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Border Raiders is my second week long bike tour so I don’t have a wide frame of reference, but I’ll do what I can to draw some conclusions about the ride.

First off Border Raiders is a 4 state ride that starts in Lawrence Kansas goes Northwest into Nebraska following the Missouri river then turns East into Iowa, and heads back south into Missouri, and finally back west into Lawrence. The route is mostly good quality secondary highway roads with low traffic. According to the website the total number of miles is 418, so it averages to about 52 miles a day, I have to note that most days the mileage I came out with on my computer was off from what they gave quite a bit. The longest day was about 70, so the mileage wasn’t bad at all, this would be a very good first ride for someone.

JC hanging out near the Farmers Supply with a diet coke.

This is probably one of the few rides which will offer you some choices on your route for the day. On several days their was an official shortcut, removing 10-20 miles off the ride, in fact one day you could opt for a 15 mile ride. Usually there was also a long option to add some miles by repeating a loop on the ride. I really liked the shortcuts, I think I only took one of them, but it was nice having the option.

The terrain was somewhat varied, the first several days was rolling hills, they were those sweet kind that have just enough downhill to get you most of the way up the next hill. There were plenty of flatter areas too. It wasn’t until the ride got into Missouri that the terrain became unfriendly. The hills start when you get to Missouri, the 5th day goes from Hamburg Iowa to Maryville Missouri. There was about 30 mile section of this ride known as The Serpents Back because it had about 90 hills over that 30 miles. These were not nice hills, you had to actually pedal up the other side of these guys, they were mostly short and moderately steep. I think I remember someone spiting out a number like 4000 feet of climbing, even tough we started on stopped at about he same height.

Here I am in front of a faux old tyme store front

The terrain stays hilly pretty much the whole time your in Missouri, the roughest day for me was probably day 7 only about 40 miles, but had many challenging hills, I’m talking 15-17 percent grades, granny gear got a good work out that day. One older rider who had apparently been everywhere in the country said that it was tougher riding then Ride the Rockies

Conception abbey was one of the more interesting stops along the route.

Border Raiders does an excellent job of routing the ride by some interesting spots, especially historical type stuff, which makes sense since this is a historical themed ride. Before the Civil War was officially started, the war over slavery was getting started in the new territories in what was then the western borders of the states. Every night there was some form of entertainment, music, movie, lecture, most of which were pretty good. There was also a ride meeting every night after the entertainment that was usually very funny and somewhat informative.

Rider's roll in to check out Juniors old store, Junior was 80 something and ran this little grocery store all by himself.

Border Raiders is a small ride, they limit it too 200, but they only had about 150 people this year. Because its a small ride it doesn’t make such a huge impact on the towns we went too. This was mostly good since the restaurants weren’t jam packed with riders, but its nice to not be the only person in an establishment in lycra. Sometimes organizations had put on some kind of supper or breakfast, sometimes they were good, sometimes they weren’t so good. The breakfasts were always 5 dollars and to me that is too much, especially for biscuits and gravy. I guess if I was going to have a complaint about the ride it would be prices.

Most of the towns we stayed in had a shuttle to take us to town from the school, but it was 3 dollars, sometimes for a ride of only a few blocks. There were several sag stops along the ride, most of the time it was just a guy standing by the side of the road with a water jug, usually one of the stops per day was selling snacks. Many rides will give you snacks, others will charge, like this one, the problem was that the prices would range from downright cheap to way to expensive, for example a bottle of Gatorade could be anywhere from 50 cents to 2 dollars.

Here I am trying to look cool.

If you are going to be on a ride with 150 people you better hope that they are a easy to get along with group because you are going to be seeing the same people everyday. Fortunately the group was very easy to get along with, there were lots of friendly riders who didn’t mind talking a bit. Some were more friendly then others, like Canada Bob. This guy was very friendly and loved to give advise, most of it good, if superfluous. He was also a bit quirky in that he liked to leave every morning around 4:00AM.

The riders were mostly older as can be expected, I was probably about the 5th youngest person on the ride. Most of them looked like good riders on good road bikes, not necessarily racer types though. I think there were only a few people on flat bars, 2 tandems and 2 recumbents. Almost everyone wore a jersey everyday, which made me stand out since I don’t own one. On BRAN last year there was a huge variety of riders: young and old, beginers and vets, fat and skinny, and they were riding every type of bike: there were guys on every type of recumbent, many tandems, trikes, wal-mart bikes and mountain bikes.

This dog was the most active citizen of the town of Rosendale.

The Hog back ridge crew were the organizers and they were very involved and helpful. You could almost always find one of them hanging around talking to riders. Most of them had great senses of humor and were easy to get along with. Not to say they didn’t take their job seriously, they worked very hard to make the ride go well. They even took your luggage from you and put it on the truck.

I do have to say I had a problem with one of the organizers, though it was my fault. It was the last day of the ride and we were way out in front. With about 20 miles to go I decided to be a rebel. I don’t usually wear a helmet when I ride, and I had worn one every day for seven days in a row. I hadn’t seen one of the organizers in a long time, for that matter I hadn’t seen another rider in a long time. JC, the guy I came with, had packed his helmet with his luggage that morning, so I took my helmet off and strapped it to his recumbent seat. We were probably about ten miles from the end of the ride when we came by anorganizer parked along the side of the road. He immediately started screaming for us to stop. When we pulled off the road he immediately walked up and started cussing and carrying on like one of the mental patients at my wife’s nursing home. It was kind of hard to keep a straight face, but I didn’t want to make him any madder then he was. After I strapped my helmet back on and JC explained his was on the truck he let us go.

Now I don’t hold to much against this guy for that episode because we should have been wearing our helmets, but a simple, “put your helmet on” would have worked just as well and keep him from looking like an idiot.

I guess to sum up Border Raiders it was a very fun and well organized ride. It was a little bit laid back but had enough challenging hills to make it hard enough for anyone. I wouldn’t do this ride again though, and it was nothing to do with being cussed at, with so many week long tours out there and only about 40 years of bike riding left in me I need to make sure I do a different one every year. I would highly recommend this ride though, especially if you are new to week long tours.