Kris Blocker and Andy Bartlett, RAGBRAI Update, April 10, 2026

All right, so the question is, is it cool down in Boone or cool down in Boone? What's the idea? Again, we have Chris Blocker here from Visiboon County and our RegBri committee, and the coordinator and co-coordinator is Andy Bartlett, manager from the legislative park.

So theme is cool down in Boone? Cool down in Boone. Okay, or is it cool down in Boone? I think it's the first one. Okay. All right, we'll go with that. We'll say both. They're both kind of cool, aren't they? Yeah, you can use it either way. It's multi thing you can do.

Again, we now know all the other RegBri things that we've been doing. A lot of people, of course, they had a meeting back on the 23rd, kind of your first meeting to get a lot of info. Now, I'm guessing you guys have been a little bit busy since then.

A lot of questions because different groups and organizations. Well, what about this? What's happening? So how's it been coming together so far? Really well. So part of our initial efforts planning for RegBri overnight in Boone is communication with the community.

So like you said, we had a community meeting in late March where we told as much as we knew and recruiting volunteers and sponsors and hosts for our riders, just giving that information out, our initial planning efforts to the community.

And as the ride moves along or gets closer to the overnight, we want to get all our plans in place in the stage set here in the community.

And then we start letting our riders know more about what they can find, where they can stay, what they can eat, and all the amenities and services available on the July 21st overnight stay.

Chris, I got to say that a lot of people are going, you know, they'd still come up with a lot of questions and different things like that. But really, we're early on in this whole process. And you still have people from RegBri.

I mean, we're talking to people that do this organization across the state. They're still making the rounds, still stopping and visiting. Every community is getting a visit by them. Every community they're going through. Yep, that's correct.

Like every two weeks they're in town and they meet with a different executive committee member and have different topics. And they highlight that specific information and give us more tidbits and just more details about that specific topic for that day.

So as well as our executive committee meets, what we're meeting about every two weeks right now, and we'll start ramping that up. But yeah, we just have really dug into a lot of meetings. And, you know, the RegBri team has given us lots of kudos.

We are ahead of a lot of other communities. But to your point, Jim, there's still a lot of time until July 21st. So we still have a lot of planning and there are still some things that are going to come to fruition.

Probably the big thing again, well, this week it went to the city. And again, a couple of different things from that meeting. First of all, they wanted to be the big contributor. So they put $20,000 towards that. And they are going to help with startup money.

Again, people tend to forget, we got a lot of things that cost some money to get going. Like we got to get the band. Yeah, right. Yeah. Yeah. The band, insurance, porta-pots, all those things. We got to put money down for those. We have a lot of expenses. Yeah. Yeah.

That are going to cost us a lot of money. Dollars that will be coming in from this, mostly off vendors, I'm guessing. Vendors, sponsorships. Yeah, there's a number of ways in which you can get involved as a sponsor, both with logos on our website, with t-shirt advertising.

There's a lot of different packages that you can sponsor at different levels. That's all available on visitboomcounty.com under the RAGBRI tab. Yeah, with that. Just say, contact Denny. Right? Yeah, Denny Hammond's taking care of the sponsorship.

But with that, we'll have a 10 by 17 digital display that'll be close to the stage. And it'll have a lot of our sponsors highlighted on that. So our sponsors will get a lot of recognition.

So I know that out of your main committee that you've got, we call it your executive committee. Basically, there are each one, each member, as its own other committee. We got Andy doing volunteers. I know that. Yeah. Yeah.

Volunteers is something that's not quite so relevant right now. But as we get closer to the ride, they told us, they said, you're going to need 300 to 400 volunteers on the day of RAGBRI. And then even some the next day with cleanup or set up the day before.

But they said, don't freak out because you'll probably get the majority of your volunteers the week before the ride gets here. So, you know, we've got a good jumpstart.

We have a volunteer interest form right now on the RAGBRI website that you can just put a placeholder in there and say, yep, I want to help that day. And we'll reach back out as we refine those roles and shift times for different volunteers. Sure.

And you've been doing the marketing, you have the marketing side. I do have the marketing piece of I get the fun part of RAGBRI along with organizing a lot of meetings and getting, getting a lot of things put into place. As we know, BJ McGinn was doing entertainment. Correct.

And again, the big one was hairball will be the entertainment. But he did also point out that there are several others that we are still going to have to get set up. Right. Yep. Yep. I think he's going to give an update today.

I think he has a lot of the afternoon entertainment locked in. So we'll be releasing that soon. So yeah, so we'll have entertainment from about noon on all the way into 10 30 on, on that evening.

So, and I know vendors, and this is one of the questions where you get your local businesses and, and churches and stuff like that, what's happening with this. But on the, on the vendor side, and you do have vendors that come in from out of town, obviously. And that's good.

That's part of the thing. The city has their process doing it, but I think they worked out an arrangement that everybody was agreeable to kind of handle it through one person or one group. Right. And Bill scare is kind of heading that up. He is heading that up.

So he's taken on all the vendor role. And, and you're correct. The city has allowed us to add their application into our process to simplify some things. So we'll take their application as well as they'll have to fill out our application.

They'll have to submit their certificate of liability, submit their state license, if they're serving food, um, and then pay their vendor fee. So yeah, Bill's taking care of all that. Come through that side of it that way.

Then the city does have the record if they come back later in the year for maybe pufferability days or something, or super nationals or we'll get vendor. They've already gone through the process. So yeah.

And chief, uh, Adams will be out doing their fire inspections the morning of on the 21st. All right. Well, let's talk. One of the big things that a lot of people are hearing about right now is do you want to be a host?

And I know that, uh, really you don't start matching things up until you get into maybe June or so, but, uh, building that list and we have a little bit of apprehension. We don't have a lot of people responding yet.

So, uh, there are ways people, if you are interested, even thinking about it, let them know. Yeah. There's a, there's a staying overnight is the big thing, right? So the dynamics of housing 20,000 or plus riders on one night is, is pretty complex.

So we're placing people in campgrounds. We're placing charters at different locations around town. And then the other, other aspect of that is sometimes groups or even individuals just want to stay with private residents or even at a business, you know, if you have space in town.

And so what we do is we do matchmaking with that. So we have a couple of forms available online right now where riders can request housing. If they want to stay away from the festival area or have more of a quiet, you know, place to stay, they can stay at a personal residence.

They can stay on a business lawn. They can stay in space that you own here in Boone. And you can fill out a form on visit boomcounty.com to, uh, to host a rider and just kind of list what amenities you have available.

We've got quite a few requests already for housing here in Boone from anywhere from one person up to 20 or 30 people to stay.

And, and one of the cool things about it from the other overnight towns we've talked to on previous rides and the Ragbride directors staff is that, uh, usually these matches that we coordinate for riders to stay at personal residences or property, they, they, they get along really well and they have unique experiences and they communicate with each other even after the ride is passed.

And then if it comes back through here in the next three to five years, you know, they've got that relationship built where they can reach back out and maybe stay with the same person again. So it's a, it's a neat dynamic to Ragbride.

And if you have space and are willing to open up your home or your yard, uh, for a group of riders or a couple of people, um, please fill out that form on visit boomcounty.com to host a rider.

Probably the one thing a lot of people will go back to and I say, this is not the same Ragbride you remember when they were here last time and stayed overnight, even the last pass-through. Correct. And it's a, it's different.

Uh, or we, we were midway town at that time, I think in 18. So, uh, this is, again, it's, it's a whole different animal right now. You mentioned charters. So a lot of people are going, what's that? Yeah. Yeah.

So a charter is, is an organization that will, that you can hire on to provide you with the Ragbride experience.

So if you're coming from out of state or even somewhere in Iowa and you don't have the means to jump on and just do Ragbride by yourself, you don't know a team that's riding, you hire this charter and I mean, they'll pick you up at the airport.

They'll shuttle you to the start of the ride in Onewa in Western Iowa. And then as you go from, from overnight town to overnight town, as you arrive, you find your charters camp, they have your tent set up, your meals planned, restroom and shower facilities on site.

So you, you literally just ride and eat the whole week across Iowa. And this charter provides the entire experience for you. So that's, that's totally different than what it was even five years ago and gaining in popularity each year too.

A whole new, a whole new, we can make money doing this kind of thing, but it's, it's the experience. Right. Again, helping with the experience. Yeah. So, uh, I mean that mentioned, uh, I think one of the other things during the first meeting, you mentioned with average age. Yeah.

It's, it's a little bit, yep. And they're ride experience is a little different than it was, uh, 20, 25 years ago. So there's a lot more RV camping now than there ever used to be.

I mean, there's still a big demand for tent camping and our main campground there will be at DMACC and that lawn space where the soccer fields are on the west side, but we have to find space for, for several hundred RVs throughout town as well when the ride comes through.

See, that's the, that's again, new concept or the way things are going now. Why someone will drive my RV here and then we'll gather there and then we'll go do our thing afterwards. But they still want pie, don't they? They still like their pie. Yeah.

So one of the questions I know from a lot of them that keep coming up to you is, uh, about this map and getting to be on the map and how do we do that? And for businesses that are in town and stuff, how do they do, where are we at on getting together on things like that? Yeah.

So our vendor application, um, just went, uh, live on visit been county.com this week. Um, so after we got done with the, uh, council meeting on Monday, made a few revisions to that. And now it's live on the web.

So, uh, on there, it shows that you can, um, you can be a, uh, for-profit, uh, vendor, you can be a nonprofit vendor. And then there's a spot where you can just be on the map.

So if you have a location that you will not be down in the festival area, but you want to be highlighted because the map is basically covers the town. It does. It does. And it's two-sided. So one side has their lodging on it and the other side has all vendors.

So, uh, those maps are printed 25,000 of them, um, for each overnight community is printed. Um, half of those will go to Guthrie center and they'll get them the day before they come to Boone. And then the other half will be in our information booths here in Boone.

So, uh, to be on the map. Yeah. You just have to fill out that form and then get that into bill scare and, and, uh, you'll get placed on our map once that's all completed. So, and I think I know that's one of the things that they're, well, how do we do this? What's it costing?

And things like that, again, it depends what you are, what you're trying to do. Yeah. Literally the map is the holy grail of Boone's overnight for reg bray.

And, and when we develop our vendors, even our offsite vendors, as we get some of those things cemented and you get your applications in, it'll help us develop our transportation routes and shuttles around town. Because we want to be able to help get riders to where you're at.

If you're serving an off site meal. And so we might drop people off in downtown or out on the west side or somewhere like that, depending on where all these offsite services are being offered to.

I know that, uh, Dave Sherry has been doing camping part and I'm anticipating that a lot of camping will end up at Mcco's just because that's one of the popular places to go. But you do have these other spots that are available as well around.

So yeah, DMACC will be the main campground. So when riders come, when they leave Guthrie center, the GPS reg bray provides, we'll take them from main campground in Guthrie center to main campground in Boone, which will be at DMACC.

And on the south side of DMACC in that little U lot, they'll have two big reg bray semis there. They'll offload everyone's tents and gear. You'll, they'll show up, they'll find their stuff and they'll set up their camps.

They're either west of DMACC in the lawn space, or they can pedal over to Mcco's. We'll have probably a lot of teams, a few charters and some open just dispersed camping in Mcco's in different spots. Gutter Ridge park is quiet camping.

And we're working with the middle school also on providing some RV camping and things there. There's more up and down the hills. You can make them do through.

That's where the shuttle comes in though, because when they get here from past experience, the director staff at reg bray says they parked their bike and they, they want to shuttle around or, or have things close to walk to. They don't like to ride around.

And that's going to be one of those things too. And I know because this topic came up and again, it was debated some among the council members and they couldn't quite agree.

But some of the issues that come up is you do have vendors that show up, just show up and they'll set up on the edge of town, kind of away from everything and to basically to have the authority to, right? Who's in, who's handling that? And again, it happens.

It's just like I said, it's a business. They come in. I gave that example of in 2018, we did have that experience of somebody just showed up and set up shop.

And, and unfortunately, you know, at that point we just have to close them down because they haven't filed the paperwork and done the steps that they needed to do.

So I, we were very thankful that the city approved that and we'll be able to, to control the streets and be able to maintain, you know, order for, for Chief Wiebold as well as our crew. Yeah. The public safety part, because I know the mayor talked about this the day after too.

He said that one of the issues is for businesses that would like to have street closure. This is going to be difficult to do because of not having, you know, or having adequate public safety. Yeah. Yeah.

And so Chief Wiebold is leading that charge with the public safety and, and he has made it very clear that, yeah, they have a limited number of officers and, and even the number that we get provided with the major concert that we're putting on, it's going to require the Iowa State Patrol help.

So, so yeah, he, he's going to have all hands on deck. And then as you alluded to on Monday night, he even talked about hiring some additional resource officers. So. And it's still a ways away.

We don't know how everything's going to pan out yet, but your committee basically will do the call.

So your executive committee, mostly with public safety, I'm guessing, if we could provide public safety for different events, but the other businesses, if they want to be on the map, could definitely get on the map. Yeah.

Visit Boone County.com is the place to go right now for all things Boone. You can find hosting applications, vendor applications, sign up to be a volunteer. It's your one stop shop right now for Boone. Right. Right. Okay. Yeah. We also have a Facebook page. Okay. Boone. Right.

Right. 2026. So follow that we'll have lots of information on there. And that's where we usually, um, highlight who, who are entertainment and any of our fun announcements coming out is it's usually on our regularly, um, Facebook page.

And I will go once again, go to Terry, cause he's doing a, he, if you want to host, please, please sign up again.

I know we've got time, but still this really, you'd like to have some people signing up showing an indication that yeah, we'll be glad to host a group of eight or half a dozen or something like that. And then you got time to mix and match and go forward. Yep. Yep.

We're, we need some residents to, to kindly open their homes or their backyards or whatever they're willing to offer, uh, to some of these writers. So we, Terry can work on matching them. Okay.

So we know that now you guys have your, your regular meeting coming up executive committee meeting. Uh, we did have that first public session, the 23rd, you had a nice crowd of people that turned out for that. A lot of information went out, obviously raised a lot more questions.

I know you've been going around, everybody's been fielding them as they go, but, uh, it's, it's July. So we still have time, but, uh, more public information meetings coming up. I know you want to try to keep people updated on what's happening. Yeah.

We're looking at it, scheduling something. So we meet here in just a little bit with our executive team. And, uh, that is on the agenda to schedule our next meeting for the end of March or excuse me, the end of April.

And so, um, we will definitely get that word out once we get that set today. All right. Let me just keep moving forward. Other things, sponsors, please step up and let Denny Hammond or his committee. No, because they are working on that.

And I know he said he had a one big sponsor that was certain and then the city said, no, we'll do even more, which is okay. Uh, and again, but they, they want to highlight the community. They want people to see what's going on. So, right.

We want to roll out the red carpet and show that Iowa nice. Okay. Are we going to have, will we have recovered totally from the fair by that? No, it doesn't matter. Does it? It's still coming. It's coming.

Uh, I know the big thing, even at that first public meeting was, uh, what's the route? And now we know the route. So that was the last one that came out.

And again, I go back to the fact that, uh, the rag ride people, they are constantly coming around and giving you updated ideas, tips. They gave you your playbook really, didn't they? They did. Yeah. I was a binder.

That's probably two inches thick for every overnight town and, uh, covers everything from volunteers to vendors and sanitation and you name it. And it's in that book. So, uh, they give us a lot of support.

They come back, like Chris said, every two weeks and cover a different topic in that book, just to make sure that we're ready and planning well and any resources they can provide for us. They're being really helpful in providing those.

And not only that, they've developed a digital portal and in that portal, they put all the notes from our meetings as well as we are connected to all the other overnight towns.

So we can coordinate and have conversation about what, what are they serving for beer and how much are they serving and our, what is the cost and those types of things. So that is extremely helpful as well.

At this point, everything essentially, really the focus is staying south, uh, south story, basically south of Hancock. Uh, but as you said, they'd like to go all over.

They like to get, uh, I'm pretty sure there's one or two might want to go check rail explorers, which is probably already booked full, but you know what that happens. Uh, because that's an electric book and that's an electric ride.

You don't have to pedal too hard on that, but, uh, you know, they'll be making their ways around town. So there'll be a lot of people that will be showing up and making their way around. There will be.

And Terry, I think side at best, the Dutch oven bakery will not be able to make enough donuts either on Tuesday or Wednesday morning when everybody's leaving. So they'll find their way around town.

And again, we just, uh, look forward to everybody having a safe time, uh, doing the best weekend with it and cool down in Boone. Cool down. I'm sure it'll be busy time. It always, uh, it has been in the past and of course, the mayor, he said it best.

Just give us the good weather. That's what we want good weather. Uh, and we can't, sorry, can't run them down through the ledges and make them climb the hill. I think we'll be busy enough that day. He'll be, you've got a few people that'll be out there camping in advance.

Anyway, they've already got it booked. I'm sure we're almost to that three month window. April 21st will be the three month window for the overnight stay. And some of those, uh, we'll be doing it out there too. Yep. They just do what's ever the most convenient for him.

I do appreciate you coming in and letting us know what's going on with this, keeping updated visit Boone County.com. Correct. That is the website. And there's a page on there. You set that up like day one and now you keep adding to it.

So that's a, for people that want information to make contact and then find out when the next public meeting is going to be coming up and hopefully we'll get more people involved again, still lining up. And absolutely. It only happens once in it. Like in this case, 15 years.

Yeah. We're excited that they're coming back and we're, we're just thrilled to make it the best that we can imagine. Gilbert, this is the first time since 76 they've gone through Gilbert. So that's a, that's a big, big fun time too. Yeah. Do appreciate it. Thanks for coming in.

Thanks, Jim.