In Which The Route Goes Right Next Door!

RAGBRAI posted this image on Facebook showing the route announcement.

RAGBRAI just announced its 2015 route. The overnight towns are:

• Sioux City.
• Storm Lake.
• Fort Dodge.
• Eldora.
• Cedar Falls.
• Hiawatha.
• Coralville.
• Davenport.

Hiawatha! I bike through that town on my way to the Cedar River Trail. A night a home? Sounds ideal. It’s a more northern route than I would have thought, given last year’s route. But that’s OK

The RAGBRAI site says that, at 462 miles with 16,000 feet of climb, it’s a “middle of the road” RAGBRAI. Last year was a fairly short one.

It’s also the first time since FAGBRAI (the First Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa in 1973, and it wasn't called RAGBRAI until several years later) that the ride has started in Sioux City and ended in Davenport.

The first RAGBRAI I rode with Jon ended in Davenport, and it was a good spot to end. With the Bix going on that weekend, there was plenty of traffic, but since Davenport is fairly large, it was still relatively easy for us to get together and coordinate things, unlike last year in Gutenberg.

Well, I don’t know exactly how many miles I’ll actually ride. In recent RAGBRAI’s, I've done about 75 percent of the miles. I would like to ride all the miles again sometime, but the team deal I’m in may not allow it, plus my stamina last year was not outstanding, so some breaks are probably not a terrible idea.

Still, if I can pull off riding into Davenport, and have the street is not be melting like it was in my first RAGBRAI, that will be good. I’m pretty excited for RAGBRAI 2015, and I’ll have to see if Team Joe is getting back together again!