Charles City RAGBRAI repeaters share stories from the road

By Mary Pieper, Special to the Press

Some Charles City area cyclists can’t get enough of RAGBRAI.

“It’s just a fun way to meet a lot of people,” said Dick Neal, 78, of rural Floyd, who has done the full bicycle ride across Iowa 17 times since 1996 and has completed part of the route another five times.

Steve Martin of Charles City, 55, has gone on RAGBRAI almost every year since 1996. The one exception is 2001, when his daughter Whitney was born shortly before the ride started.

Whitney, now 21, has been riding along with her dad on RAGBRAI since she was 16. Martin’s 17-year-old son Drew also goes on RAGBRAI.

Martin has made lots of friends from around Iowa and from other states while on RAGBRAI.

Martin said when he was younger he was more into “the party side” of RAGBRAI, but “as I got older and had been on it for a few years, it was the riding part of it, just what was going on in each town as we passed through each day, seeing what the towns had to offer … and now I like meeting different people, grilling out, hanging out with our team, going downtown to what they have for activities.”

Then there’s 66-year-old Steve Swartzrock of Charles City, who will be participating in his 48th RAGBRAI later this month.

When Swartzrock first rode across the state in 1974, the ride was called SAGBRAI – the Second Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa. The first one had taken place the year before.

Swartzrock has ridden on every RAGBRAI since. Even when the official ride was canceled in 2020 due to COVID-19, he rode on his own from Sioux Falls, South Dakota, to Keokuk, Iowa.

About 2,000 people participated in that second ride in 1974. This year 17,000 have registered and thousands more are expected to tag along for all or parts of the way.

During the first rides, “a lot of old ladies would look at you and go, ‘It looks like you need a little food or something,’” Swartzrock said. “People were giving you food and drinks.”

Nowadays vendors sell food and beverages to hungry and thirsty cyclists along the route.

“I typically gain 5 pounds during RAGBRAI. I eat too much,” Swartzrock said. “I’ve never eaten so much pie in my life.”

During RAGBRAI’s early days, nobody wore helmets and very few women rode. Fortunately, both of those things have changed, according to Swartzrock.

“Now you are riding along and you go, “Wow, she just went by me like I’m standing still,” he said.

It was Swartzrock’s neighbors who first convinced him to go on SABGBRAI in 1974. He rode with Team Rockford, as it was known back then. The group eventually grew to around 60 people, many of them from far outside of Floyd County.

Today the team is down to about a dozen members from Iowa, Minnesota and Oklahoma. They only see each other during RAGBRAI, so the ride “is like a little reunion,” Swartzrock said.

They aren’t together much during the ride because everyone rides at their own pace. However, they meet up in the evenings and eat together.

The team members go to bed at 9:30 p.m.

“We aren’t the rowdy group. We are looking for a quiet place to camp, not a party place,” Swartzrock said.

The team members get up at 5 a.m. so they can stay ahead of the bulk of the riders, who generally hit the road at 6 or 7 a.m.

Riders from Charles City have something special to look forward to this year as their town is once again one of the overnight stops on the route.

It seems every five or six years, RAGBRAI organizers chose Charles City to host the riders for a night.

The city gets picked so often because it does such a great job, according to Swartzrock.

“It’s a time for Charles City to shine,” he said.

Every time the city is an overnight RAGBRAI stop, Swartzrock hosts riders at his home. When RAGBRAI last came to town in 2017, he had 100 people sleeping either inside or outside his house. This year he has only 20 or so staying with him.

Martin said, “Charles City has always done a really good job for RAGBRAI and we have always gotten really good compliments. It’s always nice when it comes to your hometown and you want to do a good job and know everything is happening, and it’s fun downtown and people enjoy it.”

Also, “It’s nice to stay in your own bed to so you don’t have to put a tent up,” he said.

When Martin first started going on RAGBRAI, he rode with a few other members of his Charles City High School graduating class. Their team, known as the CC Riders, began to grow. They even got a bus in 2000 to use for their SAG vehicle.

The team, which now has 20 to 30 members, still has the bus. It is painted bright orange so it stands out from the other SAG vehicles and the team members can recognize it when they reach an overnight stop.

“It’s easy to lose people,” Martin said. “When you come into a town it is just wall-to-wall people walking.”

The CC Riders haven’t used the bus for the past few years, but it is coming back this year, according to Martin. Team member Roy Salinas put a new deck on it and has been taking the vehicle out on the road for short spins because it has sat for so long without being driven.

Area residents who go on RAGBRAI often participate in the Bike Around Tuesday rides held every week from spring through fall in Charles City. The group typically rides for 22 miles a night.

The RAGBRAI repeaters also ride on their own to train.

Swartzrock said if he gets in 600 miles on his bike during spring and early summer before RAGBRAI, he’s happy. He noted other riders prefer to have 3,000 miles under their belts first.

Neal first became interested in going on RAGBRAI because of biking with his kids. He and his wife, Josie, would go on short rides with them from Floyd to Charles City.

Josie is now the SAG driver for her husband when he goes on RAGBRAI.

This year Neal will only ride a few days instead of the whole route. On one of those days, four generations of his family will be riding together.

He will be accompanied on either Thursday or Friday, depending on the weather, by daughters Rochelle and Jacqueline, a granddaughter, and a 5-year-old great-granddaughter who will be on a trailer bike fastened to his bike “so she goes where I go,” he said.

Neal hopes they will be able to ride together for at least 10 miles.

“We are really looking forward to that,” he said.

Swartzrock’s kids have gone on RAGBRAI with him beginning at age 12. He started out on a tandem bike for three years before they could do it on their own bikes.

These days battery-powered bikes, also known as e-bikes, are becoming more common on RAGBRAI, according to Swartzrock. He estimates 10-15% of all the riders are now riding these bikes, which gives beginning bikers and others who might not have braved the ride without one an opportunity to participate.

Swartzrock and his daughter rode e-bikes once.

“We didn’t even break a sweat,” he said.

One thing that makes RAGBRAI special is “you see people with $15,000 bikes and you see people with $300 bikes,” Swartzrock said.

There are even people who ride tricycles because of their balance issues, he said.

People from all over the world go on RAGBRAI because it’s a “bucket list” item for devoted cyclists, according to Swartzrock.

“It’s a legend,” he said.