Originally written for the CogHauler, the newsletter of the Carolina Tarwheels
Thanks to our biking buddy Marie, 6 Carolina Tarwheelers arranged to participate in the twenty-fourth annual Register's Annual Great Ride Across Iowa--RAGBRAI. Sponsored by the Des Moines Register newspaper, the ride's route is changed each year. Towns in Iowa vie to be on the route, either as a resting place or as an overnight town. This year, Marie, Bruce, Paul, Beth, Carol, and I were lucky enough to be selected as a group in the lottery used to decide which lucky riders get to be among the 7500 or so. This year's route followed the northern border of Iowa from Sioux Center in the west to Guttenberg in the east.
Our group, with Marie as our coordinator, found out we had been selected in the lottery in late spring, as I recall. Our next step was to decide how to get there and back. RAGBRAI's route is always a one-way route across the state. After some discussion, Marie, Carol, Beth, and I decided to fly into Dubuque, about an hour south of Guttenberg. Bruce and Paul drove up in Paul's pickup truck and carried all six bikes for us. Bruce and Paul left early in the morning on July 18; the others of us flew out of RDU on the morning of July 19. When we arrived at the Dubuque airport, Paul was waiting for us. He and Bruce had arrived safely in Guttenberg where they dropped off the bikes; Bruce stayed to watch over them while Paul picked up those of us who flew.
Our first night was a real adventure, although I think I clearly got the best end of the adventure. Marie arranged for us to stay in several "host homes" during the trip as alternatives to camping. Our first host home was a houseboat on the Mississippi River! I looked forward to that from the time I found out. The houseboat was quite small, but the weather was clear and warm. So, Carol, Beth, and Marie picked out spots in the houseboat rooms to sleep. Bruce and Paul laid their sleeping bags on the deck which faced into the dock. And I got to sleep on the deck facing the river! What a treat. I went to sleep to the sound of waves lapping a few feet from my head. There was a slight breeze and no mosquitoes. In the morning I woke up to the sight of the sun rising over the river. It almost made getting up early worthwhile!
That day (Saturday), we met a shuttle service in Guttenberg to be driven across the state. I'd love to tell you all about the trip, but the truth is I dozed during most of it. I kept waking up, thinking, "Libby, you should stay awake and watch the scenery!" It didn't work, though. My body wanted to sleep. In retrospect, I think my body knew best. The rest of the trip was too full of really early mornings for someone (like me!) who is a definite nighttime person.
We arrived in Sioux Center in plenty of time to set up our tents and head into town for something to eat. We actually rode our bikes around town since that seemed to be the easiest transportation. That was the beginning of understanding the scope of the ride... bicyclists were *everywhere*. All kinds of bikes were there: recumbents, uprights, tandems, bikes built for 3, bikes built for 4, and even a bike built for 5! We saw people riding that one around town, but never saw it on the ride. The town of Sioux Center had mounted bikes (yes, real ones) on all the lightposts along the main street. Some of them had manequins or stuffed animals in the seat. It was a very festive look to see bicycles staring down at us as we biked to and from town.
The housing provided as part of RAGBRAI is camping in very large areas with lots and lots of people. Bathrooms were often port-a-potties and showers consisted of communal showers in some cases and cold garden hoses or rivers in others. In our group, 3 started out as "uncampers"--Carol, Beth, and Marie all agreed that they really appreciated the little comforts of a home--running water, comfortable beds, etc. Several days into the ride, we were amused to hear them talk about the difficulty they'd had sleeping in one of our host homes. Could they have turned into campers on this trip???
The first day of the ride was Sunday, and it began by raining very lightly for a couple of hours. During that time, we were all expressing our most sincere hopes that we weren't in for 7 days of riding in the rain, setting up wet tents, and packing wet clothes. Luckily, the sun came out before lunch and until the end of the last day, the weather was perfect: sunny, warm, low humidity... Many veteran RAGBRAI riders talked about how lucky we were to have such unusual weather for the ride.
That first day was also our first experience with the Pancake Man. We hadn't gone very far when the first signs proclaiming the distance to Pancake Man began appearing. We didn't eat in town before beginning just so we could eat pancakes at what we could only assume was a RAGBRAI tradition. Sure enough, the line at the old barn-turned-cookhouse was long--but friendly. Inside, one man squirted out uniform pancakes, dozens at a time. As he finished forming the batter pools, he'd return to the beginning of the rows and begin turning the pancakes. Finally, the final turn and, plop! A stack of pancakes would end up on plate after plate. As we stood in line waiting for food, we joined in the amusement as the Pancake Man had a young boy stand in the middle of the barn while he flipped pancakes to land on his plate from several yards away. Each pancake, he had the boy stand a bit further back. The pressure was on the boy, who valiantly captured each pancake as it was flipped his way. Quite a bit of excitement in the first hour of the ride! The Pancake Man became fairly routine for us. He was set up within 20 miles or so of each overnight town. I think we only skipped his daily stand twice on the 7 day ride.
The 6 of us had breakfast together almost everyday, and started out riding together. But, as you might expect, we ended up riding separately and in pairs and groups of three at various times. Except for Wednesday, Carol and I rode together every day. Generally, when I refer to "we," I mean Carol and me.
Our first experience with a ride-through town was Orange City. The townspeople, young and old, lined the streets handing out oranges to every rider who came through. As we quickly found out, "rider" in one of the ride-through towns was a misnomer. Almost everyone got off the bike and walked through the town. Imagine 10,000 cyclists (including those who rode for just a day or two and those who rode even though they weren't officially registered) riding into a town, population about 500. I'm not sure what the population of Orange City is, but according to the Des Moines Register (DMR), the total population for all the overnight towns (combined) is 31,873 (1990 Census). We continued to Alton, through Granville, and arrived in Paulina about lunchtime where we met up with Beth. We ate a lasagna lunch followed by homemade pieces of pie, wandered through town and found a map of the U.S. and a map of the world. A woman wandered through the crowd handing out map pins so riders could indicate on the map where they came from. According to the DMR, all 50 states were represented as well as DC, the Virgin Islands, and 15 foreign countries. Along the way, we found out that a number of towns had places for cyclists to write messages or record their home state or country. Townspeople we talked to were *eager* to keep those signs as a concrete memory of the year RAGBRAI came to town.
At the end of Sunday, we arrived in Sibley. When Carol and I got to the place where we were to pick up our luggage, Paul met us to let us know our luggage had already been transported to our host home for the night. We walked a few blocks through a residential section to stay with a couple who opened their house to us for the night. The man, a retired farmer, was able to answer all the questions we had after riding by acres and acres of corn and soybeans. We had hot showers, and I even had a hot bubble bath! Compared to the nights to come, this was absolute luxury!
We had dinner at the couple's church... a barbeque sandwich, fruit salad, beans (for those who wanted them), and "bars." Wow. After listening to tapes of midwest humor and hearing about "bars," now I finally had real experience with them. Yum! Mine was good, but Marie had a butterscotch one that she shared with me. It was so good, I went back to see if I could buy another. I'm sure I looked pitifully hungry after 66 miles of biking, 'cause they *gave* me another one. After we finished eating, Bruce and I looked at each other, and I asked, "So, where do we eat next?" Naturally, we *did* find more food.
Sibley is very, very close to the Minnesota border, so this is the place where we hatched the scheme to ride to Minnesota. Sadly, after talking about it at various times, it got too dark to hop back on the bikes. Also, Bruce, Paul, and I had fun wandering through the various bike vendors dreaming our own personal bike dreams. Bruce, in particular, was looking for a Roadrunner jersey he had seen in Sioux Center the night before, but we didn't see any.
We collected back at our host home at various times, and crawled into our sleeping bags (well, Marie crawled into a bed) to get some sleep before our early morning rising on Monday.
