RAGBRAI 2011: Carroll to Iowa City

Try to imagine riding your bicycle down you local state highway, sharing both lanes of traffic with 10,000 other bike enthusiasts. You are being cheered on and supported by people you never knew existed, everywhere you ride. This is RAGBRAI. On our four day adventure my good friend Rachel Segner and I rode our bikes, fully loaded with gear, accross 250 miles of hills and valleys between Carroll and Iowa City.

We usually started out before 9 am. This meant that we were right in the middle of the rolling city of 10,ooo riders. If there is one thing your learn quickly on RAGBRAI is that everyone experiences it for themselves. We met people that left their campsites at 5:30 am to beat the outrageous heat. But we also rode with others that sometimes left at noon and arrived in the overnight town after dark. Our small faction rode hard between towns, but we stopped at almost every hamlet to find a shady place to lay out and stretch. We were in no rush.
Every stop was a new opportunity to meet new people, admire the bikes, laugh at the costumes and eat and drink some of the best Iowa has to offer.

Everyone has the same destination on RAGBRAI. A common goal. This creates a kinship that brings people together that would otherwise never speak on the street. As an example, during a routine safety check under a shady willow tree, our group of artisans had a fairly normal conversation with an Air Force B-52 bomber crew that claimed to carry more nuclear warheads on a single flight than most nations have in their entire arsenal. What did we have in common? RAGBRAI. This sort of occurance happens 100 times every minute of every day, on all seven days of this ride across Iowa.

I am already planning for next year. RAGBRAI 40, 2012!!