A rider on Monday was fortunate that RAGBRAI draws all sorts of people from around the country.
In this case, it just so happened that Dr. Christopher Arpey, a Mayo Clinic dermatologist from Iowa City, was on the ride a few miles outside Rinard when his daughter, Meredith, part of a group accompanying him, saw a rider fall.
Arpey, 60, stopped to help while his daughter, 25, called 911. While Arpey isn't an emergency room physician, he said it appeared the man had overheated.
“He had a thready pulse, but he had a pulse,” he said.
Within minutes an ambulance was on scene taking the man away. For Arpey it was just another story to tell about his adopted home state of Iowa, where he started riding the Register's Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa in 2011.