(Milford)– RAGBRAI officials Sunday began inspecting this year’s route. RAGBRAI Chairman Matt Phippen says a group of riders Sunday inspected the first leg of the route from Orange City to Milford…
“You know over the last 20 trips I’ve been in an F-150 doing 50 miles an hour, you miss things. From a rider’s perspective you feel that crack, you feel that bump, so we want to make sure that we help make sure that the roads are in a good spot.”
Phippen says the pre-inspection teams are also taking some time to explore the pass-through and overnight cities…
“Day one is roughly a little over 71 miles so we explored a little bit. Like I say with our full team we brought in we have social media so we are going around to all the different locations and taking pictures and talking to communities. We added some more extra bonus miles. So yeah, the day of, we’ll be 70 some miles.”
Today (Mon.), Phippen says the route inspection team will be biking the second leg of the route from Milford to Estherville, including the roughly 15 miles through Minnesota, where the riders will go through some Jackson county parks on the south side of Loon Lake. It’s the first time ever RAGBRAI has crossed state lines…
“I made three phone calls, State Patrol, the sheriff and D.O.T in Minnesota. They were all very receptive. We asked them to start to plan and they’ve been fantastic to work with. It would be really, really cool to take our ride 15 miles into another state. We’re learning a lot, we’re learning how to work with other states and what their rules and regulations are. So this has definitely been a learning process for us. Will we do it again? Maybe. I mean there’s not that many times we go that far north but there’s other states we can maybe dip into. I think it’s been very well received from the riders. When we pull 50 states it’s really kind of cool to go to a state where we pull a lot of Minnesota riders down into Iowa.”
Phippen adds riders will also have an option to ride small legs of the route on gravel roads if they want to…
“We want to show riders how gravel changes from one side of the state to the other, because it definitely does. Driving in a vehicle the land and the views change too because you’re truly kind of in these hidden spots. So based on where the route goes we spill off on to a gravel road, we ride a little bit on gravel and it connects back to the route. So the towns that are on route still have the riders coming through and support.”
Phippen and other RAGBRAI officials met with local committee members and answered questions from the public during a meeting early Sunday evening in Milford.
