RAGBRAI registration opens Monday: 'People are chomping at the bit to register,' marketing manager says

Tyler Jett | The Des Moines Register

Show Caption Hide Caption Trace the route of every RAGBRAI Take a look back at all the routes taken during the history of the Register's Annual Bike Ride Across Iowa.

Participants can sign up for the 2020 Register's Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa beginning Monday.

RAGBRAI Senior Marketing Manager Anne Lawrie said organizers planned to open registration on Nov. 15, but they moved the date up four days for those who want to make a statement of support for RAGBRAI. The ride experienced controversy last month when longtime ride director T.J. Juskiewicz left the company to start a competing ride.

Lawrie said beginning registration on Monday will be more convenient for riders. Had it opened on a Friday, as originally planned, some riders would not have been able to reach the ride's staff with questions over the weekend. There is a link for registration on the RAGBRAI website at ragbrai.com.

"We're ready to go," Lawrie said. "And we know people are chomping at the bit to register this year and show support for RAGBRAI. We're going to open up early."

Like RAGBRAI, Juskiewicz's Iowa's Ride will also run from July 19-25, he has said. Registration for his ride already is open.

Pete Phillips, co-founder of Pork Belly Ventures, one of the charter companies that helps cyclists with ride logistics, said beginning registration for the 2020 RAGBRAI will assuage fears among some riders and vendors.

"One of the concerns was that, when the previous staff left, all these little details, all these little moving parts that make the ride happen, were somehow not going to happen," Phillips said. "...Why would it not work? I don't know. But there was just this general sense. There are so many little details to this thing. Are they going to put these things together?"

Phillips' Pork Belly Ventures, which works with 1,400 riders a year, is one of two major charters to commit to RAGBRAI for next year. Timothy Haeffner, owner of Out of Staters, said he chose RAGBRAI about a week after Juskiewicz announced his ride.

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Bob Brancel, owner of Brancel Charters, said he is "90% committed" to RAGBRAI. He wants to reserve his decision until after the ride announces Juskiewicz's replacement. Brancel Charters supports about 700 riders a year, while Out of Staters supports 300- 400.

Charters play an important role in the event, picking up riders who fly into Iowa for the annual event. The companies drive luggage to towns where riders stop for the night, and some offer other services like tents and shower trailers.

For his part, Juskiewicz has secured support from at least two charters. Kyle Jaeger, of Bikes To You, which supports about 150 to 200 riders, declined to comment on why he chose to go with Juskiewicz. So did Bubba Barron, owner of Bubba's PAMPERED Peddlers, which supports about 300 riders a year.

"I just want to keep those decisions to me," Barron said Thursday. "It was my decision. I don't want to sway anybody else."

Juskiewicz left RAGBRAI Oct. 14. He said officials at Gannett, which owns the Register and RAGBRAI, had censored a statement he wanted to issue distancing the ride from the Register after a negative response to a profile a reporter for the paper wrote about Carson King. King, an Iowa State fan, became a sensation after his appearance holding a sign seeking beer money on ESPN's "College Gameday" in Ames went viral and morphed into a fundraising drive that led to a $3 million donation to the University of Iowa Stead Family Children's Hospital.

Some vendors said they have not heard many complaints from longtime RAGBRAI riders. Brancel said most customers who responded to an online poll he conducted did not connect King to the ride.

Of the 550 respondents, Brancel said 44% indicated they would stick with RAGBRAI no matter which ride he supported. Thirty percent said they would follow Brancel Charters to either ride. The other 26% said they supported Iowa's Ride no matter what.

Many riders come to RAGBRAI from out of town. Brancel said most of them didn't even know the Register had published a controversial article. Others didn't know Juskiewicz had left RAGBRAI.

"The Carson King [controversy] seems to be more of an Iowa thing," Brancel said. "Since our customer base isn't really in Iowa, they weren't really wrapped up in it."

Haeffner said some of his longtime customers initially wanted to bolt for Iowa's Ride. But he said most changed their minds after a couple of days. They respected the work Juskiewicz and his staff had done, but they described RAGBRAI as an iconic Iowa brand that they didn't want to abandon.

Haeffner said many riders talk about how many years in a row they've participated in RAGBRAI, and don't want to break that streak. He said he thought about his own child, whose sixth-grade math book contained a word problem about RAGBRAI.

"Riders have their tradition," he said. "They want to keep those things intact. Quite a few of them initially said, 'We need to go with the new ride.' Then they rethought it."

Some vendors also took offense to Juskiewicz's decision to book his ride the same week as RAGBRAI. Juskiewicz has said he did so because riders had already planned vacation time for those dates. (During a town hall in Ames on Sunday, he said he was open to changing the date in future years.)

"That's fine if T.J. wants to do it," said Joe Hildebrand, who supplies shower trailers and bunk houses to RAGBRAI. "But it's just — same days, same rides. It's fishy."

Phillips said he brought the issue up with Scott Garner, RAGBRAI's former assistant ride director, who also left for Iowa's Ride last month.

"I guess we know how that went," he said. "But that's the question I think everybody would really like to know or to have resolved. Why do we have to choose? Why can't we have Iowa's Ride be in June or August or some other time where potentially people could do both rides and not have to choose? And vendors like us could potentially do both and don't have to choose.

"RAGBRAI is special. I don't want to mess with it. If you want to build on Iowa's cycling culture, build on Iowa's cycling culture. But let's not mess with the biggest multiple-day bike ride in the world."

Tyler Jett covers jobs and the economy for the Register. Contact him at 515-284-8215 and tjett@registermedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @LetsJett.

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