Town of 3,000 prepares for 20,000 bicyclists

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By Jennifer DeWitt | Thursday, July 24, 2008 |

VIDEO: Tipton prepares for RAGBRAI
The small town of Tipton prepares to be the final night stop for this year'…
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TIPTON, Iowa — Sharon Niles steadied a cell phone between her ear and shoulder Thursday as she washed a window of the old ticket booth at the Hardacre Theatre.

“It just needed a mannequin,” she said, inspecting the vintage mannequin — dressed in a RAGBRAI T-shirt and a bike helmet – who appeared to be ready to greet the scores of visitors headed to town.

“It’s all the little details,” Niles said, thrilled that the phone call had been about garbage cans arriving.

From setting up porta-potties, placing signage and stringing snow fence around the Cedar County Courthouse square, six months of planning for the invasion of 20,000 bicyclists and supporters was down to the heavy lifting and last minute surprises Thursday. The 36th statewide bicycle ride arrives in Tipton today for only the second time and the first time since 1982.

“You go in blind,” said Niles, a member of Tipton’s RAGBRAI executive committee. “RAGBRAI gives you a book that really helps you a lot, but at the same time it is all the little details they don’t have in there.”

Throughout the town, tables were going up on church lawns, tents were being erected outside businesses and volunteers were checking every detail to make sure the last overnight stay for RAGBRAI would be a success.

“RAGBRAI rocks,” said Dick Hall, who had ridden the first four days of this year’s ride but came home to Tipton to fulfill his committee duties. “This is the smallest town RAGBRAI goes through this year, and you really couldn’t be smaller just because of what all it takes to get it done.”

“Ames didn’t even know RAGBRAI was in town,” he said. “In Tipton, everybody is affected and involved.”

Dozens and dozens of volunteers were out and about completing every task needed for a town of 3,000 to play host to 20,000 visitors. Even more will be on hand today, assisting on a city-wide shuttle, serving meals at the local churches, hosting bicyclists in their homes and providing any other hospitality.

“All we have to make sure is there is enough food, showers and enough places for people to sleep,’’ Hall said, speaking from his experience of riding about five or six RAGBRAIs. “Everything else is the small stuff and we don’t sweat the small stuff.”

But there were folks sweating the small stuff Thursday such as Rita Sissel, who owns Tipton Bakery with her husband, Bob. “We baked from 4 a.m. to 10 p.m. Wednesday and we’re going to start again tonight about 10 and we just won’t stop.”

With trays and trays of cookies in the freezer ready to bake and crescent rolls – yet to be raised, fried and filled with fluffy white creme, she said it will take a lot more hands than the usual three employees to feed the onslaught of customers they hope will come in the door.

“(RAGBRAI) told us to take your best business day ever and multiply it by the best it could be,” Sissel said. “They also said don’t do something you wouldn’t necessarily do – don’t try something new.”

That was why the bakery’s efforts were going to its signature crescent rolls, doughnuts and cookies. They did, however, frost sugar cookies in honor of RAGBRAI with white frosting and a “red carpet” to go with Tipton’s theme of “Rolling out the Red Carpet.”

It is not a red carpet, but as the riders enter town near the fairgrounds they will be greeted by a new arch topped with a small bike and red flowers. A stretch of a dozen blocks decorated with American flags and small red bikes suspended to the power poles will lead them to the city park.

Travis Alden, Tipton’s community development director and a co-chair of the RAGBRAI committee, said, “I’ve been nuts for the past month. But we’re trying to not lose sight of the important things – that everyone is fed, safe and has a place to sleep.”

To accomplish the latter, he said Tipton was setting up campgrounds at the county fairgrounds primarily for the RVs as well as tent camps at the two school buildings, the city park, the library and a former implement dealer. “We had 3,000 people request private housing in people’s homes or yards,” he said, adding that “we were able to match a vast majority of those. But it’s getting to a point in Tipton where we’re tapped out of places to stay.”

Alden, who had never even heard of RAGBRAI until moving to Tipton two years ago, said the effort has drawn together more than 500 volunteers on 30 committees. “It’s good for the businesses. It’s good publicity and it’s brought people together who normally wouldn’t work together. I thought that is something great for the town the size of Tipton.”

RAGBRAI estimates each rider spends $50-$60 a day – with the majority spent in the town they overnight. As the last stay before the riders dip their bicycle wheels in LeClaire on Saturday, their arrival should be a financial boon for Tipton.

Mike Goetz, the co-owner of Family Foods – Tipton’s only grocery store, said he expects business to be booming as cyclists come in for water, Gatorade, fresh fruit and vegetables and the deli’s fried chicken.

“We’ve been real busy today, all week actually because all the locals are shopping now because they know they won’t be able to get to us Friday,” he said while helping deal with a problem involving a semi tractor trailer. The Nash Finch Co. truck — full of ice for the event — had one of its supports break through the asphalt street – tipping the truck to its side. “If this is the worst thing we have to deal with, we’re fine,” Goetz said.

His store also was busy delivering supplies sold to area churches, such as the United Methodist Church, which will serve thousands of meals.

Tina Nau, who is chairing the Methodist church’s effort, said pasta – with sausage, ground beef and vegetarian – will be on their menu as well as tacos and granola bars. But mostly she expects them to come for the pies and ice cream.

“We’ve baked 175 pies – most were made here,” she said, adding that the crew was under the watchful eye of Frances Kuehl, the church’s “master pie baker.”

“We’ve been preparing and working for about four months now. There’s 100 volunteers who had something to do with this – probably more,” Nau said. And the bicyclists will find them – “we’re setting up Burma Shave type signs on the road coming in so people know about us before they get here.”

Alden said it was the potential exposure RAGBRAI will give the small eastern Iowa town that convinced him to advocate for Tipton to play host. “I knew this would be a shot in the arm for the local organizations,’’ he said.

But there also is a fellowship in meeting the bicyclists who hail from around the country and the world. Countless residents will open up their homes to bicyclists – some strangers, some not.

Joanne Straumanis was busy cooking and planning how to serve and seat the 24 men and women who will camp in her back yard. To her husband’s surprise, she offered to have a fish fry for them – which meant buying boxes of Canadian walleye since her fisherman husband, Juris, can only bring home four fish at a time from each trip north. “The only thing I’m worried about is that I’ve never cooked for that many people I don’t know,” she said.

Likewise, Margo Weih will have 16 people in her home – three of whom she knows. But she’s not worried about cooking because she has committee duties that begin at 6 a.m. today. “I’ll be at the city park campground from 6 a.m. to 5 p.m. today before I go home and put on my transportation shirt.”

“I have enough beds for people to sleep up and off the floor,” said Weih, who recalled riding the second year of RAGBRAI, or SAGBRAI — the Second Annual Great Ride Across Iowa – as it was known then. She and family stayed in private homes from Council Bluffs to Dubuque.

“It’s so nice people will open up their homes. But that’s what Iowa is all about. That’s why we live in Iowa,” she said.

Jennifer DeWitt can be contacted at (563) 383-2318 or jdewitt@qctimes.com.

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