WHAT WOULD MAKE THOUSANDS OF CYCLISTS TAKE TO THE ROAD TO CROSS IOWA? IT’S MORE THAN JUST THE THOUGHT OF DIPPING THEIR TOES INTO THE MISSISSIPPI.
The Philadelphia Inquirer, Sunday, March 26, 1989
By Andrew Cassel, Inquirer Staff Writer
OSKALOOSA, Iowa – I was lying near the gazebo on the grass beneath a small sign that said, “Keep Off the Grass.” I didn’t care. Let Oskaloosa’s finest haul me off to jail. I’d probably sleep pretty well there, and it would take less energy than walking back to the campsite.
Brian, my fellow traveler, had gone off to look for Brenda the masseuse, the thought of whose therapeutic fingers had motivated him most of that day. All afternoon he had been rehearsing the speech, in which he promised to quit his job and leave his wife, if she would only knead his calves once more.
Across the square, behind the police barricades, next to the 17-foot inflatable Spuds McKenzie, the rock band was setting up. Hundreds of firm young thighs in spandex were gathering, preparing to boogie. Back on Day 2 of our bicycle ride across Iowa, I had been awed by their energy; now, as Day 5 ended, I wondered idly if I could arrange to have them all arrested.
But no police seemed interested in either them or me, so as the sun sank over the K mart, I began to pick my way through the streets, past the spaghetti-supper lines and first-aid lines, T-shirt lines and bicycle-repair lines, $2 shower lines and porta-potty lines to the gravelly ball field where my tent shared space with about 5,000 others, trying lamely to recall:
Just whose idea was this, anyway?
In Mexico, pilgrims walk miles on their knees to honor the Virgin. In Iran, penitents flog themselves bloody for the faith. In India, pious Hindus throw themselves into the Ganges.
In Iowa, there is RAGBRAI.
Imagine, if you will, bicycling 450 miles in seven days, across the real Breadbasket of America, home of the original Amber Waves of Grain (well, all right, corn), meeting middle-Americans on their farms, seeing towns with real Main Streets and towheaded kids with red wagons and old-fashioned families who welcome you with smiling faces. . . .
Now factor in about 10,000 others, pedaling alongside you, camping with you, eating with you, lining up for showers with you, in fact, sharing virtually every aspect of your life for a week.
What started as a journalists’ stunt at the Des Moines Register 17 years ago has become a movement, a psychosocial phenomenon that turns Iowa’s hog-and-corn farmscape into an annual rolling carnival. RAGBRAI, which stands for the Register’s Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa, attracts more than 10,000 bicyclists – the official limit is 7,500, but the actual number may be twice that – to the state each summer for the simple and colossal purpose of riding from the Missouri River, at Iowa’s western border, to the Mississippi on the east.
Along the way, they close highways, overtax local water-sewer systems, and turn dozens of obscure little towns into mini-Woodstocks for an hour or an evening. This all goes down very well with the locals, which is less surprising when you consider that the participants also spend about $1 million collectively on bananas, Gatorade, beer, pork chops and souvenirs.
Tiny hamlets, of which Iowa has no lack, vie fiercely with each other to be included on the route, which changes each year. The communities chosen spend months putting in provisions and planning to make a good impression. So, for example, during the 20 minutes or so we spent in Odebolt (pop. 1,299) at 7 a.m. on Monday, there were not only pork chops and sweet corn on the grills along Main Street but also a 6-foot guy dressed in a cockatoo suit and posing for photos, and five dancing potatoes on a makeshift stage doing something that sounded like “Tea for Two.”
RAGBRAI (rhymes with sag-thigh) is American dada, Personal Best, starring Monty Python, a marriage of high adventure and low comedy and, in some hard-to-define way, a slice of the true, surreal Midwest.
I got into it on a dare. I came out with a sunburn, sore knees and a set of memories that, with time, only grow more bizarre:
– Charging into the rising sun on a rural road across an endless, empty, rolling landscape, the sky growing light, the birds chirping in the fields – and enough bicycle traffic to make it feel like rush hour on the Schuylkill Expressway.
– Waiting in line outside a field of elephant’s-eye high corn, next to signs designating the first four rows “Men” and the last four “Women.”
– Passing an elderly gent, wearing farmer’s overalls and a railroad cap and sitting on a homemade recumbent bike, pedaling steadily up a hill, while being passed by a speedy young woman whose lavender boombox, lashed to the back of her bike, blared Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries.”
– Scarfing down fresh-grilled, thick-cut pork chops for breakfast, followed by homemade apple pie with ice cream, then piling into a rural bar at 10 a.m. for Budweiser and a Gatorade chaser.
RAGBRAI is not a race. It was conceived as a tour of Iowa’s out-of-the-way communities and has evolved into the state’s biggest party, everybody welcome. Farmers ride. Bankers ride. Politicians ride: Bruce Babbitt began his 1988 presidential bid here, and Iowa Gov. Terry E. Branstad came along last year. Young men chase young women, and vice versa. Parents haul their kids – a sign on one child-carrier bragged that its 2 ½-year-old occupant was doing her third ride.
Out-of-staters by the hundreds ride, too, arriving from all parts of the United States and elsewhere in elaborate convoys of camper vans or U-Hauls. Their bikes carry name tags, or home-town names, or political slogans, or whatever. One guy’s sign said, “Looking For Apt. in NYC – Upper West Side.”
Getting there is at least half the battle. Indeed, the ride has become a kind of seasonal industry for bike entrepreneurs such as Phyllis Leggette of Chicago, whose charter service I used to get to and from Iowa, and to transport my gear each day during the ride.
For $125 (on top of the RAGBRAI registration fee, which this year is $35), Leggette’s Chicago Charter provided me and 100 others with buses and a U-Haul van for our boxed-up bicycles to the starting point at Sioux City. The truck then became our traveling base camp, hauling tents and overnight bags to each night’s designated campsite. Just as important, the truck’s drivers made sure we had reserved space in each campsite – no small item when you’re talking about a moving army of 10,000 – and an ample supply of beer and soda when we arrived.
Most riders work out similar arrangements, either through regional bike clubs or among “teams” that form once a year for the ride. Groups identify themselves with T-shirts, flags or headgear: Team Turtle’s middle-age members rode with large, green stuffed terrapins mounted on their helmets, while the Hooters wore electric orange cycling shorts. Team PMS Stress – a group of determined-looking young women – passed us several times, as did Team Me-Off, a perennial favorite whose members sport nicknames such as Turn, Throw, Tick, etc., on their T-shirts.
We rode 50 to 75 miles a day, leaving at dawn to get as far as possible before the sun cooked us. The first two hours was glorious, with cool yellow light hitting the gently sloping fields; later I often felt like the drought-stricken corn we were passing. Temperatures reached into the 90s nearly every afternoon, and when a big hill or a headwind hit late in the day, simply finishing became a grueling obsession.
Fortunately, it was never far to the next fruit or juice stand. At least once every mile, across 450 miles of Iowa, somebody was selling something. A mobile deli served bagels. Volunteer firemen flipped pancakes. Church ladies baked muffins. One Des Moines gas station had free beer. If they had nothing else, farmers would mount a tank of water on the back of a pickup and park it by the crossroads.
Ambulances, meanwhile, patrolled the line of march for casualties, of which there were a few every day. No one died on the road – a handful have over the years – though one rider succumbed to a heart attack while camped one night. RAGBRAI organizers say the accident rate has gone down over time, as the average rider has gotten older and wiser, wearing a helmet and riding defensively in the perpetually heavy traffic.
But the occasional blare of sirens along the road added to the surrealistic atmosphere, which didn’t end when we finished for the day. Our overnight towns turned themselves inside out for us, with church suppers, street dances and endless souvenir and bicycle-gear stands. It was all very impressive but lost on me; all I wanted by then was a beer, a shower and dinner, and I was ready to crawl into my tent.
By Day 7, though, I was in the groove. My relationship with the bike saddle had stabilized, my quadriceps were no longer warning of imminent doom, and I was beginning to see why some people think of hogs as graceful creatures. That was about when we began coasting down the last hill, toward the Mississippi and our finish. We breezed the final three miles, jammed into a tiny riverside park and lined up for the ritual dipping of our front bicycle tires in the muddy river.
Just as I went for my turn, the woman with the purple boombox rode up, blasting “Stars and Stripes Forever.” I got all choked up.
HOW TO JOIN THE TREK
Though not everyone who rides registers, to “do” RAGBRAI officially, you must register by mail to the Des Moines Register/RAGBRAI XVII, Box 622, Des Moines, Iowa 50303. The deadline is Saturday. The fee per rider is $35, plus $5 for patches, souvenirs and programs.
That’s right: The deadline is less than a week away, but you can send your name and address and the fee in without an application form. The newspaper will select 7,500 applications at random from all the entries. Those people will receive maps, baggage tags and wristbands that serve as passes to the campgrounds, shuttle buses, showers, first-aid and repair facilities. Everyone else is on his or her own. (If you’re not accepted, your money will be returned.)
The paper also will transport gear for anyone who hasn’t made other arrangements, but as a rule, other arrangements are a better idea. Full-service charter groups exist throughout Iowa, providing transportation and camping help for a fee. Obtain a list of charter services through the Register or consult local bike clubs.
RAGBRAI has become such an institution that other states, including Wisconsin, Michigan, Kansas and Ohio, have started similar long-distance bike treks. But RAGBRAI still draws the biggest crowds.
This year’s Iowa trek begins July 23 in Glenwood (15 miles south of Omaha) and ends July 29 in Bellevue, 25 miles south of Dubuque. Those planning to bring along a car or van need separate passes for their vehicles and special $15 nonrider passes for the drivers. Only 500 passes are accorded those who bring their own sag wagons.
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