Thought Sausage

It has taken me three days of recovery to properly recount the activities of the last week. For about two days, I felt like somebody took a bunch of pennies, threw them in a sock and beat me with it for a good couple hours. On top of that, my computer decided it was going to gasp its last breath SUnday night. So its on its way back to San Francisco to be formatted (surely I'll catch hell for this next time I'm in fogtown).

For those of you who don't know RAGBRAI occured last week. This is where you get on a bicycle and ride it across Iowa. Along the way you consume as many alcoholic beverages as humanely possible, while enduring the 100 degree weather and seemingly hilly Iowa countryside (think its flat? You won't after you power your own arse through it). You are joined by about 30,000 equally insane individuals. 7 days of madness, drunken insanity, heat exhaustion test every facet of stimuli a human can endure. And this year, I can safely say we definitely raised the bar.

So after that ride, I find myself viewing last week in a haze. All the days 'n activities run together. SOMEHOW Carson was able to parse out the highlights of the days. To me after about the 3rd day, it starts to play out like Groundhog Day, that movie with Bill Murray where he keeps doing the same shit everyday.

-wake up with a pounding headache
-ride 10 miles to alleviate headache
-get really hot
-eat a Farm Boys breakfast burrito
-pound the bike really hard
-douse in water
-eat Tender Toms Turkey
-pound the bike hard
-douse in beer
-pound the bike really hard
-arrive at camp and drink till you can't feel feelings
-awake the next morning on either a golf course or under the bus

Rinse/Repeat

Somewhere in there I took 3 showers. None of which were real showers. I even had to use the car soap in a carwash for one of them (I considered using the tire foam because it seemed like a good way to add a nice shine to my epidermis).

The theme for this year was "What happens on the ride stays on the ride". That's a bunch of shit if you are partying in the host towns for RAGBRAI in this year of our lord 2006. Cos if 'standing around town square with families' is your idea of shit that should stay on the ride, you probably have no business riding the ride to begin with. Nope, if you RLY want to experience RAGBRAI the way the good lord intended, you get your ass about five miles out of town and find the off route parties. This is where it happens. Wanna lick a temp tattoo of a shamrock on a random girl's arse or breasticle? DONE. Wanna strike up a conversation with another rider only to watch him get tackled jackass style before your eyes? This is the spot. Wanna stand in cramped confines with half naked women, some from town some from the ride, and drink 75 cent draw beer (or free if you're partying with a sponsored team) while orgies occur 5 feet in every direction until 5am? Ain't happenin in the host town.

For shame too. A ride of this size (some 30,000 strong) is bound to draw some attention. The beauty of riding through backwoods Iowa is that until the rest of the world pays attention, shit just happens. Ever read that book or see the movie "The Lottery"? Same thing. Well now Lance Armstrong has taken his cancer-crusade to our fair event. The result? A slew of mainstream media and big company money who want to clean up the image of this ride. Oh sure, its always gonna be about the drink, but that ain't how this shit works. Lance announced in one of the towns that he would be riding all next year (he did two days this year). What can we expect from that? I'd say probably 10,000 additional god-fearing biker wannabe's with those "Live STrong" bracelets who will be shocked 'n awe'd by the insanity we conjur. And by shocked 'n awe'd, I really mean "Will-bitch-and-moan" to any newspaper, child, man, rabbi, priest, conspiracy theorist in earshot. Ya can't blame Lance..afterall, all he wants to do is ride. But this ride has gone on for 34 years now, and we've thrown down hardcore since day one (well those before me). More than once I've heard 20+ year vets of the ride say if Lance rides again, the ensuing circus will guarantee that they will not show.

I believe Corey Taylor summed up the essence of RAGBRAI when discussing Iowa in general:

"I remember the first time I ever went to a Hollywood party in 1998. I just remember looking around at these people. We were wandering around like outsiders thinking, "This is it? This is what we heard about and this is what we dreamed of doing and this is it?" It was really banal. It was almost horrifying. It really hammered home to me that I would rather be in Iowa. I'd rather be in Iowa at a real party where people don't have all the stuff that the east coast or the west coast has. So when we have a party, we throw down. We really go for it, because who knows when you're going to have another opportunity?"

Truer words couldn't be spoken. At RAGBRAI, we straight up go for it. You hear about frat kids dying from binge drinking...we straight up assume deaths will be incurred during our party. If we can pull the ride off for under 3, we call that a good year.

Now I'm not advocating that people drink till they die, just trying to make the point that RAGBRAI has always been a hardcore not-for-kids-or-faint-of-heart party. Cops routinely told the miller lite chicks not to announce that chicks should flash them to earn beads or they'd be arrested for "inciting a riot". This NEVER would have happened 10 years ago. And I would be willing to bet if Lance rides next year, they'll actually get arrested.

Sorry mainstream america, I gotta call bullshit on you here. RAGBRAI should fall under the "if you can't stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen" file. We aren't bringing our drunken bullshit to your front door, we're bringing it to middle-of-nowhere Iowa. And seeing as how we've been doing it for 34 years, I don't think Iowa has any particular beefs about it.

So drink up or get the fuck out pussies!