With RAGBRAI's 50th edition concluded, what's ahead for the ride?
After days of long rides through oppressive heat and a final overnight capped by a violent thunderstorm that sent riders scurrying for shelter, the world's largest, oldest annual recreational bicycle tour ended its 50th year in time-honored fashion Saturday.
Kurt Allen, who had driven from Newburyport, Massachusetts, for his first RAGBRAI, lined up with other riders on a Davenport boat ramp to dip his bike tire in the Mississippi River, marking the conclusion of his ride. After getting just four hours of sleep because of Friday night's storm, he was happy to finish.
"It's emotional, Allen said as cheering spectators welcomed the riders. "It's a big accomplishment."
So was staging the weeklong, 500-mile anniversary ride, which began at the Missouri River in Sioux City on July 23.
There, riders from almost every state in the union and around the globe followed the Day 1 route charted in 1973 by the founders of the Register's Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa: Des Moines Register journalists John Karras and Donald Kaul.
En route to Storm Lake, they encountered the first of many quintessential Iowa experiences in Quimby, a town that welcomed them with more pies than it has people.
They took in the rural grandeur of one of America's leading farm states, with corn and soybeans stretching from horizon to horizon. They visited five of Iowa's metro areas, including the college towns of Ames and Iowa City and the capital, Des Moines.
More: See the photos as RAGBRAI rolls through Iowa State's Jack Trice Stadium in Ames
There, the ride's first visit in a decade drew an expected 60,000 riders ― the most ever on a single day of RAGBRAI. They entered the city past the gold-domed Iowa Capitol and rode through the heart of downtown to the Water Works Park campground, where they celebrated with a free concert by classic rock legends Lynyrd Skynyrd.
The riders rose before dawn the following morning to power through a grueling Day 5, a nearly 90-mile ride with a mountainous elevation gain in almost 100-degree heat to Tama-Toledo. They were welcomed with a powwow at the Meskwaki Settlement and showered in a car wash.
They did it again on Day 6, taking advantage of any water source, from sprinklers to the fountain on Marengo's town square, to cool down on a day when the heat index pushed to around 110 degrees.
Then there was Friday night's thunderstorm in Coralville, which forced the disappointing cancellation of a free concert by '90s hitmakers Bush. But it also brought a quintessential example of Iowa nice, with a vendor giving away food to the hungry throng because he worried they had missed their dinners and didn't want it to go to waste.
Soon, the planning will begin for the next annual ride, one that will take a different course across Iowa yet offer a similar variety of experiences. Setting out on its second 50 years, how will RAGBRAI navigate its future?
Will RAGBRAI return to capping ridership?
If this year's riders had any universal concern, aside from the heat, it was the size of the golden anniversary ride.
The crowding was apparent from the very first day when registered week-long riders joined by thousands with day passes as well as unregistered tag-alongs rode shoulder-to-shoulder through the Loess Hills, six and eight wide on roads with no shoulders. Food and beer lines at times stretched a block or more.
More: From Sioux City to Davenport, the Des Moines Register's Courtney Crowder covers RAGBRAI 50
It was the original route, but not the original ride, when a mere 200 people joined Karras and Kaul on their merry adventure.
"It's so much more packed," said Lisa Harris, of Alexandria, Virginia, who along with her husband, Michael, was riding her first RAGBRAI. "The first couple days I just felt like salmon (swimming in a river)."
Sheila Duggan of St. Charles, Illinois, making her fourth ride, said she loves RAGBRAI because of the people she meets, but her enjoyment was in part hindered by crowding, especially on the Day 4 route from Ames to Des Moines.
Looking ahead, Duggan said she believes limiting the number of riders may be necessary.
"I know this is a big deal for the towns, but it detracts from the experience," she said.
More: Gov. Kim Reynolds joins her first RAGBRAI: 'Such a legacy'
On earlier RAGBRAIs, riders had to apply to get one of the limited spots and meet certain criteria. For example, in the 1980s, ultra-marathoner Marty Sprenglemeyer wanted to run RAGBRAI, but his application was denied repeatedly because he did not ride a bicycle.
Later, as RAGBRAI gradually increased its cap on riders to 15,000, a lottery was held to determine spots.
The cap was dropped in 2022, and this year for the anniversary RAGBRAI, some 20,000 weeklong riders signed up and 9,000 bought day passes. Their numbers swelled daily with those who joined the ride without registering.
It's an issue RAGBRAI has faced almost since the beginning, as towns along the way hosted far more riders than they had people. The mismatch has been exacerbated over the decades by the ride's growth and the shrinking of Iowa's rural population.
RAGBRAI ride director Matt Phippen, at the Davenport tire dip Saturday, said he's committed to helping the ride grow, saying having large attendance "is a good problem to have."
“Yeah, the roads were filled. We did have accidents, but they weren’t bad accidents because they’re rolling at slower speeds," he said. "It was forcing people to actually slow down and enjoy the person next to you, not just beat it into the town. Now, if we were blessed with cooler weather, it’d be even better."
He said there are several possibilities planners are looking at to better manage the ride, whether it’s a cap or partnering with the state of Iowa and counties to bring more assets to bear.
RAGBRAI will have to continue planning the best routes it can based on the number of people participating, he added. It doesn’t necessarily mean routing it through bigger towns, he said, but those that host it will have to be towns that can “pull it off” because they’re “all in.”
More: RAGBRAI riders near Colfax not sure they agree that 'The Gravel is Worth the Travel'
Alex Inman, of Charlottesville, Virginia, participating in his first RAGBRAI, said he appreciated the tightrope RAGBRAI organizers walk. Other rides he's participated in are for dedicated riders focusing on their personal performance.
But RAGBRAI is open to all, and the daily festivals in each town are as much a part of the ride and the roads taken, bringing along complex issues of capacity and safety over a seven-day, 500-mile span.
More: What's it like to be an Iowa State Trooper on RAGBRAI? We spend a morning with one
"If you go to most big group rides anywhere else, the appeal is to cyclists," Inman said. "RAGBRAI is different. I don't envy the organizers who have to wrestle with these sorts of questions and issues."
Looking ahead to RAGBRAI 100
Cycling in Iowa has grown up with RAGBRAI, as the state and local governments have invested to build thousands of miles of bike trails and mount cycling-oriented tourism campaigns.
Despite grappling with issues brought on by that growth, will RAGBRAI still be around in its time-tested form for its 100th edition?
Longtime and rookie riders said they believe it will be.
Steve Taylor of Norwalk began riding RAGBRAI in 2012 and said that other than technological changes in bicycles, he can't imagine the ride he knows and loves not remaining substantially the same.
"It's sort of like the Iowa State Fair," he said. "There are changes, but you kind of go because it's the same every year. You know what to expect. If they did radical changes, it would probably scare people away."
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Inman, the rookie rider from Virginia, is the son of a former Hawkeye football player and has family roots in Tama. He said he started cycling 11 years ago and vowed to ride on the next RAGBRAI that went through his ancestral town.
On Thursday night, he ate pasta at the Tama church where his parents got married, and in Quimby on the first day he sunk his teeth into free watermelon that residents gave out to celebrate the town's annual Watermelon Days festival.
More: Someday, this couple will tell their family about how they got engaged on RAGBRAI 50
"I could've stayed there for hours, it was so good. It was so genuine. It was awesome," he said, adding that he thinks that RAGBRAI is a "celebration of Iowa more than a cycling event."
In fact, that was the very idea Karras and Kaul had in mind: to ride across Iowa and tell its stories along the way.
Now their supposedly one-time excursion is an Iowa institution that generations have grown up riding with their families, said Jim Gorman, a six-time rider from New Hampton.
Like anything, RAGBRAI has problems to fix in the next 50 years, Gorman said, but he believes it will endure.
If it ever goes away, Iowa will never be the same, Inman said.
"I want to believe that people will continue to come along to see what RAGBRAI can be," Inman said. "It would be a massive hole in the state of Iowa if there wasn't RAGBRAI in late July."
Phippen said he's confident RAGBRAI will remain.
"There are so many people and so many communities in Iowa that love RAGBRAI so much," he said. "You know, communities that will do everything in their power to make sure the riders have a great experience.”
Long term, he said, Phippen wants the ride to grow. “I want people to find it for the first time and fall in love with it like I fell in love with it.”
"I’ve always said, the only way this ride goes away is if the people of Iowa say we don’t want it anymore," he said. "I don’t think it’s ever going to happen."
Philip Joens is riding his 18th RAGBRAI. He has completed the river-to-river trek six times. He covers retail, real estate and RAGBRAI for the Des Moines Register and can be reached at 515-284-8184 at pjoens@registermedia.com or on Twitter @Philip_Joens.
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Looking ahead to the next 50 years as RAGBRAI 50 comes to a close
