By CHUCK OFFENBURGER

DES MOINES, Iowa, July 26, 2026 — Oh, how I’ve loved RAGBRAI, the 53rd edition of which ended Saturday, July 25, in Dubuque. I’ve ridden 30-plus of them, starting in 1983, but in more recent years, just a day or two.

I will be forever grateful for all that the great bicycle ride across Iowa — and bicycling in general — have done for me.

But I’ve now bowed out of both. I skipped all of this summer’s RAGBRAI, and I’m giving away my bicycles.

It’s been a great ride!

When you’re 79 years old, when few friends your age are still riding, and when one of your best friends of similar age — Terry Rich — has recently been injured in a bicycling accident, well, I took it as a strong suggestion.

Terry, the former Iowa Lottery director, the boss at Blank Park Zoo in Des Moines and earlier a cable TV executive, is also recovering now from open heart surgery, which was unrelated to his bike accident. He may bounce back fully-fit and ready to ride again.

But I think I’ll stick to taking walks, porch-sitting and telling stories. Please be kind to an old man — you’ll probably already have heard or read some of them.

So, let me repeat what I’ve often said is the real significance of RAGBRAI, which more formally is the “Register’s Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa,” started by Des Moines Register columnists John Karras and Donald Kaul in 1973. It is one of the few truly “major league events” that happen in Iowa each year. By that, I mean it’s a cool enough event — even when held in the hottest of weather — that people will come from every state and a dozen or more other nations to ride it.

RAGBRAI takes these visitors into the heart of Iowa, our small towns, by meandering seven days and 500 or so miles across, up and down the state. They get a much better view, feeling and understanding of the state than they would by attending our other “major league events.” For example, the Iowa State Fair is a great state fair, but it isstuck in Des Moines, our largest city.

Now, let’s warm-up a story that happened back in 1997, near the end of the 25th RAGBRAI.

The Friday of that ride, as I pedaled into the southeast Iowa town of Stockport, enroute to our overnight stay in Fairfield, I was handed a note telling me to phone Barbara Henry in Des Moines.  She was the publisher of the Register and thus my ultimate boss, so I stopped at a phone booth (there actually was one in Stockport) and made the call.

“I keep being asked in meetings and getting phone calls, asking me if we’re ending RAGBRAI after this ride,” Henry said. “What’s that all about?  Where’s it coming from?”

Yes, I told her, that rumor has also been spreading wildly among the bicyclists on the ride.  Best I could guess, RAGBRAI co-founder Karras, my “cyclemate and co-host” as I called him, had recently retired from his full-time editing and column-writing position at the Register (although he had no plans to quit leading RAGBRAI).  Two years earlier, in 1995, I had fulfilled my lifetime cycling dream of leading a ride of Iowans across the U.S.  People were guessing both of us might be transitioning out, and maybe that would happen when we completed the highly-celebrated 25th anniversary ride.

“Well, have you written your column yet for tomorrow’s Register?” Henry asked.  When I told her I had another couple hours until deadline, she said, “Would you please quote me in it?”

Of course I will, I wisely responded.  What would you like to say?

Here it was, just as it appeared in the Saturday, July 26, 1997 edition of the Register:

“The Register ending RAGBRAI?” said Barbara Henry, president and publisher of the newspaper. “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.  Where’s that coming from?”

Then she put an exclamation point on it.

“Here’s the truth: It’s full-speed ahead for RAGBRAI. We’ll still be doing this when it’s 50!”

Much changed since 1997.  Barbara Henry moved on to become publisher of the newspaper in Indianapolis, and later retired.  RAGBRAI co-founders Karras and Kaul died – Kaul in 2018, Karras in 2021. The Register’s first two organizers of the ride, Don Benson and Jim Green, are also dead, Benson in 2011 and Green in 2019.

I left the Register in 1998 for teaching, freelance writing and eventually retirement.

But I’m still very loyal to the Register and RAGBRAI, too.  I’m proud to have had a role in building “the oldest, largest and longest recreational bicycle touring event in the world.”

It taught me a lot.

For example, in late 1990 and early ’91, the Register sent me on two trips to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iraq to cover the build-up, launch and victory of the United States armed forces and our allies in the Persian Gulf War.

When that assignment was completed, the Register bosses asked me to write a piece about what I learned over there.

“One thing I realized, afterward, is that the best training I’d had to go cover a war is that I had covered RAGBRAI,” I wrote. “What I learned was war and RAGBRAI are alike in three ways: 1) They’re both very big, 2) they’re both very confusing, and 3) everybody in them wants to talk. So they’re pretty good places for a reporter to be.”

Finally, I want to remind people that I once wrote a “mission statement” for RAGBRAI. I did so at the end of that 25th ride in ’97, when my big boss Barbara Henry reminded me with her phone call just how special the bike ride had become.

My statement after that:

“RAGBRAI is so fun that we’re going to keep doing it until everybody in Iowa has done it at least once. And we’re waiting for you!”

I think that’s still operative.

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You can comment on this column below or write the columnist directly by email at chuck@offenburger.com.