SMALL TOWN, Iowa — “When did gas stations stop selling maps?”

I was standing in a Casey’s in a pass-through town early on in RAGBRAI 2015 when my bad habit of talking out loud to no one in particular flared up, this time with both annoyance and desperation obvious in my voice. As a child of Google maps and numbered blocks, I was lost with a phone unable to connect to an overloaded tower, and with a sense of direction not compatible with winding country roads.

A woman bagging up a slice turned to me. “Where are you looking to go?” she said.

I replied with the next town on my itinerary, one a few stops away, where I would hunt for a new story. “Easy,” she replied, rattling off roads she’d no doubt driven most of her life — but her suggestions were on the route. (Driving on the RAGBRAI route is a major no-no for obvious reasons.)

She didn’t know another way, but asked her friend, the cashier, who was sort of familiar with how to get there. In walked a farmer they knew, who offered more keys to my puzzle but didn’t have the piece to finish it.

A shopper, just back from the town square, heard us and told me the way using north, south, east and west turns as directions. My face gave away how little I understood the compass, so she offered to see if a local policeman friend had a map.

One phone call and a few minutes later, he was there, map in hand, sketching my route on the barely visible lines representing local roads. “Good luck,” he said, passing me his number in case I got lost.

As I sat and processed news of the RAGBRAI marketing team's surprise resignation, tendered by social media posts and emails sent to a database of followers built over the ride’s 47 years, this was one of the stories that wouldn’t stop swirling through my mind.

What wasn’t popping up in my memory were the ride's logistics. Not the Excel documents, not the sales pitches, not the merchandise tent, not the secrecy behind the route, not the binders of how-tos and what’s-whats.

Those are important building blocks, sure, but they are not the heart of RAGBRAI, the colloquialism for the Register’s Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa. They are not the moments people hold dear, not the images conjured for years to come.

What I realized as I wrestled with sleep was that this roving carnival set on the back of two wheels has never been about the people who ran the ride. RAGBRAI is about the people who rode the ride, the towns who hosted riders and the space — literal or metaphorical — the event offered riders to find whatever it was that enticed them to put their lives on hold and risk saddle sores in the July heat.

RAGBRAI isDonald Kaul and John Karras, godfathers of the ride and bicycle enthusiasts who finagled the Register to pay expenses as they rode across the state in 1973. Their boss agreed to the scheme as long as they invited readers. A cultural institution — considered the oldest, largest and longest recreational bicycle touring event in the world — was born.

Both grumbled for years about how their silly idea had become an out-of-hand behemoth, but make no mistake, they both loved RAGBRAI deeply. When I broke the resignation news to Karras, 89, he was “stunned,” “dismayed” and, frankly, heartbroken he hadn’t been consulted.

RAGBRAI is 400,000 people who have ridden, and thousands more who will ride.

RAGBRAI is families eschewing screens for the great outdoors.

RAGBRAI isthe mile of silence, a short length of road where the party dies in favor of stoic reflection. It’s Di Lenz, who woke up before the roosters to decorate the 2018 mile in cardinal and gold in recognition of her good friend, Shawn Gosch, who was killed when a car hit him on a training ride. It’s the family of Grace Harken, who lost their daughter the same way and were fighting for tougher distracted driving laws when they rode RAGBRAI in her honor. It’s Cassandra Rieken, 8, killed while riding her tricycle, whom RAGBRAI riders paid respects to along the 2018 mile.

► More:Grace Harken was killed by a distracted driver while bicycling. Now, her siblings ride RAGBRAI in her memory.

RAGBRAI is Wilma Bittinger and Christian Parkes, a mother and the son she put up for adoption decades before, who chose RAGBRAI as the place they would meet for the first time. Taking a leap of faith few others would, they started out on the 420 miles across the state mere minutes after making introductions and camped in the same tent over seven days.

RAGBRAI is the international riders who couldn’t point out Iowa on a map, but suddenly find themselves in the middle of cornfields. It’s the man from Finland at the Ackley library who was so-ex-cit-ed to tell me about his trip that he didn’t pick up my subtle “I’m working here” hints.

RAGBRAI is spouses who found love on passing bicycles.

RAGBRAI is charitable. Ever since a registration fee was levied in 1982, a slice of the profits has been donated to about 20 charities on behalf of RAGBRAI, Des Moines Register Media and the Gannett Foundation. Contributions focus on groups that support families and children and community enrichment.

RAGBRAI is really charitable. As hungry and thirsty riders parade through small communities, they support pancake breakfasts and spaghetti dinners for church roofs and school trips and band uniforms and dearly held community events. Other teams pedal for a greater purpose, educating or soliciting donations for the cause closest to their hearts.

RAGBRAI is high school buddies who reunite for one week of revelry every year.

RAGBRAI is the Dream Team, a club of youth who would not otherwise have access to the ride. Seeking to impart all the life lessons that kids don't want to be lectured on, Dream Team trainers and funders instead hand them a bike and give them the opportunity to be part of the cycling community.

RAGBRAI isIowa Team BLUE (formerly known as Team C.O.P.S), who, despite the heated atmosphere around police in the last few years, held ceremonies with family members of fallen officers along the route and offered themselves up for honest conversations about modern policing as they chased the next town.

RAGBRAI is Dr. Jay Alberts, a Parkinson’s researcher at the Cleveland Clinic, who went on RAGBRAI to bring attention to the need for more Parkinson's research but discovered that biking eased the disease’s symptoms. That chance revelation was the spark to his groundbreaking study that would reverse the common practice of recommending repose for Parkinson's patients.

RAGBRAI is the volunteers who are up early and out late ensuring all goes well, but rarely taking any credit.

RAGBRAI is the Gustafson family, who rode in memory of their son who died at 22; and Bruce Brockway, who rode to raise awareness for organ donation in honor of his young son who donated after dying in a freak accident; and the countless other families who ride to remember a passed loved one.

RAGBRAI is Steve Van Deest, a quadriplegic who, with his sister, rode a homemade four-wheeled bike at a time when handcycles, Hase recumbents and specially-made adaptive wheels didn’t mingle as comfortably as they do today with able-bodied riders. In the wake of his pioneering treks, RAGBRAI has become more welcoming to riders of all abilities — even featuring an Adaptive Sports Iowa team of riders with all sorts of custom bikes and gear.

RAGBRAI is the host towns — there's been at least one in all of Iowa’s 99 counties — that come up with themes and pitch together to show people what "Iowa Nice" really means.

RAGBRAI is Chuck Offenburger, the “Iowa Boy” and a former Register columnist. Despite his resistance to going on his first ride, Offenburger says RAGBRAI saved his life by waking him up to the consequences of bad habits.

Chuck would go on to save other RAGBRAI lives by fostering AA meetings along the route.

RAGBRAI is Mr. Pork Chop, the late food vendor whose pink bus ushered hungry riders to a filling lunch of, what else, a pork chop, and whose jovial “pork chopppppppp” call was sure to bring a smile to even the most tired rider.

RAGBRAI is the pie-eating contest and the cornfield wrestling rings and everything that’s honest-to-goodness ridiculous about this bacchanalia.

RAGBRAI is my colleagues and I, past and present, who work 18 hours a day for a week to follow this parade, getting pictures and telling stories of a tradition that started as a joke but became a roving metaphor for the good that humanity has to give.

RAGBRAI isJim Green, who, in the early '90s, when RAGBRAI really was a party on wheels, instituted rules that made the event more family-friendly, starting it down the path to becoming a national institution.

And RAGBRAI is, in part, TJ Juskiewicz and his team. Juskiewicz took the framework Green set up and brought the ride to the international stage by corporatizing it through sponsorships and an ever-growing circle of famous friends who lent their voice to the choruses of RAGBRAI’s awesomeness.

But make no mistake: Their piece of the pie is no bigger and no more important than any other.

RAGBRAI doesn’t belong to them. RAGBRAI already is the people’s ride. Always has been, always will be — including in 2020.

I'll see you out there.

And, no need to worry about me or my sense of direction — now I buy my maps ahead of time.

Read more:

Register Storyteller Daniel P. Finney contributed to this column.

Courtney Crowder, the Register's Iowa Columnist, traverses the state's 99 counties telling Iowans' stories. No editor, corporate PR drone or whistleblower asked me to write this piece. In writing this piece, I open myself up to criticism and trolls and whatever dark monsters the Internet can throw at me, and I am not too big to admit that is scary. Reach her at ccrowder@dmreg.com or 515-284-8360. Follow her on Twitter @courtneycare.