RAGBRAI on Velodromedary

Bike touring Iowa + Wisconsin

Mon, 04 Aug 2014 06:30:00 +0000

I’m back from a euphoria-inducing 8-day, 600-mile bike camping tour across Iowa and Wisconsin.

The ride combined RAGBRAI (a 15,000-person group ride across Iowa with pork chops, pie, live music, and beer in tiny towns along the way) and a solo ride across beautiful, rural Southwest Wisconsin.

The mix of mostly good weather, wildlife (fireflies, startled rabbits, and red-winged blackbirds), friendly strangers, no email, the ability to improvise and change plans on the spot (the flexibility of carrying a tent…), and plenty of time to ride alone and drift between states of present observation and introspection are why I always come back to bike touring…

RAGBRAI 2011 route announced. Not sure if I'll go this year, but it's a great time.

Mon, 31 Jan 2011 16:00:10 +0000

RAGBRAI 2011 route announced. Not sure if I’ll go this year, but it’s a great time.

RAGBRAI, condensed

Mon, 02 Aug 2010 06:42:00 +0000

I spent a week biking and camping across Iowa with 10,000+ strangers. It was one of the better vacations I’ve taken. Here’s a map of the route, about 450 miles (50-80 miles/day, only one day with serious hills).

I emailed some updates and photos to this blog from my cell phone while I was on the ride– I’m combining all those updates into this post (link below).

Saturday:

Starting off the trip with a near-disaster: the airline (Fronteir/Midwest) lost my bag (tent, clothes, cycling gear, everything except my bike itself). The bag wasn’t even in their system– they had no idea where it was. Then an agent in Milwaukee called me because he’d found my bag and it had my number on it. He didn’t know I was in Omaha. They said they could get it to be a few days later– not useful since I was about to get on a bike the next morning. They said there were no flights left today to send it on. Then I asked someone else and he found a flight to put it on. 4 hours later, it showed up at the airport!