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RAGBRAI - A Ride Across Iowa July 21st-27th, 2024 |
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RAGBRAI - The Register's Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa 
Prelude - Why RAGBRAI? Most of my treks are solo rambles, but no one would describe this rolling street fair, with 18,000 other cyclists, as a solo venture. So why RAGBRAI? Well, it is a long story . . . Two years ago I crossed paths with Doug Wolf.
Doug and I had been friends in 7th, 8th and 9th grade, from 1972-1975, which is half a century ago. We saw each other once when Doug was in law school and I was in grad school, but essentially we had lost contact. Our parents still exchanged Christmas Cards and so a few years ago I had heard that Doug's wife had died, so I reached out and sent my condolence. Doug responded by saying if ever I was in Santa Fe I should drop in. Two years ago my wife had a conference in Santa Fe and so Doug and I spent I few days together. I'll admit I approached that meeting with a bit of apprehension, people do change after half a century. However we hit it off rather well, and among other things we discovered that we both enjoy bike trips. So early in the Spring of 2024 Doug invited me to ride RAGBRAI with him. Mark Handy is a friend of Doug's from high school. After Doug moved from Brockport in 1975 he finished high school in Ames, Iowa, where he met Mark. Since Mark and Doug had committed to RAGBRAI before I was onboard our team was registered under the Ames' high school motto, "Ames High aims high!" Eventually I too registered for RAGBRAI and for the support services from Pork Belly Ventures. I'll admit I didn't really know what these were, or what I was getting involved in. But it is pretty rarer for anyone to invite me to do something, so I jumped. I'm sure I'll figure out what RAGBRAI is eventually. What I did know is that I was not ready to ride across Iowa, and so when the snow finally disappeared from the upper valley, I started cycling every Thursday. At first a dozen miles, then twenty, thirty, forty, fifty and more. My last great preparation ride was an overnight to Moosilauke Ravine Lodge in the White Mountains, 45 miles there and 55 miles back home. The last two miles to the Lodge was a 12% grade. I hope Iowa doesn't have a lot of hills like that. Getting There To understand my ride across Iowa you will have to know a little bit about my odyssey getting there. The ride is Sunday to Saturday, with a pre-ride expo on the Saturday before. So I left home on Friday with my bike packed in a new travel bag, which I'm told airlines treat like any other luggage. But traveling with my precious bike is new to me. And then the CloudStrike software glitch brought airlines to a standstill. I don't want to spend too much time on this, but I should mention how I a lost a few days. Knowing what I know now, I could easily passed through this with minor delays. But I panicked about not knowing where my bike was, I rescheduled multiple times and tryed to make connections which got cancelled. I spent Friday and Saturday in the Boston airport, returning to Hanover at the end of that day. Sunday I reconsidered my plans. On Monday I got from Boston to Detroit and slept on the floor of that airport.
Doug & Mark - First three days of RAGBRAI - Glenwood to Winterset
Tuesday, July 23nd - Detroit to Winterset On Tuesday I arrived in Des Moines without my bike or my luggage, which contained my camping equipment, clothing and various odds and ends like my journal, bike tools and phone charging cable. I called Pork Belly Ventures, the support company I had contracted with, and asked them, what should I do? I had been keeping them posted about my trials over the past few days, so they knew who I was and all about my difficulties. They told me that they ran a shuttle bus from Des Moines to Winterset, that night's stop on RAGBRAI. I should get on it, and they would take care of me.
I carried with me only a minimal carry on bag. My wallet, my phone, a novel, a handkerchief (something Bilbo Baggins forgot) and the blanket and toothbrush the airline gave me in Detroit. When I got to the Pork Belly Venture encampment and found the front desk I must have been a desperate sight. There were two women there, Tammy and Becca. Becca looked up at me and said, "You must be Tim". And then she added, "Wait a second!" She then stood up, walked around the desk and gave me a hug as big as Iowa. Tammy and Becca told me that they were impressed that I had pushed through all the airline confusion and still arrived, and they would make sure things worked. You can rent equipment from Pork Belly and as I started reaching for my credit card they waved it aside and told me I had been through enough already, and this was somebody else's gear who had had to leave that day. They had a tent, a sleeping pad, a sleeping bag and a pillow for me. They then sent me over to the bike shop part of the encampment where I met Dan, who found a bicycle which fit me. Mark and Doug also found me and we all went to dinner. Doug told me he had over packed, and so handed me a bag with a day's worth of bike riding clothing. Then Mark and I caught a shuttle to the courthouse square in Winterset. This also gave me a chance to see the magnitude of RAGBRAI. Winterset is a town of 5,000, the county seat and the heart of commerce for Madison County. Today, all motor traffic is blocked off within two blocks of the courthouse square. But there are hundreds of bikes and thousands of bicyclers. I think most of the two wheeled vehicles are parked at the various encampments around town because these street are too dense with people. RAGBRAI is (among other things) a street festival! Scores of street vendors, booths and a performance stage with live music. Mark was looking for food. I was looking for a riding shirt and I wanted to see the court house. My mother tells me that an ancestor (my great-great-grandfather, Frederick Painton) was one of the stone masons who built this courthouse. It is a solid anchor for the community, right now with bikers lounging all over its many steps. On the shuttle, on the way back to our encampment, we passed a dozen other encampments. The schools, the parks, the churches all hosted cyclers. There are small support operations with a single school bus and a camp in somebody's front yard, as well as bigger groups with a hundred tents on a baseball diamond. Back at Pork Belly's, Doug and Mark head to bed, they have had a long day. But it is all new to me, so I wander around talking to people for another hour.
Wednesday, July 24th I hear people long before there is much daylight; I can understand the urge to beat the heat. Coffee was started at 4:30, but it is 6:00 before I find myself filling my mug at the coffee trailer. Pork Belly starts to break down camp at 7:00, so by 6:45 I'm packed. Which means my few belongings are in a garbage bag (most people have duffel bags), with my tent number attached; #355. At 7:00 Doug, Mark and I rendezvous, mount up and cycle downtown to join the ride. RAGBRAI is a continuous stream, no - I should say river of bicycles. There are about 18,000 riders this year and most of them start between 5 and 8 in the morning, which means about 100 cyclers are rolling out of Winterset every minute this morning.
The first mile is a long, smooth curving downhill out of town. We swoosh into the Iowa country side. The county sheriff and state police have blocked cars and trucks from the east bound lane, our lane. But occasionally, two or three times an hour, you will hear the cry from cyclers in front of us, "car up!", which means a sheriff's deputy has let a car into the west bound lane because that is the only way for that driver to get home. And generally they are creeping into the onslaught of bikes. Most of the time both lanes are occupied by bicycles. Occasionally you hear a "car back", which usually means an emergency vehicle which is en route to a bike crash. And towards the end of the day you hear "bike up!". This is a cyclist biking against the flow. I'm suspicious this is someone who wants to ride 100 miles each day, but today's ride is only 79 miles, so they are tacking on a few extra. But at 7:00 in the morning the day is cool, all I hear is the sound of a hundred bikes coasting down a long decline, and all is good in the world. We are riding at 12 to 14 miles per hour and being side-by-side it is easy to talk. After an hour we arrive at the village of St. Charles, which normally has a population of 650, but right now has thousands. This is a "walk-through-town" - a term I think I made up. Cars and trucks have been blocked from main street, which is thick with vendors, bikes and cyclers. Some walk-through-towns also have stages setup and live music and all of them have a side street with port-a-potties and a place to refill water bottles. I have my breakfast here.
We talk, eat, walk our bikes for a quarter mile. Then mount up and are off again. This is a pattern we encounter every one or two hours all the way across Iowa. I'm told that towns compete to be on the RAGBRAI route. They change the course every year and a town can expect to play host every seven to ten years. One shopkeeper we talked with said he did two months worth of business in a single day. But what a mess it must be afterwards. A rolling street fair. The carnival came to town on 36,000 wheels. St. Mary's is also a walk-through-town, but Indianola is an official "Meet-Town", as designated by the RAGBRAI organizers. These towns tend to be a bit bigger, Indianola is Warren's county seat, and are at about the mid-point for the day. Music makes the court house square a hopping place. On a side street two shiny tractors have pulled a steel cable taught, 100 feet long and about 2-3 feet above the pavement. Cyclers hook the front wheel of their bikes over the cable to park their bikes; a make-sift bike rack. This was something I saw all across the state and multiple of them in meet-towns. I think I also never saw a bike lock on any of these thousands of bikes. At one point Mark told me, "I've never seen so many women without make-up", which made me almost fall off my bike laughing. I think Oklahoma City must be a bit different then Hanover, New Hampshire. Doug and Mark had been looking forward to "Mr. Porkchop", and we found him in the middle of the afternoon. Apparently Mr. Porkchop moves to a different spot on the ride every day. Today he is in front of a farm on state highway 23. Not only are there meet-towns and walk-through-towns, but farms along the route often have there own stands or have partnered with a vendor for even more opportunities to stop, eat and drink. I didn't want pork, but I patronized a lemonade stand staffed by the farmer's grandchildren, and talked awhile with the couple who owned the farmed. They were delighted to host this rest stop. This is also where Mark got a massage and exchanged his "brick". This brick is a rechargeable battery that you can plug any USB device into; your phone, camera, headlamp, sound system, portable fan and many other things. It is turning into a hot day and so in the town of Melcher-Dallas I had peach pie and ice-cream. RAGBRAI is proud of the number of pies available along the route. Today my pie was from an Amish family. This morning I got a call from LaGuardia airport asking where they should send my bike, Hanover or Iowa? I asked them to forward it to Iowa, so it might arrive in Des Moines this evening. So when we peddled into Knoxville, our host town for the night, I talked to Tammy at the front desk. She sent me to Todd, the shuttle driver who said he would check at baggage claim at the Des Moines airport when he was there. A last - not tonight. Still, I spent a lot of time after dinner talking with the bike mechanics about classic English bikes, which meant the showers were closed by the time I got there. So I spent some time under a water faucet instead. And then fireworks as I headed to bed!
Thursday, July 25th We saddled up and headed out of Knoxville at 7:00. It is one of the shorter days, but we would still like to get in some miles before it gets hot. Yesterday I told you a bit about RAGBRAI, today I'll write about Pork Belly Ventures - but not until we gets to tonight's camp. About 10 miles out we get to the walk-through-town of Attica and I head for the grilled cheese sandwich booth, where I have a cheese, bacon and tomato sandwich for breakfast. I think yesterday I was so excited to actually be on the road that I didn't eat and drink enough. So today I'm putting those two items high on my list.
Lovilia is also a walk-through-town, and since we have time we are pretty leisurely here. The morning is overcast which makes the cycling easy. I wonder how long we will be able to keep the clouds. Coming into Albia we lose contact with Mark, and his phone is dead. But this is where he will exchange his "brick" and so eventually we reconnect. My borrowed bike is making a noise, so I stop at one of the pop-up bike shops which shadow the ride. In a dozen minutes he has pulls the peddle arms off and tighten the bottom bracket for 20$, and the noise vanishes. Mark's neck is bothering him (I wonder why all cyclers don't have this problem) but laying for a dozen minutes on a bag of ice seems to put Mark in a good mood for another two hours or so. And then we get to make friends with strangers by giving away the rest of the ice. Mark grew up in Iowa and so has taken to educating me about his home state. The two most important things, he tells me, are; When we ride into and out of Eddyville we passed a massive Cargill plant. I gather corn is processed into everything here - including biofuels. By the time we reach Chillicothe, our last walk-through-town for the day, the horses can smell the stable and our stop is brief. Tonight's overnight-town is Ottumwa and in the middle of the city is "Greater Ottumwa Park". This is a big park, about half a square mile, and I think all the encampments for RAGBRAI are gathered together here. It is the greatest concentration of riders that I have seen so far and gives me a sense of the magnitude of the event. With thousands of tents, it reminds me of a scout jamboree. The encampments are noisy, with generators running all the time. So what is a Pork Belly Venture encampment like? Apparently there are 1,285 riders in camp, an about 100 in the support crew. There are almost 400 identical tents set up by the Pork Belly crew and a similar number set up by individuals. Pork Belly has a number of semi-trailers customized for their purpose. There are 4 shower trailers, each with 24 shower stalls. There are 2 "hotels", including the "Pork Palace". And there are smaller trailers; the morning coffee trailer, the mobile bike shop, the battery/phone recharging trailer, Toilets and water stations. And the trailers which move all the gear between overnight-towns. There are food prep areas, grills, misting tents (for cooling), stages, the front desk, tables and chairs for eating. There are massage tents and a perpetual supply of lemonade. All this must be packed up and moved to the next overnight-town every day. There seems to be more trailers than rigs, so I expect the rigs shuttle back and forth a few times overnight and while we peddle. Some nights the Pork Belly crew cooks for us. Other nights local organization cater to raise money for some charity. I'm told that Pork Belly is the biggest operation, and at the high end of the price spectrum. But the encampment is a self contained community, and you really never have to leave it, until they pack it up and you need to get on your bike and head down the highway. I asked a high-school age girl if this was her summer job. She told me that she worked at a convenient store the rest of the summer, but took this week off as her vacation, because being crew for Pork Belly was so much fun. I think Pork Belly Ventures works hard to make it a good experience for their crew. Which means it is a good experience for the rest of the camp too.
There are also a few other vendors mixed in and surrounding the camp, and since we arrived a few hours before dinner I had found a bratwurst to tide me over. While eating I talked with a man from Rhinelander, Wisconsin. He told me his wife was the go-getter, and he was just barely able to keep up with her. You don't have to be a super athlete to ride RAGBRAI, but the event also doesn't attract couch-potatoes. I had noticed a bike apparel booth near the encampment yesterday, and asked Tammy if she knew where it would be today. After two days of riding in shorts Doug had loaned me, a new pair seemed in order. Tammy said she knew the vendor and she would call to make sure he would bring cycling shorts of my size. On the phone she said, "I am standing here with the nicest, kindest, most patient man in the world." Later I told her that wasn't really true, but then she replied, "You don't understand, I've been in this business for thirty-one years and have met all sorts of people in stressful situations. Yet none of them have shown the grace you have." Now I have to be on good behavior and live up to that. When I had arrived at the encampment there was a phone call from the Des Moines airport saying they had my bike and would send it by a courier to me. I had to turn that problem over to Tammy, since I wasn't quite certain where I was or how to describe it. At dinner I met "Cat" (Kat?) from Chicago and a number of her friends. These are happy, young people, and although they are now Chicago based, it seemed like many of them had Iowa connections. I think half the riders in RAGBRAI live in Iowa, and half the remainder originally came from Iowa. The courier texted me a link so I could track my bike, and when it was near I walked out to the road to meet it. The driver looked a bit overwhelmed. For the last mile he has been threading his way among bicycles and their riders in a pop-up city which is part carnival and part jamboree. "So this is RAGBRAI?" he commented as he turned the bike over to me. Dan, the bike mechanic, was closing up shop at 8:00 when my bike arrived. But he was happy to unpack his tools (mine are in a duffel bag - I think in the Omaha airport) and help me reassemble my bike. I had not done a great job of packing (I now understand some of those straps better) and my bike had suffered a few scratches on the rear stays and a few bent teeth on the front chain-ring. Dan straighten the teeth and I was ready to ride! There is a concert nearby, a group called "Night Rangers", which was rather loud and kept me awake. I think half the RAGBRAI riders want to dance all night, and the other half want to sleep right now. And then more fireworks. Then, finally, despite the heat, I was asleep.
Friday, July 26th This is the longest day of the ride. There were a few other days which are considered harder, because of hills, but today is the longest. So we decided to start early, and are packed up and ready to roll at 6:00. I found the day easy, because I have fallen into a groove. Just crank the peddles. And I am back on "Mistral", my own bike! (A Mistral is a strong wind in France, as well as the model of my bike.)
Ottumwa is asleep as we peddle through downtown, but already there is a steady stream of bicyclers. This is the hometown of the fictional character Radar O'Reilly from M*A*S*H. From what I read I think the locals relish the idea of being the quintessential small town in the heartland. A place that produces decent people. Once out of town there is a long downhill and then a long gradual rise and I unleash Mistral. I want to see how this ancient two-wheeler compares to the modern bike I have been riding on. Mistral is 43 years old and it is fabulous! It holds its own and I can zoom past any bike on the road today. In Agency, the first walk-through-town of the day, I have a grilled cheese-bacon-tomato sandwich, despite the fact that I had eaten in Ottumwa. Later, we stopped at a gas station/convenient store for some ice for Mark's neck. There is no gas being sold, since there are no vehicles on this section of the highway today. There was a table where some people were selling bottle of sports drinks and sodas (or should I say "pop" in Iowa?). I asked for a Gatorade and she gave me one free. We stopped briefly in downtown Eldon and then took a little side trip to the "American Gothic" house on the edge of town. I really liked Libertyville, but I don't really know why. It is a tiny town (274 residents) which is dense with happy people and bicycles! Mark's neck continues to bother him, so he catches the SAG wagon in Fairfield which takes him and his bike to tonight's overnight-town. I have written about meet-towns, overnight-towns and walk-through-towns, but the whole side of the road, through miles of corn fields is also a party, a street fair. We took a long stop for lunch in Brighton. This is not Brighton Beach, as the locals reminded us. We had cheeseburgers from the local teamsters union, and fried pies from the Friends of Lake Darling State Park. I love the arches made of PVC pipes which spout water all over. Some of these arches you ride under, some are water stations where you can re-fill your bottle. How much does the level of water in the town's tank (the first thing you see when approaching a town) drop on the day RAGBRAI passes through? When you register for RAGBRAI they give you a wrist band for your wrist, a wrist band for your bike and a tag which looks like a small license plate you can hang from your seat. (No one ever checked any of these and I rode the whole time without one, since mine were in my duffle bag in Omaha). On the tag from your seat sometimes people write down their hometown. So when you come up behind someone you can call out, "Hello Peoria", or "Your the only Alaskan I've seen". You have lots of time to talk to people, if you and they are in the mood. So I struck up a conversation with someone who happened to be a nurse practitioner at the clinic where my doctor is, in Vermont. At another time I noticed a bike with the same rack as mine, and a frame of similar vintage, so we talked for a mile. The bike was from 1987, and had multiple RAGBRAI wrist bands on the frame. The rider, a man in his 30's, told me that his father-in-law rode that bike in RAGBRAI several times in the 1990's. He then told me, "I've ridden five RAGBRAIs, but my bike has ridden eight." When I see an older bike, one with double-butted tubing, I talk with the rider and asked the age of the bike. The oldest I heard was 1983, and since mine is 1981 I win! Except for the Penny-Farthing. I saw "Lucky-Penny - Ride Across America", which is a Victorian Bike. A penny-farthing has a big wheel (5 feet in diameter!) in the front and a small wheel in the back. The name comes from comparison to a penny (a large coin) to a farthing (a small coin). Wayland and Trenton are walk-through-towns but Doug and I just feel like rolling and so continue with only the briefest of pauses. By the time we pass under the interstate I'm ready to wind down the day, there is about three more miles into town. Mt. Pleasant is pleasant! Our encampment is on the campus of Iowa Wesleyan University, which is green and lush, but will be even better in about an hour when that towering elm cast its shadow on my tent. I'm drinking lots of lemonade. Mark is off visiting relatives which live locally. Doug and I then hunt up some wood-fired pizza to hold us over until dinner. While in the dinner line a guy tells us that he read an article (in the Des Moines Register) which said, "RAGBRAI is part Tour-de-France.He then said he would like to add, "Part adult daycare and summer camp". In the evening I walked around the neighborhood next to the campus. It really is a pretty town, but where are all the people? There are beautiful porches and verandas with nobody on them. Has RAGBRAI scared them away? Or is 9:30 too late?
Saturday, July 27th This is the last day of RAGBRAI and I think riders are of two minds. Some started early, will finish early, and then will be well on their way home. Others are lingering and savoring every last mile. Today is also a short day, a half day of riding. Cycling out of Mt. Pleasant we meet with groups from every corner of town and eventually converge on 220th street, heading east out of town. It is a cool and delightful morning.
Occasionally, through this week, we will meet a bike with a boom box, or as I think of them, a "sound cannon". These come in all shapes, but are often cylinders which fit on the bike's back rack. Most of the time they are playing some modern and up beat music. Something you could dance to, or maybe do a bit of jazzercise to, or what you might expect to be playing at the gym. I commented to Doug, "No opera!", Doug is an opera fan. But now, near the end of the ride, on an uphill, we have finally caught up with opera! We stopped for awhile in Mediapolis. The local high school football team was running a booth where they sold Gatorade. Gatorade is a sports drink sold by color, not flavor. So I asked the football players which color should I buy. Most of them suggested blue, but one of them insisted that white was best. When I was caught off guard by this descending opinion, one of the older players leaned across the table and explained to me, "He is only a Sophomore." Doug struck up a conversation with four kids, ages 5, 6, 7 and 8; siblings, waiting for their father to ride by their hometown. Grace, the oldest was very sharp. They all had red hair but Grace told us, "If any of us are adopted it is her (#2), she is already becoming blonde." Grace also thinks Dougs bike has a bit of teal in it. Mediapolis is our last walk-through-town, so after breakfast we head out on the last 20+ miles, a little less then two hours. And then we finally drop down into the Mississippi basin. There is an elevation profile published for every day's ride where you can see that we have been rolling up and down hills all the way across the state. But this time there is a 200 foot down with no up. Mark is riding so much better than yesterday, his neck problem seems to have vanished. He sets a blazing pace and Doug and I loose him someplace in the crowd in front of us. I rode and talked for awhile with a guy from Las Vegas who now runs a bike shop. He told me that he worked in the technical side of television stations for years. But at some point in his fifties he needed a change and so became a part owner and part-time worker at a bike shop. They now have three shops and he has quit his television job. The shop also runs bikes-in-the-community and bikes-in-school workshops, and he is loving life again. As we rolled into Burlington, our last town and a port on the Mississippi, I loss Doug, but then found him again just before the "Dip". The traditional ending of RAGBRAI is dip your bike in the Mississippi (some people dip their bikes in the Missouri River at the start). So the ride officially ends at a boat ramp into the river where there is a long line of cyclers waiting their turn. Here there are also volunteers ready to take your camera and photograph you with feet and tires in the muddy Mississippi. And that is officially the end of RAGBRAI. Pork Belly Ventures has arranged a rendezvous at a school about three miles from the dip. So a bunch of us are cycling through Burlington, much as we have cycled for the past week, using all the lanes when I realize that we are not on the ride and we really need to share the road with cars and trucks again. The rendezvous is much like an encampment but with out the tents. Some people have left their cars here and so just pick up their duffle bags and leave. The rest of us are waiting for busses which will shuttle us back to Omaha or Des Moines. For those of us waiting, the shower trailers are open and ready, otherwise those busses would smell like cattle cars. Worse than cows but better than pigs? There is also the sorting of gear and duffle bags and making sure that your bike get sent to the right city. Once on the bus I think half the people sleep to Des Moines. And once in Des Moines, Mark reclaims his truck and gives me a ride to the airport where I collect my long missing duffel bag. I now have a lot of clean clothes. We conclude the ride with a large and long dinner. In the morning I have an early flight and Doug and Mark have a long drive. Getting Home It is all anti-climatic, but I think I should finish this account. On Sunday morning I flew to New York City and met my son Robin and walked around Brooklyn. Mark and Doug drove to Oklahoma City, to Mark's home. On Monday I caught the bus to Hanover, New Hampshire and Doug drove to Santa Fe, New Mexico. And I don't think any of us rode our bikes - until Wednesday. |
