IOWA, USA — This is supposed to be RAGBRAI week. Teams would be hitting their third stop on the seven day journey across Iowa.
Instead, RAGBRAI has been postponed a year.
But that hasn’t stopped some teams from getting together, and making it feel even a little bit normal, even if the official RAGBRAI ride is on hold.
“I think it was kind of expected we kind of knew that it was an issue with the pandemic with COVID-19 and we weren’t going to be able to probably do this," said Bryan Brownsberger.
Team Love Shack started in 2008 with a couple of cousins, friends and a small trailer.
Drew Campbell said, “Well, we’ll call it the love shack because there wasn’t room for anybody and it has literally grown from that four of us to however many there are right now. Incredible team of great people to ride with."
So they decided to still find away to enjoy their favorite parts of RAGBRAI while staying safe.
“You know we kind of decided we needed to do something as a team. You know a lot of people had this time off. And we wanted to get some bike riding in and and just decided to try and do our own thing.”
So with no ride across Iowa…
“We're riding the trails and like I say we take frequent stops. There’s riders that are fast riders and slow riders but they’ll stop and we just kind of get together and there’s a lot more chatting and just hanging that’s the joy of getting to gather because we all know what’s going on and we still ride together," Campbell said
What Team Love Shack has learned in the last 12 years of RAGBRAI, is the riding is great...
“To have ragbrai canceled and to have us from all over get together meant a lot to us. Whether it was to ride trails today or all week was something for us," said Donna Johnson.
But it’s the people that make the memories.
“That’s what it’s about, that’s what RAGBRAI is about is when you are out there hanging out with your team then you also get other teams we’re friends with a lot of other teams. I think you miss that and it’s really important to get together as a group," Brownsberger said.
Campbell said, “It’s about the comraderie there wouldn’t have to be necessarily a RAGBRAI we could still get together and have a great time, and I think this is just that cleansing palet that’s what we felt was important.”
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