I hope so. It was a great resource for looking back at old routes, and the data it provided. I emailed the RAGBRAI a few weeks ago, and asked the question. Haven’t heard back yet.

I don’t expect to see it back soon, I don’t know what the long term prospects are. The way it played out last summer almost seemed as if there was a blowup of some kind between Mr. Geobike and the RAGBRAI team. He had announced he was retiring after this year which is fine of course. It is a lot of work that he did on our behalf and if what I read online is correct he was not paid for it so it is natural that he would tire of it at some point and unpaid volunteers are under no obligation to find their own replacements or make sure that their efforts are continued in some fashion. But he put up an initial page for this year’s ride and I believe it was reported that he began the pre-ride to record data with the RAGBRAI team. And then it just fizzled out. He never updated the initial information for this years ride and then for a while the link to the site worked but all the information was gone and now it appears that there is no site anymore and the site name is up for grabs.

That does not sound like the smooth handoff that you would expect had he just retired from the role. I would have expected that he would have refined the entry for this RAGBRAI with the pre-ride data and then parked the website for at least a few years so that the old data was still available even though there were no updates. The sudden pulling of the plug most likely indicates that something bad happened between him and the RAGBRAI team. If that is true then the old data will not be available unless and until all the wounds heal and both sides feel more charitable towards each other again. And that may never happen. This is all speculation on my part, of course. No official statements other than the retirement announcement have been made by either party.

Naturally the RAGBRAI team could recreate the information in some form from their own records if they cared to. Or some new enthusiast could put together a GPS data station and drive the old routes to recreate the data. There may be other options for getting site back. I don’t expect anything soon, especially from the Register side because they have been very casual about updating the written summaries of the rides that you find in the history section of this, their own, website. I am not criticizing them (or Mr Geobike), I know this is a lot of work and I do not know all the constraints they operate under. But I do know that they do a TON of work for us each year to put this ride together and I am very grateful for that!! The ride is a great ride with or without Geobike, with or without the ride summaries but some part of me looks at things like this and fears that the Register’s commitment to hosting the event is beginning to fade. I hope not.

Rather than writing a lot of speculation, can’t we just accept that Dr. Ketcham retired ?

Certainly we can do that and I appreciate the information that you shared in private. Since you shared it in private I won’t share it here. Speculation naturally arises from a lack of information about topics that are of great interest to people. This is true in life in general as well as on internet forums. Clearly this topic is of great interest to some of us and it would be kind of those who know to share some more information about the abrupt closing of the Geobike site and the prospects for its return, some day in some form.

Without sharing any specifics R-Daryl Daryl pointed out to me that there are other plausible explanations for the facts that we know and I accept that they are true as he maintains them to be. I apologize for speculating in public but at least I was clear that I was speculating, unlike many in the media, politics, and the internet these days….

Speculation here on this Forum? Say it’s not so!!!

BTW, RAGBRAI don’t care!!!