Matthew Bohnsack

Route map for day seven

After seven days and 485 miles of cycling across Iowa self-supported, we reached the mighty Mississippi and Guttenberg, IA today.

It was a beautiful sight:

I feel slightly more elite than I did before the week began.

I took a few thousand photos. I’ll try and post some of them, along with a little text in back postings over the next week.

Update: All the RAGBRAI photos have been posted here.

Route map for day six

Route map for day five

Route map for day four

Two days of awesome riding. In Lake Milles now. Only a few more miles to Northwood and an evening with Berta in Mason City.

Day three’s route map

Made it to Estherville, IA at ~ 4:00 today, after a hard evening in Sheldon, IA, where we had to leave our tents and seek shelter in the middle school, during a deadly thunderstorm.

Today’s 84 miles weren’t too bad, despite the rain we had during a portion of the journey. The last 2-3 miles were sweet. We finished the ride through a beautiful state park, and I smoked Spenser to the finish line during the last mile.

Tomorrow: 62 miles to Algona.

Despite the adversities encountered so far, this, the world’s greatest cycling event for mortals, is well worth the effort. A glorious event. Highly recommended!

Day two’s route map

65.5 miles, Dutch hospitality, a near death experience in a killer thunderstorm, and sleeping much of the night on a middle school gym floor:

The tent we almost died in (luckily only a few feet from the bike path that a police officer came driving down and a very a short distance from the school):

Spenser’s folks drove us from Ames to Le Mars. We were tempted to drive to the Big Sioux River and across to South Dakota, so we could bike the 20 or so miles to Le Mars, before camping for the evening, but we decided against it. If I had it to do over again, I would have started in South Dakota.

We ate at Godfather’s Pizza:

It was damn hot. This thing said 104 degrees:

After we found a suitable place to camp, amidst team Airforce and between a Catholic church and its cemetery, the Villwock’s said their teary goodbyes, and we setup camp:

At midnight we were treated to a fireworks display. It woke us up out of a dead sleep. We were woken again at ~ 5:30 AM by the Airforce bugle call.

After disc golf, we hit the Bali Satay house. Iwan posed with us in front of his restaurant: