There are 20,000 registered weeklong riders, and another 9,000 that have secured day passes. There is no heading out by yourself this week. I ride in groups, which is so much fun, and every once in a while just heading out by yourself to clear my head is the best.” I wanted to get that feeling back as an adult. “For me,” Fassano says, “as a kid having a bicycle was freedom. But rather than stew over the crater it just put in their wallets, the group’s first thought was: How do I get to Iowa now?Īfter some frantic hours, they managed to rent a pickup truck with a hitch for their bike racks and were on their way. He was on his way to the start when the transmission in his group’s car blew up. The charm is evident in Victor Fassano, a retired sheet metal worker from New York, who decided he wanted to start doing “epic adventures” at this stage of his life. Or the myriad teams that continue to rip the seats out of old school buses, paint them in often garish colors, pack them full of refreshments and set off down the road for a week in the Iowa sun. Or the riders that stopped just outside Sioux City to help a stranded rider helplessly holding his broken chain. It was evident in the man pulling his kid in a wagon down the road, and the youngster doling out fruit snacks (two for a dollar) and granola bars to other weary riders. The charm of the ride still exists, though. Some of the dedicated charters these days carry gear from town to town, cook food each night and even set up riders’ tents before their arrival. Some of the quaintness of the ride has been lost, of course, as commercialism took root along the route. The ride really took off during the 1980s, when Greg LeMond put American cycling on the map with his three triumphs at the Tour de France, and the 1990s, when Lance Armstrong - a frequent RAGBRAI rider - was wearing the yellow jersey. Then it grew up gradually as the bicycling craze caught on.” The second year they had a truck that carried our gear, but people were just kind of on their own. “They had a couple of hundred show up that first year and didn’t have hotels or anything. “Even Kaul and Karras were surprised at the response,” Molsberry said. He will be riding part of RAGBRAI for the 30th time this year with his daughter and two grandchildren. It was unique,” said Bob Molsberry, who watched that first ride go through Iowa City as a college student and joined in the following year. “The early years were great because they were freewheeling, so to speak.
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