Editor’s note: Recently, Monica Tolley, FCC member and Pedal Powered People ride leader, participated in RAGBRAI for the fourth time.
RAGBRAI stands for the Register's Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa. It takes seven days and is billed as the oldest, largest, and longest recreational bicycle tour in the world. The ride route varies every year, but it is always big and the towns it goes through really put out the red carpet.
Monica traveled from Fairbanks with fellow FCC members Krista and Mark Wilkinson. They did the ride with a charter, a support organization that provides tents and sleeping gear for each night as well as breakfasts and dinners.
Here’s Monica’s report from this year.
RAGBRAI isn’t an event, it’s an experience.
The vibes started two days before the ride, when Krista, Mark and I arrived in Dubuque. We would be returning to this town in a week, after riding almost 400 miles across the state. We checked in to our hotel and headed out to get some dinner. As we walked to the restaurant, we could see vehicles with bike racks everywhere – parked or driving into town. As we sat and ate dinner, we looked at our fellow diners, wondering who we would see on the road this next week.
Day 0
One day before the ride, and we got up early to catch our charter shuttle bus to the start town of Onawa. It’s a 7-hour drive across the state, and a week-long bike ride to get back. Hardly seems like a fair comparison. As our bus took the shortest and flattest route to the start, we looked again at each upcoming days’ mileage and elevation for the bike ride.
We chatted with our fellow campers and got to know them. After all, we would be spending our evenings the coming week debriefing with them, hearing about their ups and downs of each days’ ride. On that 7-hour drive we went from knowing just ourselves to having 60 new friends.
We made it to the start town, where it was still a bit early, but things were buzzing. A bike expo was downtown, full of vendors to shop at. You need a helmet because you forgot yours? No problem. You need a new jersey? Some jorts bibs (biking bibs that look like jeans)? Corn arms? Yup… it’s all there. To see a town transformed – where bikes suddenly become the primary mode of transportation and cars are the unwanted – is a bit surreal. My bike arrived in Onawa before me because I used a RAGBRAI-sponsored shipping service to send it via UPS. I picked up my bike from the bike shop that assembled it and headed to our charter campground.
There is no wrong way to do RAGBRAI. One way is to do it on the cheap. Your registration gets you access to their baggage service. You take your bags to the semi-truck trailers in the morning, and when you get to the next town, you grab your bags with your tent, sleeping gear, and other stuff. You set up your little home for the night and then repeat the next day. Some people even bikepack, carrying everything with them on their ride.
But there are other ways. We elected to use a small charter company that takes care of everything except riding the bikes for us. Tents and air mattresses are set up every night. Dinners, breakfasts, laundry, charging stations, drinks and snacks…all is taken care of. All you have to do is sleep, eat, and ride. There are even companies that rent out air conditioned “rooms” in converted semi-truck trailers. So much variety in accommodation. Team buses stay at the homes or yards of locals.
And the party doesn’t end with the ride each day. There is entertainment in every town. Concerts, vendors, and food trucks. It’s got a real “traveling state fair” energy to it. Since we had two long days of driving, we decided to turn in a bit early. We wanted to be fresh and ready for the week.
Riding RAGBRAI
This is my fourth RAGBRAI, and something I’ve noticed over the years is that I feel better and stronger with each passing day. We start our days early, but my body gets a chance to reset my circadian rhythm with all the fresh air and the nights actually getting dark.
The first two days of the ride were the toughest. They were each only 55 miles, but they both had a lot of elevation. A phrase I heard all week is that Iowa is flat like a waffle. A lot of the hills are rollers, so you get just as much downhill as uphill. But sometimes we just had steady climbs, up, flat, up, flat, up. The route is peppered with pass-thru towns full of enterprising young people, selling everything you can imagine to eat or drink.
The first two days were also really hot, especially for an Alaskan girl who thinks 68 is extremely warm. I had to cut my ride short both days as I suffered from heat exhaustion. Better to be safe than hospitalized was my thinking. The night of Day 2 brought a tornado watch and a rather exciting thunderstorm with a fantastic lightning show, before culminating in a hard rain. The good news was that this cooled the temps off for the rest of the week considerably and made it a much more comfortable ride.
Days 3 and 4
These days just sailed by. After a couple days to warm up the muscles and get used to hours in the saddle, we were hitting our peak. The days started following a routine. Get up, pack, get the bike ready, have some breakfast, and leave camp. Ride to the first town or first breakfast stop. Get off the bike, get some food, relax a bit, fill up the water bottle, and hit the road. Ride to the next town or vendor. Did you get your Mr. Porkchop? Beekman’s Ice Cream? Chris Cakes? Make sure you stop at that little kids’ lemonade stand. Want a free popsicle? Heck yeah! Oh, and watch out for any farm animals you can give a snuggle to. Did you want to stop at the beer garden and have a beer and sit in the shade? Heck, yeah!
We would bike and stop, bike and stop our way through the route, and then get to the end town for that day, find our campground, and park our bikes. Then we would get some nice cold water and a snack before heading off to the shower truck to get cleaned up and change out of our bike clothes. We would head into town for dinner, and we have learned that the best meals can be found at local churches. There is always pie for dessert.
Day 5
This day was the long one. Every previous day, we thought about Day 5, so we took it a little easy on the hills and didn’t go all out. You want to have enough energy for the big day. The standard ride was about 87 miles. At the last pass-thru town, you had the option of adding an extra loop to make it 105 miles so you could get a patch for doing a century. This year, they also had an optional loop for 250km to help celebrate the semiquincentennial of the United States, which boosted the number of day-pass riders. I chose the standard route, but Krista and Mark did the century. Safe to say it was a pretty worn-out group in camp that night and a lot of early goodnights.
Day 6
This was the best day of the entire week. With all the hard stuff behind us, the mileage, the hills… we had a short 42-mile day to enjoy. We made all the stops, spent longer relaxing in the shade, and I even did a little bit of knitting on my socks. All the riders around us were putting out such positive vibes that it was almost electric.
Variety is an interesting part of riding RAGBRAI. For example, it often sounds like you are riding with a radio on automatic seek. You will hear music coming up from behind, and then it will pass, and then you’ll hear some more music coming. All genres of music are represented. Then there are the bicycles. Road bikes, gravel bikes, mountain bikes, e-bikes, fat bikes, recumbents, tricycles…I even saw a penny farthing and a unicycle. I’m pretty sure one kid who rode by me had pulled his Huffy out of a dumpster. And you get to see people of all ages…everything from young kids to folks in their 80s. Many of the roads are closed to car and truck traffic for the event, so it’s just people cycling for as far as the eye can see, ahead and behind.
Day 7
This day, the last day, seemed so far away at the beginning of the week, but suddenly it’s already here. It was only 36 miles, but a short day meant we could get out of Dubuque quicker and on our way. (Our tradition has always been to get a hotel halfway between the end town and Chicago, the airport we fly into and out of, so that we can have a good steak dinner and soak in a hot tub.) On the ride, we made our first stop at the Field of Dreams Movie Site outside Dyersville, and it was really incredible. Now I want to watch the movie again.
We entered Dubuque at the west end and rode through the entire town. It is a hilly town, and we did more climbing in Dubuque than we did the rest of the day. But part of the RAGBRAI magic is all the local support. I felt like a pageant queen as we waved and shouted good morning to all the residents who lined the streets to watch us go by. Some promised us there were no more hills. Ha, they lied but their moral support gave us energy. Finally, there were no more hills, and we made our way down to the Mississippi River to get our tires wet for the finish. Ceremonial tire dipping is available at both ends of the ride. You dip your rear tire in the Missouri River at the beginning of the ride; and then your front tire in the Mississippi at the end.
Finishing is a bit anti climatic. One minute you are riding like you have been for several days, and the next you are done. Since it’s not a race, there’s no clock, no thought of what place you came in. But you do have an intense joy and satisfaction of looking back and realizing that you have just ridden your bicycle across an entire state! And not a little one like Rhode Island! And you are surrounded by other slightly crazy people, and everyone is just laughing and smiling. The saddle sores magically disappear. The sunburn doesn’t really hurt all that much. You may have almost died on Day 1, but that memory fades.
Back Home
I dropped my bike off to be shipped back to Fairbanks. Then we got our truck out of long-term parking and headed out of town. A nice hotel and meal were waiting for us, and we didn’t want to delay. We wanted time to soak in the hot tub! The next day, we flew back home, and the pause on my real life was over. But I’ll definitely be back for some more RAGBRAI magic. So long, Iowa…see you again in four years!
Below are pictures from Monica's RAGBRAI adventure.
