Ragbrai Xxxii

[jaybird]

One of the biggest party rides is set for the summer - RAGBRAI XXXII. It's a week long ride across Iowa and you basically whoop it up from start to finish. Registration for the lottery ends Apr 1. Just want to see if anyone may be going from my neck of the woods. Details available at http://www.ragbrai.org

[funky-funky-chicken]

Sorry for the long post, but I get a little excited when thinking about all of the fun over the years.

Every year I eagerly await the announcement of the overnight towns. This will be my 20th consecutive year of riding RAGBRAI. I am not exactly from the Mankato area, as I live in Roseville, so I don’t know if that qualifies as “in your neck of the woods.” I will tell you though that I will be passing through Mankato on my way down to Onawa though.

The two years that I went, I wasn’t old enough to drive so I went with part of a touring club. After that, I talked a couple of buddies into going. We took a variety of different vehicles over the years, finally purchasing a dedicated hippie van at some point. Each of my first 10 years I have ridden almost every mile. I missed one day because we had a terrible thunderstorm in the middle of the night and had to evacuate camp and take shelter in the local gym. Come morning and time to ride, I discovered that I had packed my shoes in my bag and loaded under 100 other peoples stuff on the bagage truck.

After 10 years, I discovered the only way to do RAGBRAI is to carry all your own gear and go self supported. I have been riding down to the start, riding most or the way across, and then riding back home. The number of miles that I ride has ranged from just over 600 to 1,200 usually averaging about 100 a day.

As part of the ride down, I usually go down through Mankato and stay overnight in Saint James the first night. From there, I have been riding to and partying a bit in the Okaboji area, then the third day riding into the starting town. Getting down south to Glenwood last year was a bit more challenging for 3 days of riding.