John Karras R.I.P.

It began as a lark. Nearly half a century later, it had become the world's oldest, largest and longest bike recreational bike ride.

In 1973, a couple of Iowa newspaper guys decided to pedal across their state:  about 700 kilometers from the Missouri to the Mississippi River.  They wrote about their adventures for their newspaper which, as one of the riders jokingly said, allowed them to claim that their adventure was part of their job and therefore get the newspaper to pay for it.

Perhaps more surprising to them, though, was that they went along with their editor's idea of allowing readers to ride with them--something one of the two fellows thought was "stupid."  His disdain turned to anxiety when more than 100 riders showed up at the starting line.

So was the Register's Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa (RAGBRAI) born.  The ride has set off every year since except for 2020, owing to the pandemic.  The most edition of the ride included more than 15,000 cyclists.

Perhaps more important, RAGBRAI--which could have disappeared along with the 1970s Bike Boom--helped to spur interest in bike touring and, arguably, led to the construction of a bike lane network that criscrosses the state, as well as bike routes beyond the Hawkeye State's boundaries.  It also helped to raise the State's profile, which people identify with RAGBRAI ("that ride") in much the same way that France is linked to its Tour and Italy to the Giro.

When they founded the ride, Donald Kaul and John Karras were Register columnists.  Kaul passed away from cancer three years ago.  He was 83 years old.  Earlier this week, 91-year-old Karras followed him to that great bike tour in the sky.

I hope to do RAGBRAI.  And I will remember Karras--and Kaul.

John Karras

Roman Numerals=Postponement, Not Cancellation For RAGBRAI

Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, many organized rides have been cancelled or postponed. They include everything from local charity rides to European classics, rides with long histories and others that began in the past decade.

Now, "postpone" is a more elastic term than "cancel."  That is why it's ludicrous to call the current Tokyo Olympiad the "2020 Olympics" or its official name, "Tokyo 2020."   That allows the Olympic Movement (In the immortal words of Harry Shearer, "The Olympics are a movement.  And we need one, every day!") to say, with a straight face, that the Games were "postponed" or merely rescheduled.

Such terms can be used more plausibly when the event is denoted, not with the year in which it's held, but with a Roman Numeral.  The Super Bowl, which has never been postponed or cancelled, follows this practice.  So, it turns out, does one of the largest and oldest organized bike tours in the United States.

Register's Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa (Say that three times fast!), better known as RAGBRAI, began in 1973, when John Karras, a copy editor at the Des Moines Register (and avid cyclist) and Don Kaul, a columnist at the newspaper, decided to ride across the state and write accounts of it.  Don Benson, the newspaper's public relations director, coordinated the ride.  There wasn't much advance publicity, so it's remarkable that about 300 people turned out for the ride.  

From the RAGBRAI blog

 

Somewhere along the way, RAGBRAI followed the Super Bowl's practice of denoting its rides with Roman Numerals.  In a way, that makes sense, or at least for good publicity:  Instead of saying that the 2020 ride was cancelled, ride organizers could postpone the start RAGBRAI XLVIII until this past Sunday.

Perhaps some year I'll make my way to it.  In the meantime, I'm happy that something that could have just been a passing fancy of the 1970s North American Bike Boom has become enough of a tradition to be postponed, but not cancelled.

Let The Profits Roll In

From Knox Gardner

 According to economic surveys, the price of gasoline is dropping, however slightly.  Still, it begs the question of how long prices will stay down, and when and by how much prices will rise again.  If the long-term trajectory for gas prices is upward, I have to wonder what it will do to the way people commute and travel, and how they will shop and entertain themselves.  While gasoline prices in the US are still nowhere near the levels in Europe and Japan, long-term increases will, I think, impact Americans' way of life even more than Europeans' or Japanese people's lifestyles because so much of this country's landscape and infrastructure is designed for the automobile.

Now, I don't expect people who are accustomed to driving a couple of days to their favorite vacation spots to suddenly take up bicycle touring.  However, there seem to be signs that more people, particularly the young, are doing that.  Almost any time I take a ride outside of New York City, or take a road or a path that leads out of it, I see couples or groups riding bicycles laden with panniers and, in some cases, camping equipment.  I am also noticing more and more families (or fathers and sons or mothers and daughters) riding on the paths and trails.

If more of us ride our bicycles, that could actually become a tourist economy unto itself, as it has in places like Portland.  In fact, Elly Blue, a bicyclist, activist and writer based in Portland, makes such an argument.  She points out that 78 percent of visitors to the city say that its bicycle-friendly reputation played a role in their decision to travel there.  She also shows how such tours as RAGBRAI pour money into local economies--which, I imagine, has a real impact in states like Iowa, which ranks 47th among the 50 states in tourism.  Even in New York City, a ride like the Five Borough Bike can boost revenues for restaurants, stores and hotels as thousands of people come in from other states and abroad to join local cyclists for the ride.

So...Will Tourist Bureaux establish committees on bicycle touring?  Stranger things have happened!