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Every year over the last full week of July bike riders, clubs, teams, and families join up at the Missouri River in easter Iowa for the Registers Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa (RAGBRAI). Anywhere from ten to thirty thousand people show up for the 7 day ride east across Iowa to the Mississippi river. Team buses roll in to the host town all day looking for camping sites to unload at. People set up their tents then get ready to go to the river and dip their tire in the water of the Missouri. The town is filled with food vendors, bike shops, bands, beer gardens, and everything else you can imagine at an event of this magnitude.

On Sunday morning as early as 4am bikes start to head west for the first leg of the trip. Usually there is two or three towns along the way to the nights host town. All day you see a sea of bikes that stretches longer than you can even imagine. The people are about as friendly as you can ask for and the towns you stop in are full of nice people with pies, cookies, pork chops, and all sorts of other food and treats. Through out the week you will stay in a new town every night and camp either by yourself or with a team in the host towns. There is usually some sort of festival going on in that town when you get in and always proves to be a good time.

You'll end up seeing every kind of bike and every kind of bike rider you could imagine, meet tons of new friends and cool people, push yourself to get to the end point on those hard days and best of all feel like you at a 7 day long party with 10,000 of your best friends while your out there. Once you've ridden RAGBRAI once it tends to consume a large part of your life. RAGBRAI teams hang out year round and ride together almost weekly in anticipation of that great week at the end of July.

If you're interested in taking part in RAGBRAI make sure to be prepared well in advance. People start getting stuff set up in January and registration fills up extremely fast, people are left out every year. I personally suggest hooking up with a team to reduce costs and make things more fun while your around. Lots of teams have websites now and are easy to get a hold of. I know I save a lot of money and trouble riding with a team that transports my stuff, sets up my tent, and even gets some free beer from a sponsor.

Hope to see you next July!

Learn more about this author, Andrew Becker.
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