The Biggest Bike Race in the Country – Druber takes on RAGBRAI

The Biggest Bike Race in the Country

“I see Hubbards everywhere. They don’t know they’re Hubbards. They walk around just like you and me.”

The conversation generally begins like this.

“How do you stay so thin?”
“I ride my bike a lot”
“I have a brother in law who is a big biker. Have you ever done that big race in Iowa?”
“The Old Capital Criterium in April? Yeah, I’ve done it a few times. Great race.”
“No, this one he does is in July.”
“Hmm. It’s not ringing a bell with me.”
“Yeah, he says it’s like a week long and he camps”
“You mean RAGBRAI?”
“Yeah, that’s the one.”
“Well, it’s not really a race, that just more of a social event”
“Oh no, my brother is law says it’s the biggest bike race in the Country. Have you ever done it?”
“No.”
“Well you should. He tells me it’s a big time race.”
“I’m generally busy racing in Wisconsin in July”
“I see…You ever consider signing up to ride the Tour de France?”
“Can we change the subject?”

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had variations of that same conversation and with more people than I can remember. So, I decided that if you can’t beat the general public, you may as well join them. If John Q Public is convinced that RAGBRAI is the biggest bike race in the country and that you’re not a serious cyclist if you’ve never done it, then it’s best just to do it so you can answer “yes” and move the conversation along next time it happens.

I have a good friend in Champaign that rides his bike some. He and another buddy some how got it into their heads that doing RAGBRAI was something to do this summer. My good friend, I call Captain Beefcake, insisted that I join him for the “race.” I tried to explain that it wasn’t a “race” but he insisted that it was “the biggest bike race in the country” and it would be a lot of fun as it was each of the prior three times he’d done it. He convinced two more of my good friends, Banderas and Jet Weiss to join him. I was on the fence, but the tipping point for me was that I hadn’t been able to spend much time with my good friends since moving to the mean streets of Chicago two years ago. What the hell, I was in.

Not knowing anything other than the fact that a large number of people participate in RAGBRAI and that a good number of people wear costumes and a good number drink a lot, I sought the counsel of Craig, a friend here in Chicago who is a RAGBRAI vet. Craig is an avid cyclist, former racer and a drinking buddy. Craig goes to RAGBRAI with a group of guys that have a big purple bus. They call themselves team Bad Monkey. They make it a point to start late, stop in every town and drink heavily. He’d invited me to join his team when he heard I was going to pop my RAGBRAI cherry, but the thought of having my two passions of cycling and likker colliding in a simultaneous cold fusion explosion was more than I could wrap my head around. I prefer my libation AFTER I ride, not DURING. Besides which, I already had a “team”.

The team had plans to go to the opening city of Glenwood in an 11 passenger Mercedes-Benz Sprinter. We towed a U-Haul behind is. The U-Haul was well stocked with Booze, Prime Grade Beef, Elk and Organic Free Range Chicken, and sundry dried goods. If we were gonna rough it, we would at least be well fed.

One team member is a master wine maker. And by master, I mean to the point that he purchases French, Hungarian and American oak barrels to age his wines therein. He has a connection in Napa who supplies him with top grade grapes and juice and the final product is quite frankly, some of the best wine I’ve ever had the pleasure of drinking. We also had several bottles of Grey Goose vodka, 1800 silver tequila, a large cooler full of beer, and one team member packed in 5 boxes of Black Box wine. We treated those boxes of wine with less than recommended levels of care and they remained in the U-Haul despite the temperature inside that aluminum container reaching what had to have been at least 150 degrees. This did not dissuade our friend from nightly consumption of the box Chardonnay which he cooled from bathwater warm with ice from the cooler. Yummy.

Photo Caption “The team perusing the food vendors in Glenwood, IA for pork products on a stick.”

Upon arriving in Glenwood, we unpacked and set up camp in a large field with several thousand other campers. The skies were threatening. I am not a camper. I had borrowed an REI half dome tent from my son. It is an easy proposition to put it up. It practically puts itself up. I hadn’t camped and slept in a tent since early grade school when my brother and I had a two person pup tent that took hours to build. I needed help. Team member Eric, a Bank CEO and experienced RAGBRAI hand stepped up to help. It took less than 5 minutes and by the end of the week, I was quite proficient in tent building.

Photo: “Ominous skies over Glenwood’s tent city”

It’s a good thing that I had Eric’s help as soon after the tent was up, the tornado sirens went off. Seriously. This was a great way to start the biggest bike race in the country. I’m no genius but I do know that if a tornado strikes, a nylon tent is not the place to seek shelter. I began to panic. Fortunately, the front blew through without spawning a tornado, but we did get a good dose of rain which made me thankful for the rain hood on the mesh tent. This was gonna be a long week.

That night, we drank beer in the town festival in Glenwood. It turns out that when the biggest bike race in the country comes to your small town in Iowa, it’s a big effing deal. Picture the county fair, 4th of July, sesquicentennial celebration and Labor Day all rolled into one. That approaches the party that is repeated in each small town along the route. All 39 separate towns were set up in such a way with bands, food vendors, all you can eat pancake and sausage breakfasts at the churches and fire stations, bloody marys beer gardens, bounce houses, watering stations from border to border. If one intends to ride the biggest bike race in the country, one must plan for the time it will take to walk your bike though town stuffing one’s face with Iowa Pork products. I was not prepared for this.

The first morning, I was roused from my sticky, uncomfortable, oft interrupted sleep by the sounds of fellow participants in the biggest bike race in the country moving about and tearing down their camps at 5:00 in the fucking morning. ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! I wanted to scream but my head hurt so badly from the cheap beer I’d consumed the night before that the thought of it was unbearable. I had no choice but to do the same. I rolled

Photo: “Druber’s quarters for the week.”

out of my dew and rain dampened cocoon and looked for a port -0- john. People were walking around in shorts and Fredwear…Billowing, sleeveless jerseys with rear pockets that could hold entire grocery bags full of bananas and oatmeal bars. This was so far away from anything that I’d ever experienced in the cycling world that my frame of reference was completely broken. I was up at 5:00 a.m. I was tearing down a tent. I was looking for our team water cooler so I could brush my teeth, I was surrounded by tubby people wearing goofy clothing talking loudly and riding bikes fitted with handlebar mirrors and wearing helmets fitted with mirrors just for additional rear view exposure. I also had a hangover (this was the only familiar sensation that gave me comfort in my otherwise uncomfortable new environment).

I ate a Clif Bar for breakfast, got dressed and got on my bike. I started out with two team mates at about 7:00 a.m. I was supposed to meet Li’l Wayne who was in Glenwood to hawk his Button Hole cream to the thousands of Hubbards gathered at the RAGBRAI expo. As he put it, this was clearly the plan of two RAGBRAI virgins. Good luck finding ANYONE you know in this massive rolling sea of humanity. Couple that with the fact that Western Iowa doesn’t have AT&T mobile service and well, you’re S.O.L. if you’re trying to make a connection.

I rolled out of Glenwood and dropped my two team mates on the very first climb out of town. It was the last I’d see of them until the meeting town of Carson 19 miles up the road.

I cannot describe in words what I was seeing so I will simply toss out a few images from the biggest bike race in the country, of which at this point, I was a reluctant participant.

You have entire two lane highways shut down from 6 a.m. until 6 p.m. with people of all shapes and sizes riding, stopping, eating, drinking and calling out every single move they’re making on the bike. When you get off of your bike to buy a pork chop from this guy

you must first yell “Rider Off!”. After you stuff your gullet a full of BBQ pork tenderloin on a stick, a mere 12 miles into the day, you must yell “Rider On!” when you resume riding. When you pass a rider, you must yell “On your Left!” or “On your Right!” because god knows the wobbly rider you’re passing isn’t using the mirrors attached to their handlebars or helmet. They’re too panicked about the person riding 4 feet to their right or left to be paying attention to mirrors. And I do mean wobbly. I have never seen so many people who have obviously spent at least some time on the bike because they’re out here who simply cannot hold a straight line, cannot clip in or clip out of pedals without falling and break out into cold sweaty terror if you pass them within 4 feet without having previously announced your self. This is so far below Cat 5 I wouldn’t know where to begin with categorization. 7 would be too high.

I just got into the habit of yelling “On you Left” every 15 seconds whether there was anyone there or not. It became as a mantra for me. One must also announce “Turning!” when there is a clearly marked turn in the route as corners present a very real hazard to a large majority of the riders. On day one, as I was rolling into a town called Griswold, I saw a downed rider, a middle aged woman being attended to. She was according to the person attending to her and making the call to 911 “breathing but not conscious”. This was at a corner. My best guess was that she collided with another rider because the turn was not announced and she went straight. When one sees such a thing at the biggest bike race in the country, one is required to shout out “Rider Down!” which then is echoed at least one hundred times by the riders around and behind you within the sound of your voice.

Good luck trying to find anyone you know, but as irony would have it, I was riding along on my own from Griswold to Lewis later on day one when I passed and then was joined by a guy who sat on my wheel then tried to attack me at the top of a hill. He looked vaguely familiar, wasn’t wearing a helmet and was riding a cross bike. He was strong, took a pull and then waved me through. The two of us had pretty clear road ahead by this point so we cruised over the rolling terrain all the way into Lewis at 25-30 per. I thanked him for the good pace and asked his name. Turns out, he was the guy for which an ex girlfriend dumped me to go out with 15 years or so ago. Yep, he stole my girl – or, he got my sloppy seconds – depending on how you look at it. I can’t find Li’l Wayne or my riding buddies in this sea of humanity, but I found Ralph on three separate occasions. Go figure.

When it’s all said and done each day ran into the other. The routine was the same but the locations changes. Wake up too early, ride slowly as you pick your way to the first town, walk through, remount, ride a bit faster to town two, grab a bite, ride full pace between the next several towns, enjoy the scenery and terrain, wave hello to the Iowans with nothing better to do than to set up lawn chairs at the intersection and watch the biggest bike race in the country go by, arrive at the final town, find your camp (we had a support driver who would drive to the next town each day and set up camp) pitch the tent, find a shower – some better than others at campgrounds, or community college locker rooms or in portable showers set up in semi trailers – being one of the early arrivers each day had the distinct advantage of getting to a shower without a line a half mile long. Sit in the sweltering heat telling stories with your mates, drinking too much until dark and then retiring to your tent for the hot, sticky, restless sleep that will be broken all to soon by the sound of a moving truck starting its massive diesel engine and people tearing down their camps in the pre dawn dark to start it all over again.

Photo: “Yes, these people are cyclists”

You know what? By the end of the week, I was in love with the biggest bike race in the country. I loved seeing so many weird, fat, wobbly Hubbards on bikes. My god, there is such a world out there. You think Nashbar exists for no reason? Have you ever really taken a look at the pages of Nashbar that you normally overlook when you’re trying to find the page with a deal on tires? All those pages with floral and fluorescent jerseys and bike shorts (not bibs) and bike sandals with pedal cleats and handle bar mirrors. Those catalogues are full of those items because there are countless thousands of people who buy that stuff…proudly. They show off their new pair of riding sandals to their Hubbard friends. They talk in glowing terms of how light weight and comfortable their new glasses mounted mirror is. They search for just the right mounting rack to which they can affix their portable sound system so they have musical entertainment for the ride. The buy bright orange and sleeveless floral jerseys with grocery bag sized rear pockets so they can carry pork chop sandwiches and a pair of slip on tennis shoes to wear on the streets of the meeting town. There are thousands of people who aren’t embarrassed to be riding a recumbent for chissakes! Can you believe that? These people are the heart and soul of the cycling industry. These people keep bike shops open. These are the people – not you; you smug bike racer – who are responsible for the very existence of Trek, Cannondale, Giant, Shimano, SRAM, Profile, Sugoi, Bell, Performance Bike, Yakima, Panaracer and Serfas. Without these people wobbling along at the biggest bike race in the country and other smaller single day centuries and metric centuries and Hilly Hundreds and charity rides of all kinds the cycling industry would collapse and we’d not have anything that we take for granted.

So next time I’m asked if I’ve ever done that really big race in Iowa, I will not react with condescension attempting to explain that it’s not a race. I will proudly say “Yes! I’ve not only done it, I won.”