RAGBRAI: Biking the Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa

Sixteen years ago I did what I thought was the greatest group bicycle ride ever. No, it's not as beautiful as the Santa Cruz Mountains or Big Sur, but there is nothing more fun than 10,000-plus riders and NO CARS tooling down the farm river valleys of Iowa.

It's a rolling Bay to Breakers that lasts for six days and has grown exponentially since it was begun 40 years ago by a couple of columnists at the Des Moines Register who wanted to show Iowans how beautiful their state was.

Now thousands of people come from all over the world to do the ride, which every year takes a different route for the 500 miles between the Missouri and Mississippi rivers. It raises a ton of money for local charities.

I've done the ride every year since my first. My friends go cycle France, Ireland, Spain...but I keep heading to Iowa and I'm never bored. In fact, it often feels like I'm in Europe passing through towns that have kept their heritages from Czechoslovakia, Sweden, Norway, Germany or Holland.

I know there are Santa Cruzans coming and I hope you will post pictures or add words here. I'll try and add mine.

Below is the story I wrote 16 years ago, which started at least one team of 20 new riders the next year from Santa Clara County.

(For more information check www.ragbrai.org.)

Also, IOWA Patches will be covering RAGBRAI big: here are some dispatches from them.

BETWEEN THE RIVERS AND THROUGH THE CORN
ANNUAL BIKE RIDE THROUGH IOWA PROVES GREAT LESSON IN HUMANITY 

THE BEST bicycle trip I've ever taken wasn't in France, California, Washington or Colorado.
  

It was in Iowa.
  

Yeah, I know what you're thinking, especially here in California, where summer gives us a perfect climate for spending days outdoors.
  

But despite the heat, the hills (yes, Iowa has them), the bugs and the occasional drizzles, a group of Iowans, with support from city and state governments, has put together a biker's dream come true, leading more than 10,000 riders across the state without the bother of cars, and offering a picture of a friendly Ward and June Cleaver America that seems to have faded from the rest of the country.
  

The RAGBRAI (The Des Moines Register's Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa) cleared up a lot of my misunderstandings about Iowa. Riding 10 miles an hour over 437 miles of roadway between the Missouri and Mississippi rivers, I learned the state is not flat or boring, despite its reputation to the contrary.
  

The ride started 24 years ago with 150 riders following a pair of Register columnists as they explored the small towns of their beloved state.
  

It has since grown into the Midwest's version of the Tour de France, attracting not only 11,000 riders but an additional 10,000 people who show up to cheer them on and join nightly parties. It takes place the last week of July every year (next year will be RAGBRAI's silver  anniversary).
  

Small-town Iowans take days off to watch the ride as it passes through their towns (many of them smaller than the number of passing bikers). They bake pies (some sell them; some open their kitchens to riders free); kids line the entrances to towns to slap high fives and greet bikers; there are dances, live entertainment and fireworks many nights.

Farmers sit outside their homes on lawn chairs offering free food and drink in return for conversation. And many invite riders into their homes to use beds, back lawns and showers.
The bikers stretch across farm roads cleared of car traffic, a combination of a pioneer wagon train and Woodstock.
  

'''No one thinks of Iowa as a tourist destination,''' says Sue Dressler, 27, who drove several hours from Des Moines to serve food and watch the riders pass through Bancroft, her hometown. '''They think it's just boring and flat. But this is something you have to see. A lot of people are so impressed with our towns they come back year after year.'''
  

She's right. RAGBRAI administrators say only 47 percent of the riders, whose average age is 37, are from Iowa. Others come from every state in the country and from around the world. (One early year organizers were desperate for a Rhode Island rider, so they got a letter printed in a newspaper there to get the rider they needed.)
  

I met many who set aside the week, including former Oakland Raider Ben Davidson, 56, who rode with his wife Kathy, 56, and his 31-year-old niece. The San Diego resident has ridden eight of the last nine RAGBRAIs after learning about the ride from a golfing partner.
  

'''I like the infinite variety of Iowa,''' he jokes. '''Sometimes you get the corn on the right and beans on the left. Sometimes the beans are on the right. Sometimes it's all just corn.
  

'''Really, though, this is America at its greatest. It's completely different than California. People are really friendly. The only drive-bys you have are with water pistols. And people are more willing to talk on bicycles.'''
  

Kathy says the couple recently took a vacation to a high-priced Dominican Republic resort and met no one. In Iowa, they pull off at every town and almost every roadside farm stand and spread four hours of actual riding over a leisurely 12-hour day. They are partial to the beer gardens that spring up about every 10 miles.
  

'''Here we stop and talk to everyone,''' she says.
  

'''Yeah, you got to stop and smell the roses,''' says the former Raider, who is 6 foot 8 and considerably thinner than in his playing days.
  

'''Or the Buds,''' says his wife.
 

There are as many ways to ride the state as there are riders to do it.
  

Some are zealous, getting up at 6 a.m. and covering daily distances ranging from 50 to 86 miles by noon. Others approach it like San Francisco's Bay to Breakers, forming a colorful pageant of amateur and goofy bicycle teams, turning every evening into a giant spring break-like party.
  

Most people wear shirts with writing on the back to give other riders an idea of their interests or have regular yearly rituals.
  

Team Skunk, with more than 300 members, wears white and black each day. On their  '''formal day,''' they sport tuxedos. The Aim High Air Force team includes 130 buff U.S. Air Force officers in red, white and blue jerseys who are riding with Air Force Secretary Sheila Widnall. They ride fast and true and don't want strangers drafting behind them.
  

There is a team of fake nuns, who drive instead of pedal and sing in different towns.
  

Actor Tom Arnold is riding with Team Gourmet, which has hired a chef to follow them on the ride. Not surprisingly, he has gained weight despite his pedaling and says his bike is bending like a potato chip. He says the partying has been harder than the riding. Two nights he jammed on rock classics such as '''Honky Tonk Woman'' and '''Taking Care of Business''' with the formula party bands that entertain outdoors each night.
  

There are provocative teams such as Team Farm Naked;  Team Bike Naked ('''I don't think you should know what that means,''' we overhear a local man say to his young daughter); Team Men in Dresses, The Women of N.I.P.S. (Not in Perfect Shape); and Team Bad Boy, whose Colorado-based riders carry 85 pounds of gear on trailers behind them, including a fully stocked wooden bar and a TV. They pride themselves on being the last group into each town.
  

But nothing outshocks Team Roadkill. That team posts its team stickers on every dead animal along the way. I'm not making this up, to borrow a line from columnist Dave Barry, who did RAGBRAI last year.
  

I pass skunks, squirrels and raccoons covered in the day-glo stickers. There is even one on the nose of a fox.
  

There are children, doing their first long-distance ride; blind riders (on the backs of tandems); deaf riders; and paraplegic riders using bicycles with hand pedals.
  

There are rolling Alcoholics Anonymous chapters and teams that set up something called Naked Beer Slides at the second to last town we ride through each day. These are like children's rubber slip and slides, covered with water and beer. The more beers downed, the fewer clothes left on the people doing the sliding.
 

It's almost hard to believe that some people just  ride. But they do.
  

Rush Limbaugh-loving retired Des Moines IBM engineer Bob Duffy, 63, laughs at how slowly I and some of my newspaper partners (Team Mean Streak) do the ride. In his crew cut and on his 20-year-old bike, he does most of the legs in four hours or less, while we often lag, watch people and sample the local delicacies, particularly the pastries in towns founded by Danish and Norwegian immigrants.
  

He hooks up in each town with his wife, Shirley, and together they camp in people's back yards. They arrange accommodations months in advance of the ride through local chambers of commerce. We camp out together in the back yard of a weekly newspaper editor one night.
  

Duffy, who has already told me  he is convinced journalists get their ideas in dispatches from Barbra Streisand and the liberal cabal, doesn't bring it up that night.
  

He also admits to having once ridden with a team that met at the first bar on the right in each town. Like everyone I meet, his friendliness and good nature outweigh any political or cultural differences we may have.
  

There are all kinds of ways to deal with accommodations. You can camp in school yards and parks set up by the RAGBRAI committee or find your own motels or homes. The $80 registration fee includes a place on a semi truck for all your gear, besides your bicycle, and a seat in a van for you and your bike if you can't make a day's miles.
  

Many teams have buses or vans following them to carry gear and set up camps. Others contract with firms to do it. You get a full list of businesses that do that when you register.
  

For me, the best way to meet the locals was to stay in their homes. Des Moines Register political writer Tom Fogarty set up homes all along the way with help from the local chambers of commerce. Several of ours were with editors of local weeklies. We also stayed on two working farms. Ben Davidson ended up spending a night in Lake Mills with a retired football pro he didn't know.
   

Fogarty put together an itinerary that would surprise those from larger towns.
  

Take Thursday's entry, for the home of Ken and Gretchen Becker:
  

'''They have a couple of beds and floor space. They'll both be working and we're unlikely to see them home until late. There's a patio door in back that is always open and we're to use that. They have a cat. Don't let the cat outside.'''
  

My boss in California raised an eyebrow when I showed this to her.
  

'''What planet are you visiting?'''
 

Iowa wasn't so much a different planet as a different time. People don't lock their doors. They leave keys in cars in case anyone needs them. They aren't suspicious of outsiders.
  

The owner of a gas station in Lake Mills housed 23 of us, but was working the beer garden and didn't see us until morning. He gave each of us a souvenir coffee cup.
  

It was all more than a bit Ward and June-like, but I mean that in the best possible sense.
  

Every year RAGBRAI travels a different route through the state, with cities vying to be selected as stopovers. Orange City had kids hand out a free orange to each rider. Charles City gave each a free piece of pie.

Fogarty, who writes something called the Iowa Poll (Item: 65 percent of Iowans say supper; the rest say dinner), explains that the ride works here better than it would in other states because of a strong farm lobby that pressured the Legislature to crisscross the state with good, paved roads so they could get their goods quickly to market.
  

For RAGBRAI bikers, this means  there are enough paved avenues so cars can be comfortably diverted for the week without causing traffic troubles.
  

The week's biggest question was this: '''Do I want to stop and sample the pies, beer, pork chops and pastries, or do I want to cover some ground?'''
  

I resolved it this way: I would ride hard some days and feast the others.
 

The eating was easier than the riding. Each day RAGBRAI-approved merchants set up stands along stretches where there aren't towns. There is Pancake Man in the mornings; Mr. Pork Chop and Pasta Boys at lunch; Corn Lady (she sells jewelry made from niblets) and yes, Californians, cappuccino stands.
  

And to be sure, there are beautiful things to see, even for those who have Big Sur in their back yard.
  

A lighted-up pedestrian suspension bridge across the river, linking river homes and parks to a quaint Charles City downtown.
  

A stately courthouse and 1914 opera house in Cresco; bicycles strung from every street lamp in Sioux Center; windmills echoing the Dutch heritage in Orange City; the deep green Mississippi valley around Guttenberg; the historic home of composer  Antonin Dvorak in Spillville and the antique clock factory there; lakes, rivers, green hillsides, deep, dark, starry night skies. But what makes this trip memorable is the people.
  

They leave funny road signs in the cornfields for us (cornfields that are also '''inspected''' regularly by riders in need of restrooms).
  

'''Please water the little ears, they need it,''' one sign says.
  

''Heading for Elma, 4.9 miles, 333 yellow center lines or 59 power poles away,'' says another.
 

There are Burma Shave-like poems and trivia questions.

'''Come as strangers, leave as friends, please be sure to see us again,''' says one series.
  

The 20 residents of Bolan - the town flown to New York in 1989 by David Letterman to appear on his show - set up 20 food booths and greeted each rider.
  

An Alta Vista (population 246) store owner asked riders to sign the wall of his store. He was covering it with varnish to save forever.
  

And maybe my favorite moment came in his town. I was walking down the street, looking for something vegetarian (not always easy in this pork capital). A woman came up to me and said: '''Well, aren't you coming in?'''
  

I thought she had mistaken me for someone else, when she explained that her family had set up a huge buffet and were waiting for riders to stop by.
  

I did. And sat there for an hour, with a spread of fruits, cheese and breads - and more importantly, a feast of conversation with some people I never would have otherwise met.