I woke up from my hidey-hole along the Wabash Trail and arrived in Glenwood, IA, at about 7 AM on RAGBRAI day zero. To refresh, RAGBRAI stands for the Register's Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa, and it's the event that I had been aiming for since leaving Hutchinson, KS. In short, it claims to be the longest and oldest touring cycling event in the world, where about 20,000 cyclists get together to form a massive rolling party from one end of Iowa to the other. The route isn't the most direct, but takes riders about 50-75 miles per day through a bunch of small towns and interesting sites.
Though I had a blast overall, the whole event was very commercialized, which was a letdown compared to stories I'd read about the RAGBRAI of old. There were vendors everywhere selling food and goodies at inflated prices. Some places asked $8 for a shower. At one point, a bike mechanic refused to let me use his tire pump unless I put something in the tip jar first, even though he had plenty of other business and no immediate need for the pump. Maybe that would've changed if he knew I was on a longer journey.
The dedicated freeloader can, however, find all the elements of Ye Olde RAGBRAI still present, and the event is still a lot of fun on a budget. Team Good Beer arranged with Left Hand Brewing and others to set up a free microbrew tent along the route every day. Local kids line parts of the route armed with squirt guns while their parents watch the freak show roll by. Each town tries to outdo the next with live entertainment. At the center of it all are the riders themselves, which is really where one should look for the spirit of the event anyway. Riding self-supported meant that I could ignore whatever "official" parts of the event I wanted.
A bit of social anxiety prevented me from participating as fully as I wanted, but I did manage to meet people along the way. On day zero, I spent a lot of time harassing people who were waiting to buy vendor beer, trying to convince them to come with me to the local grocery and split a six-pack. I'm much more able to interact with people when I feel I can offer them some kind of service; in this case, the local grocery meant more and better beer for less money, not to mention directly supporting local business. I made some friends that way.
Backpocket Brewing set up the most popular stops every day, usually just before the halfway point and just before the end town. I stopped at each of these, and usually drank a Murderhorn or two at the day's-end site - all beer was the same price, and Murderhorn is a tasty strong blonde with an ABV of over 10%, so I'm not sure why they bothered with other choices. I spent a lot of time running through the typical Trans-America FAQs. A lot of people stayed with their teammates, but I was able to find a few RAGBRAI orphans who seemed approachable. I started Team Generic with another guy in a plain T-shirt. A couple people were from Chicago, and invited me to drop by. One even had a ukulele I could play when I got there. I ran into Deanna and Sonia a few times. I met another bearded, dark-haired, kind of awkward Trans-America cyclist from Portland, who is in all those aspects much like myself. I would run into Mike repeatedly throughout the rest of RAGBRAI, and repeatedly had to let people know that we were not brothers.
Through Mike, I met Team Hot Sauce and Team Party Pants, two of the most dedicated groups of partiers on the ride. I ended up at an off-route party with them and several other fraternity-esque teams, and was amazed that they could drink like they did and ride the whole week. It turned out that many of them rode the team bus instead of their bike for a few days. It also helped that, like most RAGBRAI riders, they had a bus to carry all their stuff for them. Jerseys for Team Hot Sauce came equipped with a "hot pocket" on the back, with a bottle of Fireball Whiskey printed on the actual jersey to remind them where it goes. Fireball, of course, is the "hot sauce" for which they are named. Team Party Pants definitely delivered on their name, with an array of designs including rainbow tiger stripes and leopard print to be worn on the bike, and in at least one case, a shiny metallic man-thong for off the bike.
A few of the other teams on the ride included:
- Team Butt Ice, who has outlived their former sponsor by the same name, which made a real product for sore butts;
- Team Monkey Butt, whose jerseys included an image of a monkey cyclist with a red, swollen ass -- presumably, former customers of Butt Ice;
- Team Good Beer, as mentioned previously, whose jerseys were printed to resemble lederhosen and dirndls;
- Team Roadkill, who were blamed for decorating roadkill with Mardi Gras beads despite that being the work of Team Fur Bandits;
- Team Bad Music, blasting the bottom-40 hits of today and yesterday from a tricked-out tandem;
- Team KYBO, named for a company that used to make portapotties - supposedly, it stands for Keep Your Bowels Open, but I'm guessing that's a backronym;
- Team Plywood: "Easy to lay, fun to nail";
The bikes were interesting, too. Most were super-light road bikes, in many cases carbon fiber. A few people lounged on high-tech recumbents. Some, like myself, were on touring or mountain bikes, loaded down with racks, panniers, and other equipment. These were generally unregistered riders like myself who had no support team to rely on. A surprising number of tandem (two-person) bikes were present, including one with an articulated pool-noodle-person as the rear rider, with its feet taped to the pedals to give the impression that it was participating. Tandems were mostly ridden by couples, hence the alternate name: divorce bikes. One family rode what I will call a super-tandem, putting five people - two adults, one teen, and two smaller children - together on one vehicle.
Some brave souls took novelty bikes, though I don't know how many actually rode the entire route. A couple bikes had superfat tires as wide as my fist. One tall bike was present, created by welding one bike frame on top of another. Some single-speed masochists struggled their way up hills for no good reason. A couple people used hand-bikes, powering themselves with their arms the whole way. A genuine 19th-century Pennyfarthing participated, though the rider had previously ridden it from San Francisco to Boston, so I guess that was no big feat. Two longboarders made it. A rollerblader was rumored, but I never saw them. One guy with impressive facial hair finished the route on a touring unicycle, which is apparently a real thing. Two people just ran the route, in at least one case pushing a stroller with water and other equipment inside.
The riders themselves came from all over the US, with a few from places like Tokyo or New Zealand. I got a free beer from someone I later learned was a state legislator, who may or may not also be bananaman ("We never realized a man in a banana suit could be so popular!"). All ages were represented, with three riders over 90, several children on tandems or on their own, and at least one infant in a trailer. A range of body types were present. Lance Armstrong was there as he apparently always is. In all, the ridership itself made a very good argument for bikes as practical transit for a wider range of people than I initially expected.
In all, I have no regrets with my decision to kill time and add several hundred miles to make RAGBRAI. If nothing else, the variety was nice, and it's worth it to have the roads (mostly) closed while crossing an entire state. It was jarring to always have people around, and I fought with some depressed, alone-in-a-crowd kind of feelings, but I was happy to meet the people that I did. If nothing else, they tended to have beer and distracted the most annoying kinds of bugs.
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