The final town I stopped in for the 2024 RAGBRAI was Milo. They had a fun theme of Milo-ritaville. They had all sorts of Jimmy Buffett themed decorations and activities.
I’m not a fan of Jimmy Buffett (nobody tell Tim), but it was a fun setup.
Here are the pictures:
It was in Milo-ritaville that I accidentally took a picture of our worthless pile of dog vomit governor. I guess it was nice of her to take a break from making sure our state circles the drain and plummeting our education and health care rankings while stripping people of the absolute most basic of human rights and stealing taxpayer money to fund private school scams to payback her out-of-state backers to take a bike ride through scenic Iowa. At least the pigs and cows don’t know that we can’t keep teachers or doctors or young people in this state.
It probably isn’t a coincidence that the shutter on my camera broke a few days later.
But all of that is neither here nor there. This concludes my RAGBRAI pictures. I hope to check out RAGBRAI again this year. RAGBRAI goes from July 19-26. It goes through the following towns this year:
- Orange City
- Milford
- Estherville
- Forest City
- Iowa Falls
- Cedar Falls
- Oelwein
- Guttenberg
I’ll probably connect with it in Iowa Falls as that is the closest town this year. But there are options. Carla has connections near Milford. Jay has connections near Oelwein. You never know, but I’m already looking forward to it.
Multiple items:
1. Jimmy Buffett makes garbage music. One at a Computer Mine Conference in Vegas, several of us went to dinner at Margaritaville and got stuck in line for 1.5 hours. (Jesse asked during that time if he could slide into their giant margarita and, when told no, asked if there was anywhere in town he could do so.) The awful constant loop of crap music was torturous – and Jon and I got stuck at an airport Margaritaville in either Jamaica or Mexico, and I have never been so glad for the ambient chaos of an airport.
2. It’s a shame you couldn’t get our trash-a** governor under the “Some people say there’s a woman to blame” sign. Piece de resistance.
3. Jon is riding the Estherville to Forest City leg this coming summer, as he’s from up near Forest City. He grew up near there. Alice wants to ride with him, and I have this fear she doesn’t realize how far that is…
1. Olivia’s stepdad Tim is a big time Parrothead, so I’ve done some time listening to Jimmy Buffet cover bands. I mean there is worse music out there, but it just isn’t good.
2. I wish I would have thought about that. I might have hung out longer and tried for that. It would have been the best picture of here I’ve ever taken, by far.
3. They just announced the ride through towns today. Looks like from Estherville to Forest City is:
+Armstrong
+Swea City
+Bancroft
+Titonka
+Woden
+ Crystal Lake
Estherville has a sweat Tour de Ville theme where Forest City has a Ride Forest Ride theme. If they go all in on a Forrest Gump theme, that would be pretty sweet! Although the town I think has the best theme is Oelwein because it seems to deal with rubber ducks. Not sure why. It is Duck, Duck, Viaduct.
Check it out:
https://www.oelweinragbrai.com/
And 71 miles is a long ride. Good luck to Alice!
1. It’s better than Dave Matthews Band, I guess. Or Sheryl Crow.
2. I’ve never loved the latent misogyny of the “there’s a woman to blame” lyric, but with her, it’s entirely accurate. Trash human.
3. Jon is from the Titonka/Woden area! He just this morning figured out we’re supposed to be going to Chicago the first part of that week for an acoustic Yeah Yeah Yeahs concert, so we’re figuring out if they’ll make it or not. Those are some crazy themes – if there’s not a bunch of people in 70s red short-shorts and copious ping pong tables in Forest City, I’m going to be devastated. Love the ducks!
Dave Matthews is the worst, but at least he is somehow better than Kid Rock. I’m waiting for the day where I find out an actual good musician is Republican. I don’t think it has happened yet.
I confess, I didn’t know that was a song lyric until I took a picture of it on that day and sent it to somebody and asked. I’m not even sure which song it came from. I’m going just assume it is “Cheeseburger in Paradise”.
When you go to a concert in Chicago do you drive or fly?
Sometimes the towns in between stops (like Milo) have cool themes, but I think the only way to find out what they are is to actually show up. Slater had a Dr. Seuss theme last year. Madrid had an Alice in Wonderland theme. Both were really well done. If Jon does the ride are you going up there too?
This is the Forest City page, if you haven’t seen it. Not much info there, but you can see the sweet logo:
https://forestcityragbrai.com/
I have admittedly never loved any of Kid Rock’s oeuvre (although I, like everyone alive in 1999, do know all of the lyrics to “Cowboy”). I never really understood the dirtbag culture thing. But this hard tilt toward extreme nationalism and racism is crazy to me. Similar with Ted Nugent, etc. Even freaking Van Morrison is a nutbag. Can you imagine just letting the fact that you’re garbage fly to a global audience like that? We’ve had that exact conversation about music in our house – even if I slightly agreed with Republican policies, their absolutely terrible musicians and comedians would be a big red flag. NONE of them are talented or funny.
I think it’s from Margaritaville! Based off of the fact that we heard it like seventeen times when we were at that restaurant.
Normally I would have flown, but we drive now that Charlie is older and Jon drives. With his ADHD, C had/has a ton of trouble being in the car for that many hours consecutively, but him getting older and being able to stop at Grandpa’s in the Quad Cities helps break it up. Todd and Kris also live in Peoria, which isn’t entirely on the way, but it also can break it up. I’m a terrible driver, so Jon driving is a big factor – there’s no way I’d drive in Chicago.
That would be so fun! I have a bike I enjoy, but perhaps not the endurance for even half that route. I could maybe do sad wagon? That seems more my skill set.
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