RAGBRAI 2022 – DAY 6 – JULY 29, 2022

CHARLES CITY to WEST UNION

DISTANCE: 63 miles CLIMB: 2025 feet

Our riders were up and all packed bright and early. Tents and bags in the second story of the CRV, in the back seat, in the motor home, in a motor home bay – wherever there was an open space. Before climbing on their bikes for the day’s ride, they gathered once again to mug for my ipad. Count their fingers – each holding up 6 in various configurations. Moments after this picture was taken, Erik, Ed, Chris, and Kevin pedaled away on their bikes, rounded the corner of the church, and headed out of the church parking lot toward the biker’s route.

3Dudaks had a host family in West Union, so we did not have a hurry-up-and-get-on-the-road morning. We took our time and left in a somewhat leisurely fashion. The Bridge Church had been a gracious host, and we were very grateful for their hospitality. So we pointed Ark toward the support vehicle route and made our way to West Union, a 70.5 mile drive. It was not a direct route because we had to avoid crossing the biker’s route, so we went east, north, east, north, east, south, northeast, then did a slow, wide curve to the south to enter West Union on the north side of the town.

Our hosts, Harlan and Margaret, lived outside of the town and had an absolutely beautiful, lush green yard. Front yard was average sized, but the back yard was immensely huge. It sloped down to a picture perfect corn field, and that’s where we parked – bottom of the slope right next to the corn. We had initially tried to park in their front yard at their suggestion. But we could not get level no matter how hard we tried. Sadly, we dug a rut in their gorgeous front yard in our fruitless attempts. Thankfully, grass grows fast in Iowa, so hopefully it fixed itself quickly. Anyway, they led us down a driving path on the side of their fenced yard, and VOILA!, here we were!

Looking out our front door, this is what we saw. It was the back yard of our host family’s home. Wow, just wow.

Here was the view towards the front –

And on our driver’s side –

Here are some of the sights that Kevin saw on the biker’s route on Day 6:

Tomorrow, Saturday, was Day 7 – our last Ragbrai day. There is always additional discussion on the eve of Day 7 of Ragbrai. The support vehicle(s) have been carrying all of the stuff for all of the riders all week. So when riders roll into the ending town and dip their tires in the Mississippi River (if they feel inclined to do so), there needs to be a plan in place to be sure they all have access to their gear for their drive/flight home. That can be logistically challenging depending on where everyone’s ride home is parked. In the case of our Indiana riders (Ed, Dawn, and Chris), they had driven to the ending town (Lansing) and parked their vehicle in a Ragbrai long term parking area and caught a shuttle bus from Lansing over to the starting town, Sergeant Bluff, to meet us at the start of the ride. So their ride home was in the ending town already. Okay – this would be
easy. Except for one thing. The scheduled ride for day 7 was 65.4 miles with 2966 feet of climb. It was a long ride for day 7. [ASIDE: there has been much generic conversation about the length of the ride on day 7. We assume there are many teams that, like ours: 1) need to make tracks as soon as the riders are in; 2) teams that do not have the luxury of a short drive to get home or an extra day of vacation so that they can stay overnight in the ending town and head for home on Sunday morning; 3) teams that have riders who have to be at work on Monday morning and have a long drive. A shorter Day 7 would simplify all of these scenarios. Alas, the planners don’t seem to take these issues into consideration. ASIDE CONCLUDED].
The end town – Lansing – was in the far north of eastern Iowa. Highlighted in red is the county that Lansing is in.

Lansing itself is right on the Mississippi River. And we have to make it to Omaha/Council Bluffs (on the Missouri River) just to get to Interstate 80 westbound (see red circle in northeast Iowa – Lansing; see red circle in southwest Iowa – Omaha/Council Bluffs).

There is no direct route from the NE corner of Iowa to the interstate or to any of Iowa’s main east-west/north-south roads. One must buck and weave and curve and backtrack on small roads that are often not motor home friendly to get to one of those decent east-west and north-south roads. Plus, it takes a long time to do all that bucking and weaving and backtracking. But these considerations had never dissuaded the 3Dudaks bike team from completing every mile of the scheduled route, no matter where the route ended or how long the day 7 ride was. Over the years it had often made for some late-into-the-night Day 7 drives and some even longer Sunday drives to get all the way back to Kevin’s house in Colorado in time for Kevin to get to work Monday morning. But this year was different, by the choice of our Colorado team members Kevin and Erik. Here is the ONE THING that changed in 2022. Kevin and Erik decided that they would not ride the full 65.4 miles on day 7. They had decided that they would ride to the meeting town (Postville, 26.7 miles) where we would pick them up and head towards home. This would save about 4 – 5 hours. David and I queried them a few times to be sure that they wanted to do this rather than ride the complete route all the way to Lansing. They assured us that they were totally good with the idea. Okay, we said. Let’s get the Indiana crew in on the discussion so that we could figure out how to get their stuff to Lansing since we would not be driving to Lansing ourselves. After much discussion, we were able to craft a plan that everyone agreed would work. We would pick Kevin and Erik up in Postville, and Dawn, Ed, and Chris would continue on to Lansing. Well, what about their stuff, you may be asking yourself. Here is the solution we came up with – and a beautiful one, I might add.

ED WOULD CARRY THESE ITEMS