RAGBRAI is turning 50 – as predicted!

Rumors swept the state 25 years ago that the big bicycle ride across Iowa was ending after that summer. Des Moines Register boss Barbara Henry set everybody straight on that.

DES MOINES, Iowa – It’s probably too early in the season for me to start telling RAGBRAI stories.  But I can’t help myself.

I’m blaming Kelly Hayworth, the city administrator of Coralville in eastern Iowa, one of the overnight host towns for RAGBRAI “L.” That’s Roman for the 50^th Des Moines Register’s Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa.  The big ride that will roll across the state July 22-29.

Hayworth, who is also a RAGBRAI veteran, has me coming to his town on Monday (April 24) to tell my favorite stories about the ride, which I co-hosted with the late John Karras from 1983-1998.  At lunch time, I’ll be speaking at a gathering of Coralville city workers and leaders of the local RAGBRAI hosting committee.  From 5:30 to 7 p.m., I’ll be swapping RAGBRAI stories with the public at the Coralville Public Library.

John Karras and me in 1989 in a photo for RAGBRAI.

So I’ve been prepping by digging up a few old RAGBRAI stories I wrote, stirring a whole lot of happy memories and a couple of sad ones, and marveling again at what a wonderful event this has been for Iowa and its people.  I’m guessing I’ll be doing that a lot in coming weeks as all of us – bicycle riders and spectators alike – are training for RAGBRAI L.

Let’s start with a story back in 1997, near the end of the 25^th RAGBRAI. 

As I pedaled into the southeast Iowa town of Stockport, enroute to our Friday overnight stay in Fairfield, I was handed a note telling me to phone Barbara Henry in Des Moines.  She was the publisher of the Register and thus my ultimate boss, so I stopped at a phone booth (there actually was one in Stockport) and made the call.

“I keep being asked in meetings and getting phone calls, asking me if we’re ending RAGBRAI after this ride,” Henry said. “What’s that all about?  Where’s it coming from?”

Yes, I told her, that rumor has also been spreading wildly among the bicyclists on the ride.  Best I could guess, Karras had recently retired from his full-time editing and column-writing position at the Register (although he had no plans to quit leading RAGBRAI).  Two years earlier, I’d fulfilled my lifetime cycling dream of leading a ride across the U.S.  People were guessing both of us might be transitioning out, and maybe that would happen when we completed the highly-celebrated 25^th anniversary ride.

“Well, have you written your column yet for tomorrow’s Register?” Henry asked.  When I told her I had another couple hours until deadline, she said, “Would you please quote me in it?”

Of course I will, I wisely responded.  What would you like to say? 

Here it was, just as it appeared in the July 26, 1997 edition of the Register:

“The Register ending RAGBRAI?” said Barbara Henry, president and publisher of the newspaper. “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.  Where’s that coming from?

“Here’s the truth: It’s full-speed ahead for RAGBRAI. We’ll still be doing this when it’s 50.”

And here we are in 2023, year 50 for RAGBRAI!

Much has changed.  Barbara Henry moved on to become publisher of the newspaper in Indianapolis, and later retired.  RAGBRAI co-founders John Karras and Donald Kaul, have died – Kaul in 2018, Karras in 2021. The Register’s first two organizers of the ride, Don Benson and Jim Green, are also dead, Benson in 2011 and Green in 2019.

I left the Register in 1998 for teaching, freelance writing and retirement.  I’ve ridden on a total of 30 or more RAGBRAIs, but in recent years, I’ve only joined in for a day or two.  I’m still very loyal to the event and the organization.  I’m proud to have had a role in building “the oldest, largest and longest recreational bicycle touring event in the world.”

A Des Moines Register photo of me as I was bowing out, at the conclusion of RAGBRAI in the summer of 1998.

RAGBRAI survived a coup in the fall of 2019, when former director T.J. Juskiewicz resigned in a huff and then attempted to start up a rival Iowa ride. It didn’t work.  The big ride also survived the COVID pandemic of 2020. 

The ride is now owned and organized by Ventures Endurance, a “public events” division of Gannet Co., which also owns the Register and many other media properties across the U.S. 

The RAGBRAI director, presiding over his second ride this summer, is Matt Phippen, an Iowa native who had worked the first half of his career as a manager for Scheels sporting goods stores in Coralville and Cedar Falls. 

Another key staffer is Anne Lawrie, who saw RAGBRAI through its leadership meltdowns in 2019 and subsequently.

Many RAGBRAI veterans, and I’m one of them, give Phippen and Lawrie high marks for the ways they’ve stabilized and strengthened “our bike ride,” as we all think of it.

You can comment on this column below or write the columnist directly by email at chuck@offenburger.com.

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