The Best and Worst of RAGBRAI

The Best and Worst of
RAGBRAI® XXX

What is RAGBRAI, anyway?
I get a lot of email from people who are not cyclists, who read my RAGBRAI reports [see below for link] without a clue as to what RAGBRAI really is. If you're a RAGBRAI rider, you obviously already know what it's all about, and could probably stop reading right now. But I'm in a philosophical mood, so bear with me. You may learn something, and by and by I'll get around to the usual smartass stuff you've come to expect from these pages.

RAGBRAI is an acronym for the "Register's Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa." It is, according to its organizer, the Des Moines Register, the "oldest, longest and biggest bicycle ride in the world." It has been held without interruption, through heat waves, droughts, floods, even the Reagan Administration, for the past 30 years; always during the last full week of July, always starting in a town on or near the Missouri River on Iowa's western border and ending at a town on the Mississippi River, on its verdant eastern shores.

For many riders it's a kind of rite of passage, perhaps the most difficult physical endeavor of their lifetime. It may not be Mount Everest, and it certainly isn't the Tour de France (which you couldn't ride if you wanted to), but seven days on a bicycle in Iowa, up and down hundreds of hills in 100-plus degree heat or in chilling rains, often with leg-numbing headwinds and a sore-and-getting-sorer butt... well, it's no mean feat.

But "bicycle ride" is hardly an adequate descriptor. I live in Nebraska and we have a cross-state ride, BRAN (Bicycle Ride Across Nebraska), which sports about 600 riders and could be fairly summed up as nothing much more than a long bicycle ride.

RAGBRAI is something else. "A Rolling Mardi Gras" is a phrase one often hears to describe it, and that, in a few words, comes about as close as you can get. RAGBRAI attracts riders from every state in the Union, plus a dozen or so foreign countries. It has a carnival atmosphere, a celebratory exuberance, an anything-goes/all-rules-are-suspended attitude, a zany, almost out-of-control ambiance, with an energy all its own, fueled with equal parts of sweat and alcohol.

How old is RAGBRAI, anyway?
This year was the 30th edition of the ride, so it started in 1973, the year after Gerald R. Ford became our first President-by-Default. (Before that, we elected Presidents; now, of course, the Supreme Court appoints them.)

I thought the Tour de France had been going on for something like 99 years; how can RAGBRAI claim to be the oldest ride, anyway?
The Tour is a race, not a ride, so it doesn't count. Apparently, back in 1973 when several Register staffers dreamed up the idea of riding their bicycles across the state, no one had ever before conceived of such a thing. Most non-cyclists can't conceive of it now. All other cross-state bike rides were reputedly modeled on Iowa's.

How big is RAGBRAI, anyway?
I don't think anyone really knows. Theoretically, you must pay a fee and obtain a pass to do the ride. The Des Moines Register claims it issues only 8500 passes, but I've never heard of anyone being turned down. Thousands ride with no passes at all. I did so myself this year. The real number of riders on any given day probably exceeds 20,000. On the Register's own RAGBRAI website numbers as high as 23,000 are cited. And that's just the riders. Add to that the untold numbers of support people, food and merchandise vendors, groupies, loopies, hangers-on, fallers-off, gawkers, hawkers, squawkers and mockers and it's as if Napoleon's army had to come to town on bicycles, trashed the joint, and left the next day -- the big difference being that when RAGBRAI leaves, instead of taking all of the money in town with them, the riders leave all of their money behind.

How long is the ride, anyway?
Each year the route is different, but it's about 500 miles, less a few, by the time you zigzag your way across the state on county roads and minor highways.

It's farther across Nebraska than it is across Iowa (ask anyone who's driven I-80), and Nebraska has a bike ride across the state; how can RAGBRAI claim to be the longest, anyway?
It's complicated. Maybe their auditor is Arthur Andersen. Maybe they're using fuzzy math or exaggerating or even outright lying. Better not to ask.

If RAGBRAI is so wacky and so much fun, how can it possibly be held in conservative, Republican Iowa? Anyway?
Good question. Consider the negatives: The ride is held in late July, when temperatures are likely to soar into triple digits and torrential rains are always a possibility; Iowa is not by any means flat, even if that's the way they prefer their taxes; Republicans are not known for their ability to get down and party; and Iowa is definitely not sexy. In fact Iowa has more fat people per capita than any other state.

(As to this last point, the thoughtful reader may be asking, "Oh, yeah? What makes you such an obesity expert?" I did some original research. Sitting in a downtown sidewalk cafe in Des Moines on the way home from this year's ride, I counted 25 fat ladies passing by my table in a 15 minute period. "And why," I can hear you muttering, "did you count only fat ladies? Why not fat men? Or fat kids? Or fatheads, like yourself?" The answer is simple. Because it's my survey, and I can count whatever I want. If you want to sit in a sidewalk cafe in Iowa and count fat men, be my guest. You'll be plenty busy. Let me know what you find out.)

But yet, Iowa is the perfect setting for an extravaganza such as RAGBRAI. It has just the right infrastructure: thousands of paved county roads; small towns every few miles to break up the ride and bring out the local loonies; a fairly uniform geography, which allows the ride (and the money it generates) to follow a different course each year; enough larger towns, sprinkled more or less evenly over the state, to play overnight host to the multitudinous cast of riders; and an open and friendly population that knows a cash cow when it sees one. And, of course, Iowa got into the game early. They hit the ground pedaling, as it were, and it all just came together for them. Now people from New York come to Iowa. Imagine that. Gelette Burgess recognized the huge economic impact of RAGBRAI on Iowa when he wrote:

So how was RAGBRAI this year, anyway?
Well, it was about like every other year. I've been on nine previous rides, so there's not much left that surprises me, beyond the fact that each year young women manage somehow to wear even less clothing than they wore the year before.

Then there's the weather. Somebody told me that the heat index on the first day was 110 degrees. Sounds about right. I must have drunk 150 liters of liquid that day, never peed once and was still thirsty the next morning. Then I dived out on the last day when faced with something that no Nebraskan has had to contend with in months: rain. I mean, there was this wet stuff, pouring out of the sky! I thought I had woken up underwater. Had I slept outside that night I might have, but I slept in the high school gym.

And then there was the wind, the relentless wind, always of the head variety. How do they do it? How does the RAGBRAI office always manage to provide a gale force headwind, no matter which direction the ride happens to go? My crack team of researchers and I now believe we have found the answer: they buy weather futures.

The futures market, as you probably know, works like this: you buy a commodity today -- oil, natural gas, wind -- at a low, fixed price for delivery at a future date. If demand, and hence price, is high when you want to take delivery, you get a good deal, because you bought early and low.

Now, wind is in great demand in the Midwest in the summer (tornadoes, storm fronts, political speeches, RAGBRAI reports, etc.), so it makes sense to get into the futures trade, so you can get just the wind you want, when you want it, and in the direction you want it from. RAGBRAI organizers, rich Republicans that they are, cozy in the corridors of corporate power, naturally have this figured out.

And why, you ask, why would the RAGBRAI office want to do this? Why would they want to blow a hot wind in the faces of riders day after day, north, south, east and occasionally even west? Why?

Geez, you are so dumb. They do it to increase beer sales, of course. That, and to tire you out so you won't raise so much hell in the passthrough and overnight towns.

Speaking of beer, have you noticed that the only beer you can buy in Iowa is Budweiser? Why is that, anyway? Yes, I have noticed. Bud and Bud Light. That's it. The official beers of RAGBRAI. In a few years, mark my words, it'll be the Anheuser-Busch RAGBRAI.

In Emmetsburg, a town which works up quite a head of foam with pride in its Irish heritage (you got your shamrock, your Blarney Stone, your wearing o' the green), I was met with blank stares from behind every bar on main street when I eschewed the Bud/Bud Light dichotomy and asked for a bottle of Guinness instead. Frankly, I think the Emmetsburgers have lost a wee bit o' contact with the Old Sod and I'll bet there isn't a person in town under the age of 80 who could find Ireland on a map if he used both hands.

Speaking of comestibles, how was the food on this year's ride, anyway?
Awful. It was just awful. I can't remember when it was worse, in the overnight towns at least, and I can remember some pretty grim years. You must understand: I'm a food snob. I like good food. I hate crappy, indifferent food. Small towns in Iowa, like small towns in Nebraska, are full of crappy, indifferent, boring food. What can I say? And don't even get me started on wine.

Training note: Every day for two months before RAGBRAI, ride 50 miles on the bike, eat four pieces of pie, sleep in the back yard in a leaky tent with the stereo blaring and get up in the middle of the night and pee in your neighbor's yard.

You say more than 20,000 people descend on these overnight towns. Where do they find toilets for that many people, anyway?
Kybos. There are Kybos everywhere. Everywhere except where you need one.

What's a Kybo, anyway?
"Kybo" is the Iowa name for a portable toilet. Reliable sources, who, out of fear of lawsuits spoke to me only on the condition of anonymity, tell me that KYBO is an acronym for Keep Your Bowels Open, and was the name of a now-defunct Iowa port-a-potty outfit. I have my crack team of researchers looking into this even as I write.

Is there, like, any etiquette for kybo use? What is it, anyway?
Yes, Virginia, there is a kybo etiquette. First, you must get in line. There is always a line, even at 4 o'clock in the morning. The line is coed, and when your turn at the head of the line comes around (plan for about 2 hours midday, 15-20 minutes after midnight) you may enter any unit as it becomes available, regardless of which symbol the unit displays. It is customary to form up one line for each four kybos. If there are eight kybos grouped together, two lines are formed, if twelve, then three, etc. You may not enter a kybo outside your line's group of four units. Yelling at interlopers who violate this rule is permissible and even desirable, in that order needs be maintained. Those attempting to circumvent the lines altogether are subject to loud jeering, and chain-whipping, if necessary. If the kybos are adjacent to a street busy with bicycle traffic, the line(s) form up on the opposite side of the street, so as not to interfere with the bikes. If the street is full of car traffic, screw it, just stand in the street.

How do you get your clothes and stuff all the way across Iowa and where do 20,000 people stay at night, anyway?
More probing questions. Maybe you should be on Fox News. They could use you. There are many strategies. Perhaps the most straightforward, if not the most convenient or comfortable, is to pay the RAGBRAI office for a pass and use their baggage shuttle, which is included in the price. There are a couple of drawbacks, however. One is that you have to load your gear into a semi trailer and when they unload it in the campground you will have to paw through a mountain of bags higher than any hill you've had to climb on the bike. And when you get to the final town, on the Mississippi, oops! RAGBRAI doesn't provide any transportation back to where you started, so now you're stranded in Bellevue or Muscatine or Dubuque, or wherever.

One of the more popular options seems to be forming up a "team" of your own (or joining an existing one), hiring a Ryder truck and providing your own sag. (SAG, by the way, is reputed to be an acronym for "Support And Gear." My crack team of researchers is currently looking into this.) If you do form up a team, you must think up a team name, a team motto and a team jersey. It is not permitted under the RAGBRAI Ride Right Rules to have a team without a motto, the sillier, the better. Example: Team Plywood, "Easy to Lay, Fun to Nail." You get the idea. You get extra points if your team name touts the overconsumption of alcohol (Team Martini, Team Spirits, Team Pharfrumpuken), sex (Team Bare Naked, Team Mornin' Boner, Team Hard), adolescent or antisocial behavior (Team Bad Boy, Team Angry, Team Evil), or alludes in some way to the difficulties of the ride (Team Butt Ice, Team Diehard, The Whiners). You lose points for lame or stupid names, of which there are a surfeit (Killer Bees, The Cheddarheads, Team Lanning, or my own former Team GUBADOR).

Whether you're on a team or not, if you have your own sag vehicle, you can arrange through the Chamber of Commerce of the various overnight towns to stay in private homes each night. This option provides you with shorter lines at the shower, indoor toilets and, depending on your host's preferences, maybe a place to sleep indoors as well. Otherwise, you camp in the yard. I've had pretty good luck with this method, but there are dangers. One year our host's grandson was a Peeping Tom and on more than one occasion I've stayed with people whose standards of personal hygiene would frighten a pig farmer. At the risk of repeating myself repeating myself repeating myself, here is an updated list of the:

For the ultimate in bourgeois excess, however, there's nothing like travelling on RAGBRAI in an 80-foot motorhome to insulate you from reality and allow you to wallow in your accustomed middleclass luxury. I've done the ride this way a couple of times myself, and discovered that in spite of my liberal, Marxist values, I can indulge a little indulgence now and then. The motorhome allows us to enjoy all of the rights to which Thomas Jefferson said we were entitled as citizens of a free society: life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, air conditioning, primetime TV, clean sheets, Viking range, dishwasher, subsidized gasoline, etc. You can even bring your riding lawnmower, if you want, and your WeedWhacker. An added benefit of the motorhome is that you can run the air conditioner all night long and annoy every peon tent camper within earshot.

But perhaps the neatest way to travel RAGBRAI, if you can accept the idea that there is something more to communing with Nature than just looking out your kitchen window (i.e., you'll have to tent camp), is by signing on with a charter outfit. Not only will a charter carry your gear from town to town and find a nice campsite for you each night, but they will bus you to the beginning of the ride and bus you back again when it's over. Plus, you get amenities like a shady canopy, comfortable chairs, cold beer and pop, campground BBQs, a little live music, and so on, depending on how together your charter has its act. You can find a list of approved charters on the official RAGBRAI website. I recommend Pork Belly Ventures, but there are probably other good ones, too.

DISCLAIMER
Everything I have written in this report is a lie, including this. I love the Des Moines Register and read it religiously every day. I am a closet conservative and wear argyle socks and women's underwear. I am not, and never was, an aging liberal hippy dipshit with an attitude problem, so if you're looking for the source of my antidisestablishmentarian bias you'll have to look somewhere else. I'm hardly clever enough to pour piss out of a boot, but I'm still smart enough to see that it ain't a good idea to go to war when your Commander in Chief is dumber than a pile of dirt.

© R Bruhn

This is an edited version of The Best and Worst of RAGBRAI® XXX. Please visit www.rbruhn.com for the full Monty. And pictures. And wooden neckties.