Day Seven – RAGBRAI 2008
July 26th, 2008AHHHHH. Ragbrai has come to its conclusion. I am home and will sleep in my own bed. Tomorrow i will wake up and not ride a bike for the first time in a week; I will not feel the pain of my bike seat on my rump; I will not feel the ache of my knees as yet another hill rises up before me; i will wake up AFTER 5:00am.
Our final day was all about speed, and we had plenty of that. The wind was not in our face for the first time in about 3 days and this contributed to an average speed of almost 20mph throughout the 2.5-3 hours of riding. So, i guess i don’t really have that much to talk about the today. We arrived in Le Claire around 10am and found Sherpa about 1/2 mile from the river. After the whole team was together we headed down to dip our tires in the mighty, muddy Mississippi.
After our tires were wet, the team headed back to the woody wagon and piled in ready to head west. All in all it was an awesome end to a terrific week spent eating a lot of food and getting to know friends and strangers better…it was also a great week of biking. We thoroughly missed having our team leader Darren “Papa Delicious” Johnson on the ride. His culinary skills and his hilarious comments to riders emerging from restroom breaks in the corn.
Another Ragbrai has come and gone and the next year may be in doubt for Team Avalanche as life begins to pull us in many directions. If this is the last ride of the team, rest assured that Ragbrai is an experience like no other, something that i would recommend everyone try at least once in their life.
