By incredible coincidence, I found on Flickr some nice photos of my own bike, shot by a stranger in Chariton, IA, day 4 of RAGBRAI 2009.

Here is his photostream, which captures the spirit of RAGBRAI 2009.  I tried to embed the photostream, but Wordpress doesn’t seem to like Flickr embedded objects.
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Ragbrai is an annual bicycle tour across Iowa, with thousands of participants.  Here is a 5-minute snapshot of what it’s like.
Freeway of bicycles

Bikes out ahead on the road as far as you can see.
Only bikes, no cars.
You can talk with the other “drivers” — little conversations all day long.

Big campsites, small towns

Every day, pitch your [...]

I smiled just now, for no particular reason.  Just randomly happy about how things are going.  This sentiment, once rare, is suddenly common, and I suspect the change is not circumstances, but simply that I stopped drinking coffee three weeks ago.
The change was for an unrelated reason:  I’m starting RAGBRAI on Sunday, and didn’t want [...]