Team Riding Writers: Warm welcome for RAGBRAI riders in Eldridge

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By Tory Brecht | Saturday, July 26, 2008 11:09 AM CDT | () comments

Quad-City Times reporter Tory Brecht is with RAGBRI riders as they finish their last leg of their across-the-state bike ride. The ride ends today in LeClaire. (QUAD-CITY TIMES) Buy this Photo

11 a.m. Eldridge, 36 miles into today’s ride, is by far the craziest scene. There are thousands of bikes on the streets, blaring music at the fire station, honking horns and people in their front yards waving.

Scott Campbell, editor of the North Scott Press, said having RAGBRAI go through Eldridge is a great thing for the town, but he’s glad it wasn’t an overnight stop.

Nineteen miles to go.

Team Riding Writers: RAGBRAI hitting the halfway point in Maysville

10 a.m. In Maysville, we ran into our first group of hard-core RAGBRAI partiers. They’re on the trip from the Fort Collins, Colo., area.

The team is called the Horse Tooth Hulas. The 12 of them wear grass skirts and have dashboard hula girls attached to their helmets. They’re also wearing Mardi Gras beads, and some have shot glasses in chains around their necks.

Their activity director, Lizzy Ginger, wearing a Hawaiian-print bikini top, said what brings the team to RAGBRAI is “a sense of community, a biking community. Iowans are fabulous and it’s a big party, the biggest bicycle spectacle in the world.”

Members of the team ride hard and drink hard, and they say the key to riding after a few drinks is to just follow the yellow line.

“It only takes five miles to sober up,” Ginger said. “So we just go on to the next town.”

All the homemade pie was gone in Maysville, and we’re not spending our money on store-bought.

Team Riding Writers: RAGBRAI from New Liberty

9 a.m. As we hit Scott County, 16.75 miles into the trip to LeClaire, we ran into County Attorney Mike Walton, who is running for election in November.

There was a group of cyclists wearing black and gold “Walton for Scott County Attorney” shirts.

Walton said the political tactic wasn’t the most effective since so many people on RAGBRAI are from out of state.

Walton, his wife, Gail, and sons Tom and John have been doing RAGBRAI for five years.

“It’s great to be finishing in Scott County,” Walton said.

I did learn one valuable tip. Do not apply sunscreen on your forehead when you’re wearing a helmet. It runs into your eyes and burns them.

Right outside Scott County, one cyclist fell and volunteer fire department personnel were there quickly to assist him. Bikers were very respectful, slowing down and getting out of the way.

Team Riding Writers: RAGBRAI report from Bennett, Iowa

We’re 10.6 miles in our RAGBRAI ride today, and have been on the road for 41 minutes.

This is my first experience riding in a large group. It’s exciting, scary, yet exhilarating. You can build up a lot of speed, and there’s a mass psychology that pulls you along the road.

There are people in all kinds of bright-colored clothing and boomboxes attached to bikes.

Here in Bennett we met a group named “Team Flamingo.”

They all wear hot pink bike jerseys, hot pink feather boas, streaming out of their helmets, and they’re led by a large gentleman with a pink dyed beard named Big Bird.

I talked to two brothers from Columbia, S.C. They said their aunt and uncle started the team some years ago.

Ross Jenner said his motivation to ride is “a combination of beer gardens and some of the ladies. And there have been some nice ladies.”

Team Riding Writers: Heading out of Tipton with RAGBRAI

7:15 a.m.: We're on the courthouse square in Tipton.

It appears the majority of riders are up and out already, but tents still litter the courthouse square.

The people that are here are very quiet, brushing their teeth behind their vans, eating breakfast, applying sunscreen, packing up their tents.

Team Riding Writers is a bit confused about where the route begins, so we're getting directions from a rider from North Carolina.

Q-C bike riders head out to meet RAGBRAI

6:30 a.m. The sun was just peeking over the horizon as Team Riding Writers headed out from Bettendorf to join the last leg of RAGBRAI in Tipton. A bit of a meager team — made up of myself and former Quad-City Times colleague Todd Ruger — what we lack in numbers and experience, we make up for in spirit. Well, maybe not the indomitable spirit of the thousands who made the entire trip from the Missouri River to the Mississippi. After all, we slept in comfortable beds Friday night, not on the hard ground. Our support staff is my supremely accommodating wife and two sleepy kids pulled from slumber for a dawn road trip. The mission is to investigate the mixed motivations of our fellow cyclists, why they ride, where they’re from and what they’re hoping to get out of it.