Amanda:

I am reminded of an ancient Sumerian proverb, “The gecko wears a tiara.”

No, no, no, not that one! Oh, what was it? … oh yeah, it was “If a woman knows, why wouldn’t she tell?”

So, by the ancient code of Sumer and by the honor of the black headed people who are the foundation of our western civilization and the inventors of the wheel, the thing that makes RAGBARI possible, I say to you that if you know, you must tell!!

Amanda – Is this what is in those magic folders?

Council Bluffs
Atlantic
Winterset
Ankeny
Marshalltown
Waterloo
Monticello
Clinton

I hope so, because those were my guesses. We will see Saturday night :)

Council Bluffs. Red Oak. Winterset. Altoona. Pella. Ottumwa. Mt Pleasant. Burlington.

Unfortunately the notes are in Klingon- didn’t know TJ was a Star Trek fan. I thought he was more of a Star Wars type guy. I have been trying to crack the code by watching Big Bang Theory- a TV show whose characters have a strange affection for Star Trek and talk Klingon occasionally. Sorry, you want to know the route and I have rambled too much.
So far I have figured out one of the towns has an a in it. Hopefully I will have this cracked by 9:00 on Saturday night.
Hope to see you at the Party!
Live long in Hospers. I mean Live Long and Prosper.

I’ve consulted my trusty crystal (the same crystal used by the priests of Isis and Osiris in the days of the pharaohs in which Cleopatra saw the approach of Julius Caesar and Marc Anthony) and this is what it revealed:

Missouri Valley;
Atlantic;
Guthrie Center;
Winterset;
Chariton;
Bloomfield;
Keosauqua; and
Keokuk.

That’s all. The crystal’s gone dark.

We shall see on Saturday night if I need yet another new crystal.

BTW, I knew TJ was a Trekkie. Why else would we have gone through Riverside last year?

See you along the I-O-Way in July.

I was doing some clue hunting and thought this was interesting. The Shenandoah RAGBRAI site title now is “City of Shenandoah RAGBRAI | The Official 2019 RAGBRAI Shenandoah Website”. Could they be doing some prep work and accidentally set it live?

Hmm… I think that has to be incorrect. We were just there in 2016.

I think TJ is putting up false clues to throw people off.:)

I love it, Jeff!

It looks exactly that way. I checked the Wayback machine, and the site hasn’t been updated since late 2016, so the date wasn’t an auto-update. Even the Copyright on the bottom was updated!

We were just there in 2016, true. It would be unusual, but not unheard of, to be back so soon:
Quick and dirty….
Coralville – 3 years (2011, 2015)
Davenport – 3 years (2011, 2015)
Glenwood – 2 years (1989,1992)

But, Shenandoah has always (all 4 times we’ve been there) started in Glenwood. No start town has been used twice in that short of a time period. The shortest I see is Council Bluffs (2009, 2013), so 4 years in the middle. Most are at least 5 years, so to be in Glenwood in 2011, 2016, and 2019 would be odd. I wonder if it’s someone hoping big….or someone put them up to it as a Red Herring…

Unless, of course, TJ’s mixing it up and we start in some place like Hamburg. That would be cool: farthest Southern start of RAGBRAI ever. Actually, the furthest South it could start!

Of course, on Saturday night, we’ll all be wrong. ‘Cause RAGBRAI Don’t Care about our opinion on the matter :)

See you in July
-Chris

When do overnight towns learn they have been selected? If 8 towns know they are in by this time every year It’s hard to believe there’s never any leaks! Does Shenandoah know something or have they just taken a trivial, costs nothing step in the hope that we’ll be there this year?

What bad luck, TJ knows Klingon and probably some obscure dialect if no one can translate it!

[quote quote=1298473]I was doing some clue hunting and thought this was interesting. The Shenandoah RAGBRAI site title now is “City of Shenandoah RAGBRAI | The Official 2019 RAGBRAI Shenandoah Website”. Could they be doing some prep work and accidentally set it live?[/quote]

My guess is they have the year added dynamically when the page loads so it always displays the current year.

Research with the Universal Translator yielded the following in Klingon: “Qo’, qatlh ghojwI’pu’lI’ RAGBRAI” or “RAGBRAI don’t care.”

Nice tag line but a little long to fit on a jersey.

As long as we have seven days of riding and go mainly easterly, I’m happy.

We went North in 2014
We went North Central to South Central in 2015
We went South in 2016
We went North in 2017
We went Central in 2018
I think it is time to go South Central to North Central in 2019
So that would be Council Bluffs, Atlantic, Guthrie Center, Altoona, Marshalltown, Vinton, Manchester, and Dubuque

This is so much fun! I love everyone guessing and explaining how they came up with their guess. Not much longer and we will know who is right! I will be at the party and close to the front when the route is announced, cheering loudly!

I know the webstream of the route announcement starts at 8:30 p.m., but at about what time is the actual route revealed? I have to work into the evening and want to make sure I take a chance to see it.