CR Biker: In Which We See the Party and Skip the Party

Saturday at corner of C Avenue and Blair's Ferry, sunset on the bike ride down to the Sag Wagon. Pretty end of a pretty day, warm for January.

And they finally announced the RAGBRAI route—already being called the ISU vs Iowa ride. The 2018 RAGBRAI route starts in Onawa. On the way to its end in Davenport, overnight towns are Denison, Jefferson, Ames, Newton, Sigourney and Iowa City.

According to RAGBRAI.com, it’s a relatively easy and relatively flat ride, compared to other RAGBRAIs. That’s OK with me, I always ride RAGBRAI as a tour anyway, and, while I don’t mind a difficult day now and then, I’m not in this for the torture.

Image posted by RAGBRAI.com of route announcement.

And while RAGBRAI was not wise enough to follow my idea of a city-themed route, I still guessed three of the towns on the ride, which is a pretty high average for me.

I’m not entirely going to new places on this year's ride—I’ve been in, I think, almost all of the towns, but I do say I’m a fan of having both Ames and Iowa City on the ride. Iowa’s two college towns have a lot to offer. And while we’ve rolled through Iowa City a lot in recent years, we’ve never camped there. In the years I’ve ridden the ride, we’ve been near Ames, but never went through it.

One of my suggestions was that Des Moines would be a great lunch stop. The ride this year has to get from Ames to Newton, and the golden dome city is between the two. I’m guessing they’ll either just edge the metro area or avoid it completely by going north and east of it, but we’ll see.

The announcement party was a bit of a bust for your biking correspondent. The Sag Wagon had announced a live streaming of the party, and a daughter and I decided to go. Saturday was an unusually warm day, and we have lights on our bikes, so we decided to ride.

The party was to start at 6, and we got there a bit after 5. While there were a number of people in the bar/deli, there didn’t seem to be any particular RAGBARI stuff going on. The lone bartender-waiter on duty took our order. We got taco pizza and Angry Orchard, which seemed like a biker kind of meal.

Six rolled around, and we noted on What’s Ap what we were doing. My daughter-in-law, who lives in San Francisco, posted that it was still several hours before the announcement, and sent us a link to the RAGBRAI page that had the announcement countdown. We hung around until after 7, but the daughter who was with me had a bit of a drive to get home, and we didn’t want to push it too late.

We were also a bit surprised that very little RAGBRAI party was actually happening. No biking trivia game, no slide shows from the last time RAGBRAI rolled through town—honestly, nothing at all. If we were just going to watch the announcement, we figured we could do that at home. So, after enjoying our taco pizza (for the record, I do recommend taco pizza at the Sag Wagon—it’s not the most fantastic in the world, but they are generous with their toppings and it certainly is a meal you can pedal for miles on—we wolfed the whole thing down, but I think 3 adults could share one and be pretty happy), we donned helmets and reflective vests and pedaled home.

The RAGBRAI livestream began around 8, but it was music, a RAGBRAI Jeopardy game and images of past rides. It wasn’t until shortly after 9—minutes after my daughter gave up and hit the road, that the route was actually announced.

Oh well. Riding 8 miles to a bar for taco pizza and then riding back still felt like a very RAGBRAI thing to do. We definitely enjoyed the pleasant evening ride, and I do like this year’s route.

The busted RAGBRAI party culminated several days of good riding. I put the toddler seat on Clarence earlier in the day Saturday and took a 2-year-old grandson for a quick ride. He and I both enjoyed the sunshine. It was breezy and felt cool—but still great for January.

On Friday, after working in my office on spring semester stuff, I rode downtown to Brewed Awakenings to have coffee with two alumni. Celine and Mariah, thanks for the invite—I had not been to BA before, and enjoyed my time there, too.

Some images from Friday. Above, I sit on bench outside coffee shop--I was the first to arrive. A biker doesn't always know how long it will take to get somewhere, as it turns out, if the question is "how long from MMU to Brewed Awakenings," the answer is "not very long." Below, my coffee and scone. Biker snack. Bottom, Cedar Lake in dim light and clouds as I head back home along the Cedar River Trail.

Winter is coming back—it will cool down dramatically as January shifts into February. But February has only 28 days, so more biking weather is likely soon. And RAGBRAI is also coming!