The beer was easy to avoid. I didn't have any problem or even notice anyone who couldn't maintain their behavior. The pass through towns were amazing. I was surprised that we had to walk through towns due to the LARGE number of riders trying to get through. Every town had a festival just for us. Every type of food they had was for sale, lots of pork chops/brats/burgers/pulled. The churches had great lunch/dinners and were always the best deal. Bands played, cheerleaders cheered people had their sprinklers set up to ride through, it was amazing. The number of riders on the road was overwhelming. I was always just a little leary of what other people were going to do. On the other hand, yesterday I jumped onto a paceline with the Arizona team and we road 18-20mph between two of the pass through towns. That was really fun. I was very surprised that riders didn't organize into groups based on abilities more. There was more of it on the last two days, but I thought it would happen right away. As my riding buddy said, "RAGBRAI is not for the faint of heart". Boy was he right. It is the longest, toughest ride I've ever done. The 900 miles of training I did was good enough that I was not sore at all during the week so I was really relieved about that. I had a lot of fun, I could be talked into doing it again.