Fort Madison and the Mighty Mississip

Big Red and I have successfully piloted the last day of RABBRAI, and we now sit parked on a side street in Fort Madison, awaiting our riders and getting ready to help Annie find her westward carpool.

It seems somehow wrong that in about six hours she will whiz back across the state she just took seven days to peddle across in the other direction.

All around me are folks sorting their gear, loading up trucks, and making their goodbyes.

The Air Force Team, 50 riders all in sharp matching blue and black outfits, just road by me in tight formation to the tune of “Off We Go Into the Wild Blue Yonder.”

They are on their way to the finish line at the dipping spot, where front tires are bathed in Mississippi River water.

This last 24 hours could not have been a finer Iowa experience.

The Jefferson County Fairgrounds, where we came to rest in Fairfield, provided handy tractor drawn shuttles on flat beds with straw bales, showers in the hog building (I’m not kidding!), and congenial neighbors.

The county Cattlemen’s Association was our host for dinner….beef kabobs (no surprise there), noodles with beef stroganoff, really fresh string beans, and ice cream on a stick. It was lights out at 9:30, and even then, 5:30 AM came so soon.

Today’s run down to the mid-day stop was by winding country road through landscapes that could have been Vermont if only there had been stone walls and a mountain in the background.

I had to stop to let an Amish farmer with two handsome Belgians pulling his hay wagon pass by.

Little Keosauqua was ready for the onslaught. The Methodists, pie makers extraordinaire, had pocket pies (actually turnovers, but the title was intriguing) and home made cinnamon rolls. They sold out early.

We met up without incident, and Arthur and Annie stoked their fires with gyro sandwiches.

Having packed off my riders for the last, 40 mile leg, I visited the historic 1840 county court house, ate my raspberry pocket pie, and headed back to Big Red.

While stowing my bicycle, I noticed that one of the roof hatches was askew, and a closer look revealed that it was actually about to fall off. This provided the day’s only drama.

I climbed smartly up the ladder next by the rear door, crawled across the roof, and tossed the hatch cover down ... no problem.

But then, backing over the roof edge, some twelve feet off the pavement, and finding the first rung of the ladder I couldn’t even see proved way too scary for usually intrepid me.

I was stuck on the roof of the camper on a back street in Keosauqua.

If a nice man wearing a Marines tee shirt hadn’t come along, I might be there still.

He kindly climbed up the ladder and helped my feet find the rungs. All in a day’s work for the Marines, I’m sure.

Then on to Fort Madison. My riders zeroed right in on Big Red, Art did his power lift of the bike, and Annie was successfully reunited with her car pool.

RAGBRAI 41 is now in the history books, and thousands of crazy cyclists must now go back to the real world.

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IMAGE CREDITS: Tractor pull from White Rock Conservancy, Coon Rapids, IA.; Amish farmer and Belgian horses - Amish America; MARINES T-Shirt - Green Turtle goods

All other images by Sue Merrow.