four hours from our home to Guttenberg, Iowa (where we’d be spending a few days after the ride) to pick up Dad (and drop off Steven). Then, Dad and I drove over three hours to Burlington, where the start of the ride was, to drop off our bikes and gear at our hotel. Then, we drove forty minutes from Burlington to Keokuk – which I’d like to point out, is the most southern city in Iowa – to leave my car in a Walmart parking lot (which RAGBRAI assured me was okay but I was nervous about getting towed) so it would be there when we finished.

Then. And then. I thought I could just Uber or Lyft back to Burlington, because I checked both sites and both showed me fares and I thought that was a confirmation there were drivers. Oh, no, Kim, there are NOT. Uber said “uh uh, no drivers” and Lyft kept spinning. Lesson learned – when checking fares, go all the way through to car request to see if cars exist. (Dad kept asking me how it all worked, and I was all cool, “it’s fine, it’ll work.” Ha, nope!)

But guess what?! There is ONE taxi in all of Keokuk and he was free to drive us to Burlington. You know, after he took someone to Walmart, got snacks, picked her up from Walmart, and dropped her off. That was one interesting ride. Man.

Dad and I had Panera for dinner, soaked our feet in the hotel pool after, and both had a great night’s sleep!

[Logistics over]

One of the weird things about RAGBRAI is you don’t know the specific course route until a few months after the overall course is announced in January. So I booked a hotel randomly (to secure one) in January and was pumped when it appeared to be right on the course! It actually was not. At least, not how they wanted us to go that morning. It looked like we’d jump right on the highway our hotel was on, but we went south (on a safer route) to end up back on that highway. That’s great, it just added a little over two miles at the start. In the past, our crew would have dropped us off, but we didn’t have that option!

Start time: 7:31 am, Start temp: 70°, Wind: SSW @ 8 mph
Finish time: ~3:20 pm, Finish temp: 88°, Wind: SW @ 12 mph
Overall distance: 74.5 miles, Overall speed: 11.1 mph, Garmin stats here

In all the years we’ve done RAGBRAI, we’ve never had rain or bad wind (knock on wood), just heat and hills. There was something unique about this year’s course for us though. In the past, we’ve always ridden mostly south or east, NEVER west. But if you look at the course above, you can see that a lot of it was headed west, because Burlington is farther east than Keokuk. I never thought of this before, but major DUH. In the midwest (at least Iowa and Illinois), a lot of the wind comes from the west, and on Saturday July 27th, it was coming from the southwest. And most of our course? Was southwest. So we had a headwind for a lot of it. It didn’t make me stabby (it actually kept me cooler when we were moving!), but it slowed us down!

I hadn’t done RAGBRAI with only Dad (we usually have more people riding with us) since 2015! So it was super awesome to spend so much time with him, just the two of us. We talked a lot in the car (I got to hear some really interesting stories from his childhood and we talked a lot about music) and we talked some on the ride. I rode with a speaker again this year (someone thanked me at the end for playing music, aww) and we’d listen to that. We’d get separated on the big hills, and I’d pull off on the top to wait for Dad.

We didn’t study the course map too much, and just planned to pull over if we saw anything interesting, or if we needed something to eat or drink. We actually mostly ate the food I brought (gels, Honey Stinger Waffles, a CLIF bar), and stopped a lot to get water and Gatorade. It was toasty out there and we were thirsty!

Each day of RAGBRAI, there’s a town that is designated as the “Meeting Town” and it typically has the most stops and options for food. Donnelson was Day 7’s Meeting Town, almost fifty miles in to the course, and we strolled in right at noon – perfect timing for a bowl of rice, tofu, and veggies (shared) for lunch <— the only food we bought all day (this is only significant because so much of RAGBRAI is about eating and drinking (alcohol)! And more water.

Photo op in Donnellson!

There were several pass through towns before Donnellson, and we did stop to walk through one (and saw this cool “MT RAGBRAI”),

but we were both surprised that it was possible to ride through all the other pass-through towns. You almost always have to get off your bike and walk!

We saw some interesting things, but nothing too crazy: opportunities for tractor rides, signs for miles and miles for a “redneck” waterslide, riders dressed up as babies, someone rollerblading the course…

I felt decent the whole time, except for some toe cramping that required a stop to stretch my toes around mile sixty (and that surprisingly worked and I felt fine!). Dad felt decent, but meh about the hills and wind. His knees were bugging him on the hills, and he was upset to walk two hills, and break his record of not walking any hills in RAGBRAI. I understand his disappointment, but I am so proud of him for doing RAGBRAI at all, on a freaking MOUNTAIN BIKE. You rock, Dad!

The course was mostly flat, but yeah, there were some hills, including this stupid killer huge one right before the finish. Grr. Then there was a crazy steep downhill to get to the dip site (you dip your front tire in the Mississippi River on the last day). It was only a block long, but it freaked me out.

We got to ride along the Mississippi River for a bit. It wasn’t cooler (temperature-wise), but it was pretty! And there was a small stretch of shade there that felt amazing!

We decided to go to the dip site (I gave Dad the option to skip and go to the car, ha, I was totally ready to be done) and we had to wait for a ten minute train in the sun. During that time, the sunscreen I had been so diligently applying at every stop got in Dad’s eye, blinding that eye. Oops. Sorry, Dad.

But we dipped, and the merchandise tent was still open after (last year, we missed it) even though it said it was going to close fifteen minutes earlier, so I got my RAGBRAI pin. And, got a paper towel for Dad to wipe out his eye, eek.

Remember that steep downhill down to the dip site? We had to get out of there, so we walked our bikes up that, then began the two+ mile ride back to the car. That ride ended up being mostly uphill (yuck), and Dad was over it, so he waited in the shade downtown and I got the car (it was still at Walmart, yay!) and picked him up. Then we drove to a drugstore and bought a ton of cold water and drinks.

And it’s not over yet! We had to drive back to our Burlington hotel to get our bags (and change outfits). And get Taco Bell. Then we drove three+ hours back to Guttenberg, where we ate pizza and shared our day with Steven, Gina, Steve, and Luca!

It was a long day but I never felt very tired and enjoyed all of it. Even the part where I was fine with skipping the dip site. I am very grateful for this time with my Dad and realize how lucky I am to have it – and that he wants to do this ride with me!

We are hoping next year’s ride is closer to home, though! I really hope it will end in Guttenberg like it did the first year we did it!