RAGBRAI arrives in Tipton

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By Kurt Allemeier | Friday, July 25, 2008 11:52 PM CDT | () comments

RAGBRAI riders head into Tipton on Friday. After a night's rest, they'll trek across Scott County to LeClaire today. (Larry Fisher/Quad-City Times) Buy this Photo

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TIPTON, Iowa — Sunny dispositions dispelled the gray skies.

RAGBRAI riders and Tipton residents alike greeted each other warmly as the traveling summertime festival rolled under a star-bedecked arch and into this Cedar County town, the end of Friday’s 65-mile route of Register’s Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa.

“Good morning, welcome to Tipton,” Paul Seebeck greeted early riders from his lawn chair near the arch on 9th Street.

“I’m just sitting here and enjoying what is going on,” he said. “I talked to one lady who said she left North Liberty at 4:30 a.m. They go at a nice steady pace.”

Jacey Drollinger and her daughter, Rachael, sat welcoming riders near their house a few blocks up 9th Street. Near their corner, a bike with dangling ribbons is mounted on a utility pole. American flags line 9th Street as people sit, watching, waving and welcoming.

“I’m surprised,” Drollinger said. “Each one riding by has said, ‘Good morning.’ ”

A few blocks from downtown, Truman Begley, 11, and his friends welcomed riders with a friendly blast of water from oversized squirt guns. As the July day warmed, they asking riders if they could give them a watery shot.

“The number of riders are starting to pick up,” Truman observed. “First it was two and now it is nine or 10 at a time.”

The number of riders pouring into Tipton grew as the day grew longer. As the riders arrived, the town braced for about 20,000 people to invade their town. Traffic jams of buses, box trucks and semis that serve as the support caravan for RAGBRAI jammed the streets around the town of 3,000.

Grills were fired up and bikes sat outside taverns. On the east side of town, riders trickled out onto Iowa 130 to get a preview of the final ride to LeClaire today. Today’s ride goes through Bennett, New Liberty, Plain View, Maysville and Eldridge before riders dip their tires in the Mississippi River. Those towns plan to provide food stands and portable toilets for riders.

Riders spoke warmly of Chelsea, where the height of floodwaters from the Iowa River and Otter Creek still marked the buildings. Despite the flooding, riders were treated to good hospitality and good food.

“It is amazing what the people of Iowa are willing to do for someone on a bicycle,” said Jan Kolk, of Houston, Texas, who was riding RAGBRAI for the second time with her husband, Kevin Kolk.

Tipton laid out the hospitality, too, offering a comedian and band in the downtown event area, while a couple of movies from the 2007 Hardacre Film Festival also were offered.

Alex Wilkins of Shreveport, La., had one thing on his mind for the final night of RAGBRAI: “I’m going to eat a lot of food.”

Kurt Allemeier can be contacted at (563) 383-2360 or kallemeier@qctimes.com.

Eldridge traffic plan for RAGBRAI

Eldridge will greet RAGBRAI riders today with plenty of food stands and relief stations and the theme Happy Days.

LeClaire Road will be closed to motor vehicles from 7 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., and crossing points will be allowed only at Buttermilk Road, 5th Avenue, 8th Avenue, 9th Avenue and Scott Park Road. Traffic will be allowed to exit U.S. 61, then directed to follow detours.

The Eldridge Fitness Center will be closed.