RAGBRAI Day 1: Sioux City to Storm Lake
When Brooklyn Tony from Team Brew Ha Ha gave me a RAGBRAI beer guide, it actually wasn’t the first time a dude on a bike handed me a beer guide while I was biking myself.
Actually, Brooklyn Tony handed me two guides — “one for your gumba” — along with a history lesson.
“Before Milwaukee was the brewing capital of the world, Brooklyn was,” he declared. “Brooklyn — and especially Williamsburg — was heavily influenced by German immigrants.”
Then he reached into his bike jersey and handed me a guide to the best beer stops during our weeklong bike tour of the state of Iowa.
But I couldn’t say he was the first biking beer guide evangelist I ever met, because Earl from Team Good Beer handed me his team’s guide a few miles back. Both were quintessential RAGBRAI moments of bonding with strangers over bikes and beer.
“Beer and biking go together pretty great, don’t they?” Earl asked me while we rode behind a guy in an Old Style jersey.
“They make the beer taste sweeter and the ride more rewarding,” I agreed.
“And the company better,” added Earl, who is part of a 24-member team at RAGBRAI.
Today we finished about 70 miles with about 4,000 feet of elevation and a few thousand beers along the way. Someone was even offering free beer to all 15,000 cyclists in the middle of a field on the side of the rural road.
And even if you don’t bump into a Tony or Earl, you can text “FATTIREIOWA” to 839863 to get text updates of where to find Fat Tire each day on the route. I was lucky enough the Shuttle Guy had it on ice when I arrived at camp
Tonight I’m hanging out in tent city in Storm Lake, home of the Beavers. Tomorrow’s route includes some optional mileage that would make it a century.
So of course I’ll do the longer version, because you know what more mileage means. More beer.
