Cycled the first leg of the 40th Register's Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa this week. It went through my hometown as well as a few other towns I spent a lot of time in growing up, so there was extra interest for me. Here are this year's comments, to extend what I wrote in 2011 and 2010 :
* In the past, I've always ridden in the middle or front-half of the ride, meaning an equal amount of riders were behind me and in front of me. I've always wondered if I was missing something wild by doing that. After all, the old saying is that RAGBRAI is like a mullet - business in the front, party in the back!
This year it so happened that I stayed well to the back of the ride, and it turns out you miss MORE that way. Some of the roadside stands that looked like fun places to stop were getting ready to shut down, and the riders weren't that much fun to talk with, because they were all just trying to survive the heat/ride. (That's one reason they were in the back.) You want to be around as many people as possible during the ride and every stop within the ride, that's the best way to enjoy it.
* A couple of new team names that caught my eye were take-offs of the LiveStrong organization. They were BeerStrong, and LiverStrong. I'm not sure it's good form to use the name of a cancer-fighting organization to promote heavy drinking.
* A lot of folks talk about drinking alcohol on RAGBRAI. A lot of folks actually do it. But I think more folks talk about it than do it, especially on the hottest day in Iowa since 1988. The most overheard, overused phrase on RAGBRAI is, "You can't drink all day if you don't start in the morning." Most of them mean water.
* Ratio of fit, 20-something girls to overweight, 50+ year old men on the ride: 1-to-100.
RAGBRAI XL. A little bit different than the RAGBRAI III I rode on in 1975.
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