It was a great trip! My daughter, Erika, made the trip with me and the rest of our group of the RAGBRAI CUBS team. The acronyms are: "RAGBRAI" = "Register's [as in Des Moines Register newspaper] Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa" and "CUBS" = "Chicago Urban Bicycling Society". [She is now an official CUBS team member!] It was a pleasure to have her along.
Our trip across Iowa was good in many ways. The people of Iowa are always a joy. Our group of riders and crew were fantastic. My bicycle held up well [no flat tires over the 450+ miles ridden during that week]. However the shifting from the small chain ring in the front on my drive train to the larger one required some bike shop repair.
The weather was cooler than it usually is during this time of the year. That was very welcome. We had a quite hilly route this year. The winds weren't too cooperative but we had a couple of days that were primarily tailwind conditions. It rained on Monday afternoon and a good part of the day on Tuesday but there weren't any strong storms for most of us. We also had some rain on Friday night. All of the CUBS seemed to enjoy the adventure of crossing Iowa on rural roads this year. We had no significant injuries.
The flying could have been better. I flew on Saturday evening and Sunday evening. Saturday evening we were about 6.4 miles from the primary Omaha airport of Eppley Airfield but the jets were flying directly over our overnight site of the Iowa School for the Deaf. The planes were a little too close for comfort for me. The flight was started late due to an 18 mile round trip to the river which was a bonus ride for some of us.
Sunday evening I had my best flight of the trip when I circled the town of Red Oak. They have a very nice airport and I later learned from Larry [one of our local hosts] that the industry and city fathers of the area have a good relationship with the federal government and the FAA which allows them to have and maintain their paved runway and taxiway airport. It is very well maintained and has 2 long intersecting runways which are long enough to handle some larger jet aircraft.
The rain on Monday evening stopped me from flying that night. My spark plug cap broke down on Tuesday evening in Indianola and I couldn't get a replacement until the next day. There were a number of children at our host's homes who were disappointed that the air show was canceled.
Wednesday evening it was learned that the replacement wasn't right so another perfect evening for flight was lost. This was very frustrating. Before I was aware of the problem, I made a trip to the airport in Chariton. There was a hot air balloon coming in to land and a biplane giving sight-seeing rides. The biplane was being piloted by Chris Price. His wife Heather was running the business end of things. She was nice enough to keep an eye on my paramotor while I made a trip to the motorcycle shop to try to replace the wrong spark plug cap for my machine. Unfortunately I got to the shop at 7:15 and they had closed at 6pm and wouldn't open until 9am the next morning. The next morning I waited until they opened and exchanged the part for one that finally worked. Unfortunately I didn't get to test it until I returned home to Illinois due to weather and time constraints.
At&t phone & mobile internet service was horrible. We had almost no service during the entire event. The overnight towns were the worst. Verizon & Sprint did much better. 10,000+ people coming into rural towns for one night clogs up the mobile phone and mobile internet services pretty effectively for at&t at least.
Thursday evening we had our fund raising banquet and invited some state troopers helping with the ride to join us for dinner. It rained a bit that evening also and it was windy so the flying probably wouldn't have been good. Friday morning the weather didn't look good in the forecast but actually wasn't bad. However, I waited too long to assess the conditions and by the time I decided it was good for a flight there wasn't enough time to take to the air. Bummer!
Friday was a long ride to Mount Pleasant. I spent a good part of Friday riding with the head of our group and my good friend, Jerry. In Mount Pleasant we had a storm that was producing wind that stayed north of us in the evening but finally produced some rain and more wind during the night. It wasn't bad in my tent at all and I slept OK. By Saturday morning the sky was clearing but everything was wet. Bikers were encourage to leave early to be at the group photo site by 11:30.
Saturday was a ride of about 42 miles which was the shortest one of the event. We were starting from the other end of town which added a couple of miles to those of us with the CUBS. Our group gathers for a group photo on the last day in our new jerseys which are provided by our fees and are part of the total cost to ride with the CUBS. This year the photo site was about 4 miles from the end of the ride. I rode the 4 miles down to the river to check out the route and then rode back before it was time to get together for the photo. My total mileage for that day was about 57miles. It was quite hilly from the photo site to the Mississippi River which is the end of the ride.
Our group forms up in a double line and appropriately sings, "Take Me Out to the Ball Game", on our ride down to the river. In spite of the hills it seems that this was one of the best results that we have had in keeping the group together over a longer than usual final leg to the river. We were all quite proud of ourselves.
We then rode a few miles to a local hotel. There we showered, packed up our bikes and other gear, and eventually hit the road for the trip from Belvidere, IA, to Lincolnwood, IL.
It was a great ride!
To see photos that I took during the week please go to:
http://picasaweb.google.com/davidmcw3/RAGBRAICUBSFlyingcub2009?feat=directlink
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