By Bob Vincent
RAGBRAI L, the 50th anniversary of the “Register’s Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa” got it’s namesake when “in 1973 two columnists at the Des Moines Register, Donald Kahl and John Karras, got the idea to ride across Iowa on their bikes and figured ‘Hey, I’ll get the Register to pay for it if I say I’ll write some stories for it along the way’, and the Register said ‘Sure, but you also have to invite some readers along.” The seeds were planted and 50 years later, it’s a massive International Event.
Moving “The City” – There’s all kinds of numbers floating around but 20-30,000 seems to be the approximation of riders who are here this year. To put this in perspective, it is like a decent sized city that gets up and moves everyday to the next town on the route. And imagine telling everyone… “oh yeah, we’re driving and you’re riding your bikes, pack light.”
Police have been there along the way controlling busy intersections and Medical Teams are spaced all over helping with incidents or with the excessive heat we’ve experienced. It’s such a safe experience knowing they’re out there while we have the roads mostly to ourselves. And when they need to pass buy you hear the familiar ‘Car back’ or ‘Car up’ all the way down the line of riders, we slide over… they get by.
Iowa, what a fantastic state. The scenery along the routes helps pass the time, lush rolling hills with corn, soy beans and other crops for as far as the eye can see. The towns on the route take so much pride in being part of this. Big organized groups are there as well as small families that line the route with water and food to keep us moving on these past few really hot days. Freezies, water guns and little hands waving as we go by will be something I will always remember. Our home stays have been wonderful experiences giving us cool places to sleep, food and any kind of support we need. The food, drink and services at all the stops have been amazing. I’ll be curious to see if I actually added weight on the trip which is kind of weird given we’ve ridden over 500 miles. Lol.
There has been some hilarious moments… we enjoyed sharing one of our overnights with another few teams, one of whom had a real ‘Chris Farley’ type of character with them. He just walked in, said ‘hi’ and then proceeded to make us crack up laughing. Of course there are massive cornfields along the way which have been accepted as nature break places. At one such visit.. 3 of us entered a field… one went left, one went right and I continued in only to hear a soft voice say “hellloooo, there’s someone in hereeeeeee”. Talking corn! Who knew? And I learned that catching a nap with this group leads to some pretty funny pictures afterwards. All good fun.
Fellow riders adorned with funny jerseys, huge speakers mounted on make-shift racks, a fellow doing the whole ride while riding backwards on his bike, unicycles, bikes built for 2 (one was built for 3!), or pulling trailers loaded gear or their dogs, a few Penny-farthings, new bikes and retro bikes and meeting people along the way who have done the ride 10, 20, even over 30 times. It’s just a big social gathering. And we met a camel! (He wasn’t riding but he was open to pictures.)
Our ride group had so much fun together. We’d ride together, get separated, somehow find each other, stop at places along the way and share stories of what we’re experiencing. And while we’ve been out riding and enjoying ourselves, someone has to get us from place to place, feed us and get everything set up. Ashley Brown and Jeff Osborn done an amazing job. Joe Brown who has been Mechanic and Happy Guy #1 while Jamie arranged all our overnights, no easy feat when you think of how many people are competing for a place to lay our head at night. We’ve laughed so much and now have memories for a lifetime. If you’ve done RAGBRAI you know this. If you haven’t, well, ya should. As I’m prone to say… Life is Short… Do Epic Shit.
