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World's biggest recreational bike ride begins anew for golden anniversary trek across Iowa
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Riders, participating in RAGBRAI 50, (Register’s Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa), roll out of Sioux City towards Kingsley, Iowa, Sunday, July 23, 2023. - photo by Zach Boyden-Holmes/The Des Moines Register via AP
SIOUX CITY, Iowa (AP) — What bills itself as “the world's longest, largest and oldest recreational bicycle touring event” was more like the world's biggest traffic jam Sunday as riders, packed together in a sinewy stream of brightly colored jerseys and shorts, churned across the Loess Hills on the western edge of Iowa. It's called RAGBRAI — the Register’s Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa — and it promised to be bigger than ever this year, as the brainchild of two writers from The Des Moines Register celebrated its golden anniversary with a route similar to its first. That meant a start in Sioux City, where ambitious riders ceremonially dipped their rear tires in the Missouri River, and a finish for those with the legs and the temerity to last that long seven days later in Davenport on the Mississippi River.