 Oh yeah. Oh no! Oh no! Hello my friends and welcome to the final episode of Rag Bride 2023. It's been an amazing week in Iowa and we're gonna finish it off in style. Thanks so much for watching this series and be sure to subscribe to my channel for many more adventures. And if you want to support my channel financially, consider joining my Patreon. You'll get early release videos and much more. Good morning! Good morning! Oh you know what? This seems like the one of the longer rag brides I've ever done and then I was talking to somebody and they're like yeah this is like the sixth or seventh longest rag bride. It's like 500 miles. Usually they're like 450. So I think that's why people are waking up earlier because the miles are longer. There's quite a bit of elevation and it's hot so when those things happen you got to get up early. Amelia this is a little sexy of a stretch for a campground. Uh don't you know the importance of glute activation? Oh I guess I do now. Yep. Man there are kids around. It's my favorite family on rag bride. How are y'all doing? Good. You all sleep well in that big tent? Yeah it was a sweaty night though. I've never sweated so much. I was soaked. How about you bud? You eating breakfast cookies? Uh-huh. Lucky. What's up my friend? What's up buddy? How you feeling today? Like a million bucks man. Cheered on a little too many people though. My voice is all messed up now. Oh hey Connor you're still here. I'm still here. I thought you might escape in the night. Um what is it? Stockholm syndrome? Where you fall in love with your captor? I think that's what we're talking about here. Uh no it's I I'm not excited. I think there's some anticipation for the day. You kind of get used to the grind. Um so you know I'm stoked. Yo Jay give me knocks. Boom how you feeling? Feeling good ready to take on the day. Oh yeah? How are the legs? Uh okay those aren't feeling as good. I uh had a moment yesterday where I was biking thinking you know running a hundred miles and then coming out of here and doing this maybe wasn't my most brilliant idea ever but I love this event so much that I wanted to give it a try. So FOMO. FOMO so I was in a bit of a struggle bus um but you know we're making it work. All right thank you wonderfully soft piece of ground. All right you weirdos ready to ride bikes? Let's go. Oh look at mine some donut action. Oh look at the donut. How long is the line here? It's not too bad. Hey how you doing? Good morning everybody. Breakfast pizza at Casey's always the way to go. Let's do it. How are we doing? Good morning. Good morning. All right. Oh we're happy. We're happy. How are we all doing? Do they have any vegetarian left? What did you find Amelia? I found my road snacks. Oh that looks good. Where are you gonna pack that? I think I'm just gonna put it on my arm and just ride. So a lot of times the lines are so long at the Casey's that you just eat all your food in line and when you get up to the cashier you're like I had pizza and three donuts and a drink. Oh yeah. Oh no. Oh no. Blame the camera. Thank you awesome people of Casey's. Thank you. One, two, three. No flaties. No crashies. No whammy. You know get acclimated to biking a bed and then in a groove. We seem to be doing all right. Going solar buys. You're set up. Hey yeah it's all handmade. Everything is pretty much junk. Well not junk. Use stuff and it's all parts that if something breaks I can go to any hardware store and find a replacement piece for it. So is it all solar power? Oh yeah. Yeah I was telling people yesterday I haven't plugged the battery in for like four months and then yesterday killed me so it made me a liar. I had to plug one in last night so that is so cool. How long have you been riding this thing? Just four months. I just put it together this winter. Still doing it looking good. Thank you. Amazing. How does it feel today? I'm tired. I'm ready to be done. I'm having a great time. I bet you're ready to be done. I am so impressed. You're going to be proud of yourself after this one. Woo you got some stories for your friends when you go back to school. Oh yeah. How far along are you? Five months. That's exciting. Are there any difficulties to being pregnant? Just having to go pee in the cornfields often. What are you going to tell your unborn baby about this rag bride? He helped me through. He was my tandem. That's awesome. I wish you all the best. Thank you. You've got four months? Five. Just into five. Just into five. Four months left. Woo. I have found my team hiding in a bunch of trees. This guy right here that's our shade hunter. Yeah we're starting to pick up nicknames on our last days. That's the shade hunter right there. They call me Shammy Conner. Shammy Cream Conner. Shammy Cream Conner. I'm going to put that title right here. This is the spot we can sit here and watch all the riders go by. Look at that man. Amelia how's that booty? A little bit chafy. Chafy booty? Yeah I haven't spent as much time in the saddle this year because I've been running and yeah I'm hurting and there's not enough Shammy Butter in the world that will fix what's going on. Come on Conner's got the Shammy Butter. Hook her up man. You gotta go. You gotta go to the hook up. Should we just take a seat here in the town? Oh it's so nice and chilly. Just a couple dudes in a fountain. You know. Feels good. How we all doing? Oh yeah Conner your first piece of pie. Amish pie. Amish pie. It's something special. Yeah it is. If you haven't had Amish pie you gotta get some Amish pie. It's time for my butt massage. Here we go. Oh that was an aggressive one. So we have a bit of a headwind and this might be the only time I'm ever gonna say this but I'm actually grateful for the headwind because it's cooling us off to a degree. Is this heaven? Let's go in. I'm gonna show you the cornfield. You might think the cornfields would be cool because they're all shady but it's actually super hot and steamy in here. It's like a sauna man. You're in the middle of nowhere fast. Yeah you can really get lost out here. If you took if you went in 30 40 feet you're like huh. Yeah you ain't getting out. But I guess you just all you have to do is listen for the classic rock on all the the stereos on these bikes. And station number one. This is a great little town called Amana. Old colonial town. All these beautiful old buildings. I've never seen a town like this in Iowa. It feels like the northeast. So I lost Connor for a little bit but then I found him because I know where he always hives. Right here. What's up? What's up? It's so amazing to go from like blazing hot to pretty darn cold. This is what the finish do with their saunas and their their ice baths. Cooling us down. All right 18 miles to Coralville in the heat. Connor you ready? Yeah yeah I'm super ready. I just got a hot dog, a cinnamon roll, giant lemonade. Should be powered up. I just got to let it turn into a little bit of energy in this body. We're never going to get to Coralville but that's okay. Skating rag ride. All right Connor last push you ready for this? Yeah just so ready. So ready to get in the pool. I actually really want I don't know I got five miles left of this journey. I do want to appreciate all of it because despite my heavy breath, his heels in the heat, I'm having an awesome time. Yeah man it's been really fun to share it with you. I'm so glad you're out here. I think we're all happy we're out here right even though it's kind of hot right now. We're all happy right? Yeah okay good. So some kid just rode up and he said hey the heat index is 115. 115! That's a lot of heat. Woo that's probably the hottest I've ever ever ridden in. But it really if you jump in water every 23 minutes like we have been it's not that bad. Ole! Ole! Ole! Ole! Hi Allen! Hello! Are we here? Yes! Ole! Are you shotgunning a fan? Yeah. Shotgunning! Chug! Chug! Chug! Chug! Chug! Chug! Small sip. Dude you guys are awesome! Great day! Cheers! Great day! Great day! Good job! Good job! Great day! Watch out! I think anything was gonna happen but I think something's gonna happen. This is a Midwestern storm. Okay time to take some shelter. Shelter time! I don't know what's happening but it is cooling down the temperature and I will take it. Woo! What's up buddy? The day is not over. The day is never over. Things tend to stay crazy here in Iowa. We are getting mixed reviews from the Iowans. Half of them say it's no big deal. The other half say we need to run and get shelter. There's sirens. I've never heard sirens before live in California, live in New York. This is all new to me. I have no idea what's going on. All I know is this is the type of thing that took Toto away and so I think we need to be on our watch. That's right. At least you look good. Look at that shirt. Try it. Still live! Day five! Still live! Day five! We are under a pavilion, luckily. It's raining pretty hard out there but we are dry and happy and the best thing of this whole situation is it dropped like 20 degrees. It is very, very comfortable. Serious Todd Connor. I am so glad you showed up dude. This was an incredible bonding experience my brother. Get over here. Love you brother. Love you too my man. Thank you. This was so fun. I've been bugging him for years to come here and he didn't quite get it and now he gets it. Oh I get it. My whole body gets it and more people are going to get it next year. Hopefully with a bunch of you too. Yeah, yeah. We're going to invite you all next year. Come on out. It's going to be so much fun. He has to leave a day early but we're still going tomorrow morning. It's the final day. Update. So originally it was always supposed to rain for another like 20 minutes. Now they're saying it's going to rain until midnight. We were going to wait it out and then put up our tents but it's only 9.30 right now. But Amelia has a friend here and they're going to come save us and pick us up and we're going to go to their house. Yay! Where'd it go? Whoa, who is this fine looking gentleman? Jacob, something or another? Apparently he's on a show. Wow, that is a nice welcome. Sweet, who are these wonderful people? Thank you so much for taking us in. Absolutely. And so Amelia, what's the connection here? Okay, so the connection is the first tough mutter I ever ran in 2011. I ran with Andy. My brother-in-law. Oh yeah. Yeah, sorry. Andy and my brother-in-law. Yeah and her brother-in-law who I worked with named Lewis had a law firm in Chicago. So it hasn't seen them since. Really? You haven't seen each other since? Yay, Ayno brings everybody together. Oh this seems a little cozier than a hot sweaty tent. It's very cozy. Oh, Buenos noches. Buenos noches. Oh, we've got Pop Tarts. Somebody knows Amelia well. Thanks for supporting us. Absolutely, happy to have you. With some yummy food. So what's the story of Pop Tarts again? So, the first world championship that I won, I was doing really well and the race director yells at me from across like the course and it's like, Amelia, what did you have for breakfast this morning? And I yelled back Pop Tarts, which I did, because they're great easily digestible carbs. And ever since that, I have always eaten Pop Tarts before races, every single race. And I guess before rock dry. Oh, it smells so good and fresh. Thank you, Rain for cleansing the world and thank you, Lindsay and family for taking us in. Oh, final day going to the Mississippi River. I've got Amelia. How you doing? I'm doing great. Oh and the world is nice and cool. That rain really dropped the temperatures. No flatties. No crashes. No whammies. No heat indexes to 115. Today, please. Oh, what an amazing week. Let's finish it off strong. We have found our people here. We are reunited with our rag briars. Good morning, everybody. Yeah. Looks like we get to go through the Iowa Stadium. Awesome. I love stadium rides. Well, that was definitely a fun way to start the day. Look at those college kids waking up early to cheer us on. That's impressive. It's not even seven. So we have about 70 miles to Davenport to the Mississippi. And then all of a sudden, rag briars done. So we got to make sure and really enjoy these last miles this last day. It's been an amazing week. Good morning. And I think we're going to be able to do that. One more awesome day in Iowa. Good morning. Good morning, Amelia. Good morning. We are back out into the fields of corn where we belong. There is nice cloud cover. It is the perfect temperature. Amelia, how you feeling? Fantastic last day. Let's do it. You've been pulling the flag all week long. All week long. Century loop as well. Wow. Yeah. Impressive. People loving it. Oh yeah. Everybody's loving it. Everybody, all kinds of cheer people stand up along the sidelines as they drive by. Yeah, it's kind of great. Yeah. Yep. Did you have a good week? Very good week. A little sunburned, but hey, you know how it comes with the territory being hot like that. So on the last day of rag briar, a lot of people wake up very early because they have to get to the end town Davenport early to catch their shuttles back by like 1.30 or 2 p.m. So people are rushing on the last day. Not rushing from the country. You know what I mean? All right, Amelia? Yeah. 30 miles down. 30 miles down. 40 to go. It's still cloudy and cool. So at the beginning of the week, you met Wilson. This is the biggest adventure bike ride of his life. He's been toughening it out. It's the last day. How's it been, my friend? It's been challenging, but it's rewarding. I feel accomplished. I know we're not that far from the end and my beautiful wife accompanied me for the last day. Yeah, Stacey's here. So tell me about some of the low points and the high points. The low points gravel and the amount of weight I had on my bicycle. Wednesday, I got pretty sick. Got dehydrated. I wasn't really sure about the nutrition side. And so I got help by some other bikers that gave me pointers on what to do. The high points are spending time with my wife, meeting new friends and definitely doing it in next year again, but next time with my wife. And it'll be fun. Right on. I'm so proud of you, my friend. Thank you. Whoa, you see that body of water right there? What? It's the Mississippi. We did it. No, wait, we have 30 more miles. This is such a tease, Rag Brie. We're in a town called Muscatine, which is on the Mississippi. Usually when you finish Rag Brie, the first time you see the river is when you're done, but today we're probably going to ride up it. So that'll be cool. Northeast we're going. It smells river-y and fishy. There's a lot of big and exciting moments at Rag Brie all day long, but if you stop sometimes you notice the little things right above my head right now, big flock of birds. And I'm just standing here mesmerized by how the they're just floating through the air. It's pretty cool. Tell me about your history with biking. Okay. So when I started Dream Team last year, I was 250 pounds, maybe a little bit less, 5'8", about. And after that year, I lost 30 pounds just doing Dream Team. And then I did wrestling and football and it completely changed my life. It made me love activity before I just wouldn't do anything. I'd never even been to a gym. Now I'm thinking about doing powerlifting. It's just everything I want to do. That's awesome. That's awesome. And next week you're going to do a century. You haven't had enough biking? No, not enough. I'm trying to hit 6,000 for the year. I did about 3,000 last year. 6,000 miles in one year? 6,000 miles in a year. Right on. Maybe I'll go for 12 next year. Maybe I'll do 12,000 next year. Get 1,000 a month. 1,000 a month. You're going to do it, man. Man, why? You're awesome. Keep it up, my friend. Look at those big fish. All right, so we have five miles to go and it feels incredible. It's a big accomplishment to ride 500 miles. This has definitely been one of the most difficult rack brides I've ever done. It's the longest one I've ever done, the most elevation and the hottest. So if you're out there, you've watched my previous videos and you're like, man, Ryan makes this look so easy. And then you came this year and you're like, ah, that Ryan guy sucks. This isn't easy. You just did one of the hardest rack brides ever. And I would say the heat played the biggest role in it. Man, that heat was brutal. And now we have five miles victory lap just to soak it all in. I love this event. I love the people of Iowa. I love the state of Iowa. I love the food. I love the goofiness. I love the kindness. That's the big thing. There's just so much genuine love and kindness out here on the part of the riders and all the locals. And it's just a special event that always renews my faith in humanity. Makes me feel good about my country. And yeah, I'm riding a high ride now because I'm almost done. I always feel good when I get to the finish line of anything, whether it's a race or just a bike ride or whatever it is. And just for good measure, one last, oh, where's Amelia? Where's Amelia? Oh, and Amelia may have just completed the first ever 100 mile run straight to Rack Bride. I think that's the first kind of a double. Anybody want to join me? Yeah, we'll do it next year. Not. Oh, I'm feeling so good. And I'm really just so grateful for all the new friends I met and all my team, dozer, teammates. Next year we're going to do it up even bigger. So stay tuned to that. And for now, Amelia and I are just gonna hang out and enjoy a 10 hour car ride back to Boulder. Sorry that you're the one that has to drive. I don't really drive. I don't really drive. She doesn't want me driving. It'd be more dangerous if I got behind the wheel of that car. I also want to thank the organizers of this event. 50 years strong. That's incredible. I hope Rack Bride lasts another 150,000 years. And all the medical and support staff, the Air Force team for patching everybody up, fixing their bikes. There's so much that goes into an event like this. And to be able to get 20,000 plus people across the state of Iowa in seven, eight days is pretty incredible. It really is. I do a lot of events and this is impeccably organized. And all the people selling pie. Thank you. You want to thank anybody? Ooh, I'd like to thank Casey's general store. Casey's, if you would like to sponsor me, um, you can reach me on Instagram. Yeah. Yeah. Casey's hook it up. Sponsor us. Who wants a free ice cream pizza? Hello my friends. Raise your hand if you want to ride bikes with us next summer in Iowa. Oh, I see you and you and you. That's great. And as you can see in these videos, we are a bunch of goofballs and we are very welcoming of riders of any ability level. That's the beautiful thing about Rack Bride. You don't have to have the best gear and be in tip top condition. You can go whatever speed you want. Last year we had Team Duser and it was a little loosey goosey. We sold the shirts, but we didn't have a meeting point at the end of every day and every morning. So this year we've come up with an idea to make this easier for all of you so that you can start and end your days with us. And so what we're going to do is we're going to join a charter and the charter is called the out of staters. There's lots of different charters that serve Rack Bride. And what charters do is essentially they create a community within a very large community at Rack Bride. So listen up. First of all, you're going to want to register for Rack Bride at the Rack Bride website. And when you get to the checkout, there's a little drop down menu where you can choose which team you want to be on. Choose Team Duser. And then next, I'm going to put this information below. You're going to want to join the out of staters charter. We've been in touch with them for the past couple of weeks. They seem great. They've been serving Rack Bride for many years. And you want to go join their charter. It does cost money. There are different levels of charges for the different amenities that you may or may not want. All questions need to go to them, not to us. We are just kind of joining their crew. They serve about 500 people. And maybe we'll have, you know, 75-ish people on Team Duser that will be part of the out of staters. So the information will be below. You can choose whatever amenities you want. But the most important thing is that this will allow us to start and end our days with all of you on Team Duser. So we're going to have like a nice little community within a large chaotic Rack Bride community. And we're going to have tons of fun. Again, questions go to them, out of the out of staters. The money goes to them, the out of staters charter, not to us. Thanks again for watching this. And we will see you next summer in hopefully not so steamy Iowa.