Introduction
I did a part of RAGBRAI for the first time in 2008 and have done parts of it several times since, usually when it was geographically convenient. I have never done an entire RAGBRAI because although I enjoyed the experience of RAGBRAI--the towns, the people, the sights and sounds--I didn’t enjoy bicycling that much. And ultimately, if you want to do RAGBRAI, you have to pound out ten or fifteen mile stretches that aren’t always so fun. Those stretches are even less fun when your bike is shitty. That changed, however, when I bought a new bike in February of 2018, updating from a hybrid to road bike. Last year, when I did two days of RAGBRAI, I enjoyed the bicycling so much more which enabled me to enjoy RAGBRAI even more.
When the RAGBRAI route is announced in late January, we always start sketching out what days we’ll do based on where the route is and what kind of accommodations we could have. We refuse to sleep in tents after a bad experience with storms in 2008 and heat in 2012 so access to indoors is paramount. This year, as we went through the route, it became apparent that we could have indoor accommodations in or near every overnight town. Lindsay, my sister, had always wanted to do an entire RAGBRAI, but I had never wanted to do all of RAGBRAI because of how poor my bicycle was. So Lindsay's bucket list item, my extremely positive experience last year, and the convenience of this year’s route, made it obvious to us that we should do the whole thing.
Over the course of the entire week we were joined by dad and my Uncle Dick, who rode parts of each day and Mom and Aunt Mary (mom's sister), who drove the support vehicles the entire week. We were also joined by others throughout the week who I will introduce as we go along.
Finally, I haven't done a good job of keeping up with this blog (my last post was three years ago!) even though I've traveled quite a bit. So I figured that RAGBRAI was a perfect opportunity to remove the mothballs and I will provide recaps of each day of RAGBRAI over the next few weeks.
Day 0: Saturday, July 20, 2019
The tradition on RAGBRAI is to start the ride by dipping your back tire in the Missouri River (or one of the tributaries if the route starts in northwest Iowa). Because of massive flooding earlier this year, however, the official dip site was not the actual river. Instead it was a couple wading pools in the parking lot with Missouri River water in it. I wasn’t really pleased with this arrangement because for my first full RAGBRAI I wanted my tire in the actual river, but we had arrived in Council Bluffs in the evening and I wasn’t in a position to go exploring on my bicycle to find a spot to put my back tire in the Missouri. So we dipped our tires in wading pool in a parking lot.
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| Can you see the Mighty Mo in the background? |
Beer of the Day
For everyday of RAGBRAI I’m going to highlight a “beer of the day.” I’ll also highlight a “pie of the day” starting on Day 1.
Since the tire dip didn’t take place in the traditional RAGBRAI manner, it's fitting that our pre-ride meal wasn’t very traditional either. Instead of a meal at a church, community organization, or a vendor at the bicycle expo, we ate at….Olive Garden! I’m not usually a fan of chain restaurants, but I do like Olive Garden and all the bread and pasta was a good meal the night before RAGBRAI. Since I always order Peroni at Olive Garden, it was the “beer of the day" and my only beer of the day. I certainly didn’t think Peroni would be one of my “beers of the day,” but sometimes on RAGBRAI things don’t go as planned.
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| A Peroni at Olive Garden--Very RAGBRAI-esque... |
I wish I had more to report or more pictures, but this is all I got for Day 0...After our meal, we returned to the hotel and prepared our bicycles for the first of seven days of riding!
