Route Announcement Party Sold Out! Ways to Follow the Route Party
Mon, Jan 25, 2010 | by TJ Juskiewicz
RAGBRAI XXXVIII will roll across Iowa July 25-31, and for the first time the Register’s Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa will throw an announcement party in Des Moines to reveal the eight overnight towns. The event is sold out!
CAN’T MAKE THE EVENT?
Here are four ways to learn the overnight towns as soon as they are announced.
- Live video: Watch the overnight towns announcement live at RAGBRAI.com. Live video starts at 7:30 p.m.
- Text alerts: Text the word RAGBRAI to 44636 to sign up for RAGBRAI text alerts.
- Twitter: Follow @RAGBRAI_IOWA for updates.
- Facebook: Become a fan of RAGBRAI on Facebook at www.facebook.com/RAGBRAI.
COMPLETE COVERAGE:
The Des Moines Register will have complete coverage of the event in the Sunday Register on Jan. 31, as well as maps and more information at www.RAGBRAI.com after the overnight towns are announced.
amazing, simply amazing REGISTER/RAGBRAI!!
what in the hell is the $30 bucks for exactly? OH! so you can tell me what towns we are going to be in even though I can buy a paper for $1.75 on sunday to find out. Also I have done ragbrai for many years now and this “fee” you ask us to pay for the riders not having you haul all their crap is outrageous for what & where does this money go as well since my bike team hauls my gear. Thank you for taking my money and using it for marketing purposes instead of help fixing the roads that we bike on. yes I will be biking it again this summer because I love my bike family not because you made it sooo much better the past 20 years I have been on it.
sorry but you need a wake uo call!!
hj, which I assume stands for “helluva jerk”: Did you even read the press release regarding the Route Announcement Party? Music by (two of) the Nadas, food, beer, door prizes, and the chance to spend a cold January night with five hundred RAGBRAIers seem to be worth thirty dollars to me. Regarding the RAGBRAI fee, does your bike team provide portable toilets, ambulance service, sag wagons, or any of the other things for which the Register is responsible? Does your bike team donate money to the overnight and pass-through towns after the ride is finished? Maybe you’re the one who needs a “wake uo call”, whatever that is.
***?
I agree with John. There is a lot that goes on behind the scenes that cost money….lots of fun for the money in my opinion..
I would love to pay the 30 bucks to go to the party with 500 of my bike friends but sadly, I am out of town. The announcement party is a wonderful idea to officially open the bike season and give us some diversion on a drab winter evening. Well done TJ and staff. Go Gators.
Advice for hj: Ride the route the week AFTER RAGBRAI and you will have an idea what your $140 bucks for registration buys.
There is the 5th way to find out the route…and get the plum housing/hotels/motels. You have to be on the ragbrai committee or one of their special “insider friends” By the time the route is “officially” announced..it’s too late. The party announcement are the crumbs that are left over. HA!
Well…..This will be my first ride. I’m 41, over weight and out of shape. I have started training and losing weight. I can’t wait til’ July, I’m so excited to see the route.
You guys need to chill. Like it is outside (BTW, its 65 in Austin where I’m training today) The $30 is well spent, I concur with JJ. JeffB – just eat lots of pie and get a bike with good climbing gears, that’s all you’ll need. Personally I’m going to enjoy Saturday night’s event watching it on the net, with a beer and ribs from Woody’s Smoke Shack. Woody, you get my order yet? Mudd.
Hey HJ – why don’t you write the NFL and complain that $1,000 is too much for Super Bowl tickets? You know they will print the score the next day in the paper and you can buy that for $1.75. What a rip off.
At least we won;t have to suffer them in our town agaon, and should they ever propose it again, it will ost definitely be rejected.
Hey hj… stay home. Your attitude stinks.
Well, this is a happy crowd. Makes me want to jump on my bike and ride the flats of Iowa. That said, I have to agree with Joeee that the route is one of the worst kept secrets in the world — I was on line two years ago when the e-mail announcing the route was sent out and every town I called except for Ames and one other was completely sold out for rooms — and I called every hotel shown on the Web Site for each overnight town within an hour. Still looking forward to being back in the saddle for the 2010 ride. I’m guessing a northern route, right?
Please, not my town again. We had people changing clothes in our front yard, showering in our church parking lot (thanks team pella) and drinking beer on our sidewalk.
Wow. If hj; Northern Iowa; and dajones hate RAGBRAI so much, why are they reading a story about the route annoucement, and then wasting their time spewing their thoughts?
This will me by 28th RAGBRAI, and I’m spending my evening at the route party to support the Iowa Bicycle Coalition.
This party wasn’t planned specifically as another way to line the DMR pockets, it is a wrap up of the Iowa Bicycle Summit that supports all bicycle riders in Iowa.
I can’t wait for slice of pie and a POOOORK CHOOOP!
well, I might not have spent the time driving from Milwaukee for the route announcement party if I had known that I could have found it out from the comfort of my living room. Might have been a good idea to have it this way for one year and do live stream next year. I did think the 350+ mile drive plus the $30 was worth the 5 minute head start I thought we’d have in getting lodging.
Leaving here in a few minutes anyway to get to DM for the party, looking forward to the live auction, happy to support the Iowa Coalition ….but it was a little disingenuous of the RAGBRAI folks in Nov to announce this event as if the 500 of us who bought tickets would have some kind of short amt of insider info … just not true.
We are really hoping to see you all for RAGBRAI this year in Charles City!
Are they planning a naked beer slide?
Northern Iowa, I guess we forgot to leave thousands of $ in your town for a night of inconvenience. I’m sure we will find other towns that are willing to put up with us for a nice financial shot in the arm.
Neil, it is your attitude that is ruining RAGBRAI. You think that just because the ride spends money in the towns you have the right to disregard our laws and our property rights. It was more than one night of inconveniece. It was an entire week with all the extra cars parked all over town. All these people seemed to think they could just pull up and shower in the streets and let the water drain to the storm lines. We are right on the Mississippi, 2 days later it rained and the soap suds were just pouring out into the river. If our stupid mayor and town manager volunteered us again I’m sure we will fire the both of them. The 1000′s of dollars that the volunteer clubs get goes to charities. We support a bread basket for needy families, send money to Haiti (been doing that for years) and raise money for scouts, etc. The man hours spent doing this are not paid back at minimum wage by riders, they don’t want to spend money. They just want to go home. Towns that are on the end of the ride should get about 4 times the amount that other towns do. The other commenters have raised the issue of waste. How can RAGBRAI become green? How much waste is generated while on RAGBRAI? How much fossil fuel is consumed getting to the starting point and back home? Would the world be better off if people used this week to stay home and help their neighbors?
Neil, that is the attitude that is ruining RAGBRAI. You think that spending money in a town gives you the right to do whatever you want. Go find those other towns. Stay out of North East Iowa.