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Mike Conklin's Diaries - Part 4 - The Arrival

A funny thing will happen on the bus as we get within a hundred miles or so of our destination, LeMars.

You will begin spotting many bicycle-toting vehicles on the highway, which, like so many Lemmings headed for the sea, are going in our direction. The closer we get to the initial host town, these sightings become almost overwhelming.

There will be automobiles with bikes on top, trucks pulling trailers loaded with bikes, and, most noticeable, old, psychedelic-style school buses that look like something from the 1960s.

These buses will have their club names painted on the side, like Team Skin, Team BIG, The Whiners, Team Skunk, The Delaware Blue Hens, and, until they were booted out of RAGBRAI several years ago for lewd conduct, Team Cucumber. (Use your imagination on that one.)

If you are lucky, the route to our host site will take us directly through town and past the general campgrounds, where the enormity of RAGBRAI is sure to impress everyone who isn’t brain-dead. It’s acceptable to marvel aloud over what you’ll see.

There will be thousands of tents and bikers milling about, plus a midway full of larger tents erected by concessionaires and accessory sellers who will follow us throughout the week. To some it is Woodstock on Two Wheels. (Note to younger riders: Woodstock was this massive, outdoor rock concert in 1969 in upstate New York. Many consider it a seminal moment in the 60s peace movement, which is total bullshit. I digress.)

In fact, the traveling RAGBRAI nation is approximately 13,000 people. Do the math: This makes it, according to my calculations, the 26th largest community in Iowa and more than twice the size of most of the overnight towns hosting us this year. It is really the Taste of Chicago on Two Wheels.

After we get to our host, Gehlen Catholic School, you will quickly realize RAGBRAI is, indeed, about the loss of creature comforts. For many, this occurs with the simple putting up of a tent­---the one thing nobody practices before RAGBRAI.

At some point, it would be a good idea to circle back to town on foot, or on your bike (don’t worry about locks, by the way) to experience the atmosphere and, above all, find samples of LeMars’s most famous product---Blue Bunny ice cream. It’s great and, from this point on, forget about counting calories.

Whether you’re sleeping in that tent, on a floor, or on box springs without a mattress, it will be difficult to get truly comfortable on this night even though you’re tired. Your adrenaline will be pumping. But have no fear: Sleep will come a lot easier the next six nights.