Three years ago, I get a call from the CEO of my company...he was all excited because the town in which our company is located was named as the starting point of RAGBRAI for that year and he felt we need to "represent" by having a company team. In a moment of weakness, my head opened up, my brains fell out, and I said, "Why not?"
RAGBRAI, for those who don't know, is the longest running pleasure bike ride in the U.S. It starts at a town along the Missouri River on the western end of Iowa, and through a series of day long rides (ranging from 65 to 100 miles per day), you wind up on the eastern half of Iowa at a town along the Mississippi River.
The term "pleasure ride" is seriously misleading, as I have first hand (or first butt) knowledge of just how unpleasurable it is to bike 500 miles in 7 days, particularly to the exercise haters of the world, of which I am a charter member. There are 10,000 registered riders and at least another 10,000 riders that don't register but add their bike to the gleaming metal miles long pack each day. The only benefit to registering, I guess, is that you get a bike shirt and a wrist band which allows you access to the "Saggin' Wagon" each day should the ride become impossible. 
This 7 week ride is filled with major bike enthusiasts - some of which started months back all the way on the West Coast and coincide their arrival just in time to start RAGBRAI. New riders for the year are marked as "Virgin" with black oil paint on their left lower leg. There are all sorts of costumes, such as RAGBRAI brides (they wear a wedding headpiece to show they met their spouse on RAGBRAI), the team dressed as Holstein cows, Santa and his elves, and various and sundry other characters. Some groups are a part of massive teams, such as the US Air Force and LiveStrong. Since Lance Armstrong has been joining the rides, the throngs of people riding and watching has significantly increased. 
My team was comprised of my co-workers and their families - none of which are avid cyclists. We had secured an RV for the trip and another tent for the overflow. We had also set up host families to stay with each night - most of which provided some food and access to a bathroom. I had borrowed a bike from major cycling enthusiast friend of mine who told me I needed a "road bike" versus the mountain bike I had planned to take. I had to figure out how to use bike clips without falling over and became intimately familiar with a product called "Chamois Butter" which is the adult version of a diaper cream. I never knew underwear and biking shorts were incompatible so I guess these teeming throngs of bikers were the largest contingent of Commandos on the road at any one time.
The towns we passed through spared no expense in welcoming the bikers...and where else would you be eating pie and rib eye sandwiches at 9:00 in the morning? I guess the underlying reason for me signing up for the trip was weight loss but to be honest, after 500 miles, I had only lost 3 lbs. I think that if that isn't cause for depression, I'm not sure what else is!
From all of this, I learned that A) Iowa has the friendliest people on earth B) biking through hog smells is enough to make me not move back to Iowa C) if you can push through the third day of biking, you bum goes numb from there on out and D) people can still bike when they are extremely intoxicated (I don't have first hand knowledge of this but certainly, on RAGBRAI, there are several who frequent the beer tents until closing time and still manage to bike 87 miles).
People along the trip asked me if I had caught the "biking fever" to which I emphatically replied "Nope!" and then they looked like I had just told them their baby was ugly. I think this is one item on my bucket list that I can cross off and say, "Been there, done that, have the biking shirt to prove it." Now, if I can only get the RAGBRAI commission to respond to my "unsubscribe" requests to their many email invitations to join this year's ride...
1 comment:
perhaps one of your most amusing posts yet!! I was laughing before I even started reading!!
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