July 31, 2010 - Day 7 of Ragbrai

We took off early today in the fog from Manchester to the Mississippi River in Dubuque. It was only projected to be 47 miles, but it took us 5 miles to reach the ride. Our first stop was in Dyersville, a beautiful, thriving small town about 20 miles away. St. Francis Basilica is one of only 52 basilicas in the US. It was an amazing building with Gothic architecture and ornate altars and stained glass windows. Nearly everyone in Dyersville is Catholic and it seemed like it was the only church in town. We also stopped for breakfast in the diner where I finally ran into someone I knew doing this ride. I ran into an old medical school classmate who I had known quite well and now is on faculty at Dartmouth. He had also brought a teenage daughter along for the ride.

About 3 miles out of Dyersville, we came upon the Field of Dreams where there was a large baseball game being put on by many bicyclists. It was a long line to get a chance to bat. I did get my picture taken with 2 of the "ghost players" from the movie. Apparently, they used some local men for extras and 2 of the men dressed in their costumes for the events today. We ran into Kristen and Monika at the field as well.

After Dyersville, we had 30 miles left and the real fun began. It was time to climb the bluffs leading to Dubuque. It was up and down some really big hills. One of the downhills was so big that I stood at the top for several minutes terrified at the thought of going down (I wasn't the only one standing there). But I finally ventured down and did my best to try to control my speed at around 25 miles an hour and thought about how safe a roller coaster ride is compared to this. About 10 miles out of Dubuque, we came to Potter's Hill, the infamous hill that is one of the largest in Iowa. This hill went on for 1 mile and had a 9% grade. I made it up 0.6 mile before finally walking the rest of the way. Very few people made it all the way. After that the hills were more rolling up and down which is a lot of fun. We finally made it to the outskirts of Dubuque with 5 miles to go through town to the river. As anyone knows, Dubuque is also a very hilly city. There was one last big downhill leading to the river that looked like it belonged in San Francisco. That one was terrifying as well as there was so many people on the road by then.

I made it to the Port of Dubuque and my front wheel touched the Mississippi River at 1:37 PM. It was a lot of fun and when I can use my laptop with WiFi, I will post the pictures.