Meet the three cyclists who have ridden 50 RAGBRAIs

Rick Paulos didn’t go to his sister’s wedding because the ceremony was during RAGBRAI.

In all fairness, he says over dinner in Coralville, he told her right after the engagement that the last two weekends in July were off limits. She called his bluff — but he wasn’t bluffing.

A few years after that, he herniated a disc — a chunk of it jammed up against his spinal cord, he says — while training for the ride in the spring. The surgeon told him if they operated, he wouldn’t be able to go on RAGBRAI.

So Paulos scheduled the surgery for the Monday after the ride — and rode his bike the three miles to the hospital that morning.

And in 2010, Paulos rode not even two months after a heart attack. He had to get permission to miss cardiac rehab, which his doctor gave in the most tentative fashion.

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“I rode a hybrid with low gears and programmed a heart monitor so it would beep if my heart rate got too high,” he says with a shrug. “I had to skip the century loop, which was the last time I did that — skipped it, I mean.”

Weddings, medical emergencies, even a pandemic — Paulos rode part of the scheduled route in the summer of 2020 when the ride was officially canceled — there is nothing that can stop Paulos from riding RAGBRAI.

Paulos, 67, is one of three people who have ridden at least a portion of all 50 RAGBRAIs. And he’s the one who has ridden the most miles total, estimating he’s only ever missed eight full days of RAGBRAI.

“At this point, it’s just sheer momentum,” he says with a laugh. But seriously, if you love biking and you love Iowa, he adds, is there anywhere else to be during the last week of July?

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Jim Hopkins, 90, one of the other 50-year riders, has a similar RAGBRAI constitution. He once rode with broken neck, says his wife, Nancy, who has been his support for all of those rides.

And Greg Harper, 64, who works as a bike mechanic from 5 a.m. to 3 p.m. or later with his family shop, Harper’s in Muscatine, also doesn’t believe in missing RAGBRAI. Because he takes his shop on the road and has to wrench much of the day during RAGBRAI, Harper gets his miles in by hopping on a bike after the cyclists clear out and riding from his appointed spot on the route into the overnight town.

All in the family

For all three, RAGBRAI started as a family affair.

Paulos’ mother, Maggie, who was a bicycling advocate back in the 1960s, organized his travel during the ride’s first year. Luckily for him, he had family or friends in every town on that first route.

“I didn't take anything, like no extra clothes,” Paulos says. “I wore cut-off blue jeans. I think I had a nylon jacket tied to my bike.”

The second year, he brought a few more essentials: a tent, an air mattress and a sheet. “That’s it,” he says.

In 1973, Harper’s dad, Charlie, was a bike shop owner, so he sent his son to experience what he felt in his bones might turn out to be a big deal. Harper’s has been an official RAGBRAI bike shop for 29 years ― ever since RAGBRAI started hosting official programs.

And Hopkins’ son, William Grace, who was 13 years old in the summer of 1973, earned the distinction of blowing the very first tire of RAGBRAI shortly after John Karras’ opening remarks in a motel parking lot in Sioux City.

Hopkins worked as a pediatric surgeon at his own practice, one of the two that operated in Iowa back in the '70s. His patients were scattered across the state, so he saw RAGBRAI as a chance to visit them in their own homes.

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In those early years, there weren't any medics or watchful state troopers, so Nancy drove behind them armed with band-aids.

Over nearly five decades, the Hopkinses have added new generations of riders, recruiting their son, daughter and later, their grandchildren. Avery Grace, Jim's grandson, first rode RAGBRAI when he was 8, and their son still travels from Seattle and their daughter Charlotte from New York to go on RAGBRAI.

“Who would have dreamed that it would become what it is?” Jim says.

RAGBRAI a working vacation

In addition to “sheer momentum,” exercise is a big reason Paulos keeps coming back. The RAGBRAI training schedule keeps him outside, on his bike and in shape.

Paulos has been involved in nearly every part of the bicycle world over the years: He was a racer, a race organizer, a race official, he worked at a bike shop and now he runs a bike co-op.

He still brings out a wrench every once in a while working for bike shops along the RAGBRAI route, a tradition he started when a county once vacuumed all the loose gravel from a stretch of road, leaving only the sharp points sticking out of the ground.

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“I get to the next town and 300 people are waiting for new tires,” he says. “So I asked the guy if he needed help and he nearly hugged me.”

After 50 years of RAGBRAI, rolling with the punches comes easily to this trio of RAGBRAI royalty.

Harper’s official rules of RAGBRAI, which he put on a T-shirt this year, demand that riders lower their standards and stay flexible – key advice he says picked up after five decades of heat and humidity.

“This is a great vacation, if you let it be,” he says. “You can disconnect from the world, from what’s going on around the country or the state.”

“The only world that matters this week is the one that passes us by,” he adds, gesturing to the passing cyclists.

Paulos agrees: “We’re all just focused on getting to the next town, and that’s more than enough.”

Looking toward RAGBRAI 75

RAGBRAI 50 has been the biggest year yet, both Paulos and Harper agreed. On the Sunday the ride began, Harper was located in Kingsley, the first pass-through town, and he did more than 90 repairs. Every day since, he’s been averaging 60 repairs, still more than the usual 40.

“Walk-BRAI,” Paulos joked, referencing how the number of cyclists meant that in many towns they had no choice but to unclip and stroll.

But that’s just fine with him anyway. Part of the fun of RAGBRAI is taking it at your own pace ― whether that be the informal races he used to hold with other bike clubs in the early years or now when he relishes all day on the route.

To celebrate the 50th year, Paulos found a ’72 Schwinn Varsity, the same model he rode that first summer in 1973.

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But he added a little more flash by painting the whole frame gold. He’d wanted to plate the entire frame, but every jeweler he asked said they’d never done something that big.

Maybe for RAGBRAI 75, he shrugs.

“It’ll probably be something medical that finally stops me,” Paulos says. “I’ll keep going until I literally can’t.”

COURTNEY CROWDER, the Register's Iowa Columnist, traverses the state's 99 counties telling Iowans' stories. She co-directed, "Shift: The RAGBRAI Documentary," which is currently playing in movie theaters across Iowa. You can reach her at (515) 284-8360 or ccrowder@dmreg.com. Follow her on Twitter @courtneycare.

This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: RAGBRAI 50: These three men have ridden every year