Mosquitoes,
Well, the time is upon us to finalize our plans for the big day, which is less than a month away. There are a lot of things that need to be completed before we are ready to go, so I’m going to try to get them completed with this set of notes, so this should be the last set of notes you guys get before I see you here on July 19th.
The Mosquito ride was a great success! If you weren’t there, you certainly missed out on a lot of fun and you have some catching up to do come the best day of the year. I would estimate that we had 40-50 riders and as far as I know it went really well. The team would like to thank Rich and my parents for helping host the ride and making it run smoothly. We also want to thank Matt the bus driver. He drove the sag wagon (there were some Red Eyes on the ride) until after midnight taking care of some of the intoxicated riders. That was a great help. The bus seems to be in great shape and everything worked as is should.
As far as things that need to be taken care of by you guys, I need another $60 for dues. That brings the RAGBRAI total to $120, along with your yearly dues of $15. Please make sure that you get the rest of it to me before RAGBRAI. Don’t bring it to me on the Friday before we leave, it makes me really confused. I got all of the shirt orders in as best I could. We had a lot of late orders come in and I tried to get them all organized but am not sure if they all got in and are correct. Forgive me if I screwed up, but I did my best. We ordered more shirts this year than we ever have in the past. We are the greatest team ever!
We are going to have a pre-RAGBRAI party at our place in Marion the night before we leave. It will kick off the ride. We have a big yard, so please come by and camp out if you would like. We have some room to sleep inside also. We had this party two years ago and hopefully I won’t have to make a trip to the ER this time. My wife will be here to help keep me in line, so that will help. I will send another attachment with directions. I also have that Friday off, so if anyone is flying in to CR I can pick you up and do all sorts of good thing. The party Friday will start whenever you all get there. As far as Saturday, we are going to be leaving at 8:00am. I know that is early, but we have a long way to go this year. The bus will travel up from here to Waterloo and probably make a stop at Clear Lake to pick up anyone if we need. We won’t be going through Des Moines this year. I believe that we are going to utilize Chickenman’s beer truck. He will be hauling a bunch of our gear and bikes to help with the weight and space issue on the bus. He may have to haul an extra keg for us also. The bus will have several kegs, and some vodka-lemonades for the trip.
A few things that you should all bring on RAGBRAI are, a helmet, sun block, bike lights for night riding if you want, your bike, money, anything with a mosquito on it, and whatever you need to sleep with. Let me know if you have questions, and call me 319-373-0514 if you need. If you aren’t here by 8:00 on Saturday, you are on your own! See you all Friday night.
Mosquito dude
Blaine McLaughlin
