SILVER CITY, Iowa (KMTV) — The full route for RAGBRAI (Register's Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa) was announced on Thursday morning. All the small towns that will host riders as they pass through on the way to overnight stops now know they have to start planning to host thousands of cyclists. Silver City is the first breakfast stop on the ride.
- City Councilwoman Rose Schoening has seen it all before: “Some people are excited and some people are like, “eh, we’ve been through this before, we’ll be fine.”
- “You know, what I’ve learned planning in Glenwood is that we need more volunteers up front for the planning process than we do the day of. Everybody wants to help the day of, so it’s not a big struggle to find volunteers who want to help that day. It is all the planning that goes into it,” said Jennie Davis, executive director of the Mills County Chamber of Commerce.
- See the route: RAGBRAI.com
- Mills County Chamber of Commerce: Glenwoodia.com
- Video shows ... the main street neighborhood of Silver City, Iowa, which has a population of 245 people, and the trailhead of the Wabash Trace nature trail; a meeting at city hall.
BROADCAST TRANSCRIPT:
I’m your southwest Iowa neighborhood reporter, Katrina Markel on Main Street where there will be thousands of cyclists that will come through this town of 250 people.
“It hit Facebook real fast,” Silver City Mayor Sharon McNutt said.
After roughly 30,000 cyclists depart Glenwood on Sunday, July 21, they’ll roll through the tiny communities of Silver City, Henderson and Emerson, on the way to Red Oak.
City Councilwoman Rose Schoening has seen it all before.
“Some people are excited and some people are like, “eh, we’ve been through this before, we’ll be fine,” Schoening said.
Jennie Davis, the executive director of the Mills County Chamber of Commerce, says it’s a big undertaking that requires a lot of helping hands.
“You know, what I’ve learned planning in Glenwood is that we need more volunteers up front for the planning process than we do the day of. Everybody wants to help the day of, so it’s not a big struggle to find volunteers who want to help that day. It is all the planning that goes into it,” said Davis.
Community leaders in Silver City sat down, just six hours after the route announcement on Thursday, to start planning: water stations, food, porta-potties, uniformed law enforcement, cleanup crews … and food has to meet state health codes.
“If you don’t meet that inspection or everything on that inspection sheet then they close you down,” Schoening said.
Mayor Sharon McNutt and Schoening say there are good volunteer opportunities for youth and nonprofit organizations, and considering the town will host more than 100 times its population over the course of that day, they’ll need the volunteers. The Mills County Chamber of Commerce is a good place to start for more information.
