RAGBRAI XXXVII

The overnight towns for this year's RAGBRAI route has just been announced. I still haven't decided if I am going to go on the bike ride this summer or not. Mel will probably not be coming along as she may not be in condition to ride this summer. Also, I am not sure if the team that I have ridden all my previous nine RAGBRAIs with, the Superior Hawgs, will be going this year. The person who owns the bus has not been in the best of health recently. In fact last year he did not come along. Instead the son of his girlfriend drove the bus. Hopefully the Hawgs will be able to make it. If they do not, I will probably want to find another team with which to ride.

This year's route is supposed to be just as hilly as last year's ride. It will have 22,806 feet of climb, which make it rank tenth in the amount of climbing. However, it will be the sixth shortest RAGBRAI, coming in at just 442.3 miles. Now although last year's RAGBRAI was very hilly, and I did not have much training in, I did not find the ride to be too difficult.

Anyway, here are the overnight towns for the thirty-seventh of the bike rides across Iowa:

• Council Bluffs
• Red Oak
• Greenfield
• Indianola
• Chariton
• Ottumwa
• Mount Pleasant
• Burlington

My first RAGBRAI, in 2000, started in Council Bluffs. That same year we also stayed overnight in Greenfield and Ottumwa, and ended in Burlington. In 2003, RAGBRAI stopped for the night in Mount Pleasant. I have never been to the other towns on this year's RAGBRAI route as overnight towns.