My all-in-one cycling computer/speedometer/odometer/heart rate monitor/cadence counter died early on the trip, forcing me to ride what some call “naked.” Initially, I thought this might be a problem, but it turned out to be a blessing. It was liberating to ride without knowing how fast we were going or how far we’d gone. We rode for the sake of riding without any schedule or timeline. I recommend riding naked, at least once in a while.

MIKE MARINO/The Times-Union
Come to Iowa for the … Cajun shrimp? Mechanicsville was hopping, and Art decided to conduct a “science experiment.”

RAGBRAI is known as a party ride, which it seriously is. There are beer gardens and bars in most of the towns along the route. These places never seemed to be empty or isolated even early in the morning. One of the questions we asked ourselves often was “how do some riders party and still maintain their motivation to pedal on?” The answer is very well, as I discovered. Call it a science experiment. However, I don’t recommend doing it often.

Yesterday, I met a fellow Humana employee. He was easy to spot as he was sporting a full Humana kit. His name is Kirk Kandle, and he works out of Louisville. He’s a very enthusiastic cyclist who is trying to get the company and its employees more fired up about cycling. Great guy. By the way Kirk, if you have one of those kits in a size medium, I’d sure like to have one.

That’s about it. Now we’re getting ready to leave Omaha and head back to Jacksonville. Tomorrow we return to the real world. For some odd reason, neither of us took tomorrow off. What were we thinking? Anyway, it’s been a great experience. Can’t wait to do it again next year.

Thanks, Iowa, it was a blast.

I’m not sure it could have been better. Other than some small rain, other than the tornado warning, other than a very few glitches, it was just about perfect.

More about today: More people waving, or so it seemed. Seniors love to bring out the lawn chairs and watch and wave. I have no idea what they think of the thousands (22,000 was the biggest one-day count) of us nuts riding by but they look like they enjoy it.

Old friends. After seven days, you see a lot of familiar faces. Abby and Tammy, who are from Orlando and Alaska but have been riding together, gave us a shout. Their husbands were apparently ticked off that they didn’t get a mention in the blog when we met their wives earlier in the week. Hubbies, relax. Mission accomplished.

The last breakfast. The morning meal and I aren’t that well acquainted but got to know each other this week. Today it was a pancake on a stick. Pure fair food. And wonderful, capping a week of pancakes and breakfast burritos and homemade everything.

The finish line. Stu Carter peeled off to join his USAF mates at the school just outside of LeClaire, so I rode the last straightaway on my own. Lots of thoughts. I was able to do it. It was better than I expected. It was yet another culmination of the lifelong ride that began when my dad bought me what was then a dorky French 10-speed instead of the cool Schwinn Sting-Rays that every other kid was getting. And the knowledge that thousands of us managed to put the world on hold for a while and pedal.

There were fireworks and balloons and high-fives and TV cameras and a live band - no Lynyrd Skynyrd or Kid Rock this time! - and it was a shame we had to pack up in a hurry and get out of town.

And now we’re watching and listening to Saturday Night Live, which isn’t very funny. We heard some of the 10 o’clock news, which was about Omaha shootings and traffic accidents and Barack Obama and John McCain and …

How many days until next year’s RAGBRAI, anyway?

MIKE MARINO/The Times-Union
This feels great.

LE CLAIRE, Iowa - We are virgins no longer.

Art and I just finished dipping our tires in the Mississippi River after today’s 53-mile ride from Tipton. It’s hard to describe the feeling: We’re jazzed at having finished, but we’re sorry that it’s over. Particularly because we rode today with a wonderful tailwind - finally!

I rode the last few miles with Stu Carter from the Air Force Team. He kept thanking me for making him a minor celebrity - we kept hearing “there’s that guy who was in the paper” as we rode in together, me in my all pink kit and Stu on his tandem with the missing stoker. I plan to keep in touch. Now it’s off to find FedEx to ship the bikes back to River City, then in three hours we have the long bus ride back to Omaha. We’ll try to distill our thoughts and report later on tonight.

Thanks for reading

On RAGBRAI, the congregations turn out to cook breakfast, lunch or dinner, provide snacks and water, and cheer.

This morning in Solon, Art and I stopped at the Methodist church for breakfast burritos. (Your choice; sausage or plain. I chose plain.) And there was fruit. Lots of fruit. Apples of every kind, including Granny Smith and Gala, plus fresh peaches and the cycling-ubiquitous banana. This was a huge fundraiser for the church, and there were congregants of all ages, from little kids to the elderly, waiting tables, helping pour coffee, offering to clean up or to get you anything you need. And at $5 a pop, they were making a lot of money, which is the point.

Getting RAGBRAI to pass through your town is special and it doesn’t come often. Each town has a theme (Solon’s was “Shipwrecked in Solon” … complete with stranded boats on the main street) and they all try their hardest to make the experience the best - and, probably, to get their picture in the Des Moines Register.

I rode this morning with one of our fellow Omanians, Sarah from New York. She lives on 94th and Lexington and does a lot of cycling in the city. I was there last month, for the first time in five years, and noticed cyclists everywhere. Thank Mayor Michael Bloomberg for that. He has pushed through smoking bans, trans-fat bans and built bike lanes all over, just to make New York more cycling-friendly. Sarah says people commute to work all the time now, sometimes in full cycling kits (outfits). “Cyclists love Mayor Mike,” she said. “We’d love to make him mayor for life.”

Mayor Peyton, are you listening?

Hot showers.

You can’t put a value on bliss. In this case, though, the girl at the table charged us $5 for the shower and $1 for a warm towel.

After a long day of riding in 60-degree weather under cloudy skies and into that infernal wind, it was worth whatever they would have asked. Twenty bucks? For a warm towel and all the hot water you want? If they’d have asked, I’d have paid. Maybe more.

But RAGBRAI vendors have a precise target on price points. Most sandwiches - pulled pork, for starters - are about $4. Gyros, $4. Turkey tenders, $4.

Pie a la mode, $4. And about the pie: It’s made by a Mennonite outfit called Poppin Jonnys, so named because their John Deere engine that makes the ice cream pops all the time. Cherry, mixed berry, rhubarb, apple or peach, although tonight they ran out of rhubarb. No problem. Cherry and mixed berry worked just fine. If there is better pie out there, I’d be surprise.

That came after the most expensive meal of the trip, a $10 plate of baby back ribs, potato salad, apple sauce and a drink. Zeb of Zeb’s Smokehouse dared us to try them. Three words: Sonny’s watch out.

But some of the best things are still free. The shuttle from our campground at the elementary school (which was about two miles away from the action) ran about every half hour. I didn’t want to wait and relied, instead, on AT: alternate transportation. My thumb.

We hitched a ride to the bike expo from a nice man who used to wrestle for the University of Iowa. Randy Lewis was a gold medalist at 136 pounds at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles and a two-time NCAA champion and is now a coach in Iowa City. Super nice guy. Had a bike in the back and didn’t know how to get the wheel on and off, so we showed him.

Our ride back, also via hitching, was from members from Team My (Backside). Sue, the night’s designated driver and a team member, says she works for the state’s division of tourism.

They say it’s supposed to thunderstorm tomorrow on our way to Tipton. Looks like I’ll be looking for another $6 shower.

Something about this morning’s headwind, mixed in with a cold rain, had me thinking about survival. That led to Survivor’s Eye Of The Tiger and it’s been stuck in my head since the start. Even passing people with portable iPod music box thingies can’t shake the erzatz Rocky them from my skull. Very annoying.

We’re riding with David from Tampa, another virgin. That’s what they call us first-timers. You’re supposed to write “VIRGIN” on the back side of your calf, sort of like NASCAR rookies with the yellow stripes on the back of their cars. Then everyone can either a) razz you or b) shout encouragement. Mostly b). (I have thus far declined.)

Riding RAGBRAI is done at a conversational pace. There are the occasional lungbuster pacelines, like the one we latched onto into Jefferson, but everyone generally rides relaxed and chats a lot. Today the chatting is of the off-color variety because of the wind and rain. The only good thing about the morning so far was expresso and mini-donuts from a roadside stand, run by a couple from Rapid City, S.D., who left their 3- and 5-year-olds behind with the grandparents so they could do RAGBRAI. 

I’m currently blogging from an Iowa Telecom trailer. They have them set up in every town so you can blog or call long distance; a pretty neat deal. Most of the folks in here are checking their e-mail accounts or looking at news sites. Me? Other than the Tour de France (I’m picking Menchov) I haven’t the foggiest idea of what’s going on, news-wise.

In fact, I think it might be Thursday. I’ll get back to you on that. Now, more Survivor.

That’s a joke here, particularly during RAGBRAI. The towns are lined with port-a-potties (the RAGBRAI acronym is “KYBO” for “keep your” … and then the last two letters mean different things depending on who you talk to) but there are times when you must experience the glory of six-foot stalks of camouflaging corn.

Special
Miss Rose, Megan, agrees to a photo with Mike. It’s amazing the roses didn’t wilt.

Iowa corn is well-known. Iowa roses aren’t. State Center (that’s the name of the town) bills itself as “The Rose Capital of Iowa” and has a “Miss Rose” to prove it. Megan says she won the contest partly on looks and partly on talent. She tap dances to All That Jazz by Bob Fosse. I couldn’t get her to tap dance for us because she was wearing flip-flops. But she was taking pictures with everyone who wanted one.

She didn’t get one with Lance Armstrong, who reportedly blew through town earlier in the day.

Speaking of blowing, today’s ride was a hellacious 78-miler into a strong, steady and punishing head wind. The wind was from the southeast, so whether we were traveling south or east, we got smacked. Everybody was grumbling. There is a commercial currently airing on the Versus channel that says stripping down to your underwear and jumping out of your car at 50 mph is like crashing in a professional bike race. And riding in the wind on RAGBRAI? Imagine jogging through wet sand while wearing ankle weights. Give me hills any day.

Special
Call Albion and ask for Wes’ Chevy truck. It’s a bargain.

Oh … before I forget. If anyone wants a ‘55 Chevy pickup, red and in pristine condition, call Wes in Albion. He shouldn’t be hard to find. He’s asking $16,500, according to the window sticker. His grandson, Cole, says it’s a neat truck. Cole is 9 and agreed to take our picture.

And why those first five rows the sweetest? Yep. You guessed it. They’re the closest to the road.

NEVADA, Iowa - Here, they call it “breakfast casserole.”

Oh, my.

Nothing like a steaming hot square of eggs, sausage and cheese, with a monstrous buttermilk biscuit, orange juice and coffee for $5, thanks to a local senior citizens group. Two nice women, Ann and Joanne, who are cousins, greeted every RAGBRAIer as family. Five bucks was a bargain. I’d have paid extra just for the kind words and smiles.

Art and I have met several people who said our blog was mentioned in the Des Moines Register print edition yesterday. Saw several of the Air Force folks, too.

Anyway, I’m in the Nevada (pronounced “nuh-VAY-duh”) public library, and the nice folks here let me use the computer to keep you all up to date.

More later.

Oh, and a special note to the A Team: I’m demo-ing a Cannondale Super Six, full Dura-Ace, Ksyrium ES carbon wheels. If Drew reads this, he’s going to try to get me to buy one!

Some aren’t so fun.

I met Stu Carter (Lt. Colonel, USAF, retired) today. Stu was riding a tandem with no stoker, meaning no one in the back. Just a helmet and a name. “Sonny Sonnenberg.” I jokingly asked, “where’s your stoker?”

“Heaven,” he said.

Lt. Col. Kevin “Sonny” Sonnenberg went down with his F-16 in Iraq last year and died. He was a member of the Air Force Cycling Team and was supposed to ride this year’s RAGBRAI. Instead, he’s just a name and a helmet, with a wife of 10 months left behind.

I rode with Stu for a while, talking about cycling, about the Air Force team, about where we were from. Eventually, he hit a downhill stretch, told me to have a great ride and drifted slowly away.

I was thinking about Sonny Sonnenberg for much of the rest of the day, off and on, wondering about the cost of war, about the good and bad, and mostly about the cyclist who wasn’t there to enjoy the camaraderie of this wonderful sport that we all love.

There are a lot of heroes in this world. And there are some who aren’t here anymore. Sometimes you find more inspiration from the latter.

No matter the size of the town, the red carpet is extended to all the riders. It reminds me of when Jacksonville hosted the Super Bowl in 2005. The town squares are transformed into Party Central. Bands play (more about that later) and booths offer up all kinds of great food from pork loin sandwiches to vegetarian fare. All that is missing from the Super Bowl atmosphere is Hugh Hefner’s Playboy party.

About the music: Lynyrd Skynryd is alive and well in Iowa. Every, and I mean every, band we’ve heard plays at least one Lynryd Skynryd number.

It’s almost like being home.