2008 was the first year that Race Across America (RAAM) came through Bloomington, IN. In the past, whenever RAAM passed through Indiana it followed our club's, BBC, RAIN route on US 40. The current owners of RAAM, Fred and Rick Boethling, were looking for new venues for the RAAM route, to market RAAM. Jeff "Bubba Shrimp" Stephens, a RAAM finisher, and marketing director of RAAM, suggested Bloomington due to its cycling history of Hilly Hundred, Breaking Away, and Little 500.The Bloomington Bicycle Club was quite experienced in ultra-marathon cycling. Ty Waltermire, sponsored by BBC, completed solo RAAM a couple of times in the 80's, and Dave Tanner rode solo RAAM once, and has ridden two 4 person RAAM's in 2007, the Hoosiers, and 2008, Team Theraplay. BBC also has put on RAIN, Ride Across Indiana, since 1987. Jeff also knew that I now lived in Bloomington and a reliable time station could be manned in Bloomington. It was a challenge that I enthusiastically accepted. Jeff and Dave spoke at our annual end of winter banquet to stir up the fire.

The first solo rider through was Jure Robic, the 2 time RAAM winner from Slovenia. According to his time breaks, he was to come through at 1 am, as a few of the BBC members were patiently waiting.Unfortunately, Robic decided to bed down on the other side of Bloomington, and finally came through our time station at 4am. He still had a couple of us BBC'rs along with the Slovenien Army cheering him on.
Dave Haas came along about 13 hours later.
Currently in 2nd he was the American hope to unseed Robic. He was quite a sore man and quite grumpy. His major complaints were his feet and heels. He was overtaken by Marc Patinson, a Brit, later in West Virginia.

Teams started coming through regularly The excitement peaked when Team Theraplay came through with our own Dave Tanner riding his leg past his alma mater,
his house, and ended at our time station 38 in front of about 75 fans at midnight on a weekday.
The time station continued its services to the riders, the crews, and the officials till the last rider came through almost a week after Jure came through.

We learned a lot in our first year, but we were appreciated by all. The Boethlings came through and enjoyed our town and Hoosier hospitality and promised that RAAM would be back in 2009.