Hosting 100 RAGBRAI riders

Can you imagine hosting 100 guests on your property?

Fairfield resident Rustin Lippincott doesn't have to imagine it. He did it! Lippincott opened his home to RAGBRAI riders who needed a place to stay during their overnight stop here on Thursday, July 25.

He had initially agreed to host 12 people in his home. They were people he knew from the Iowa City/Coralville Convention & Visitors Bureau through his work as executive director of the Fairfield Convention & Visitors Bureau.

He was excited to learn that the owner and the head chef of Big Grove Brewery in Iowa City would stay at his house (Big Grove Brewery's beer 'Tailwind” was the official beer of RAGBRAI).

'The head chef made us dinner, and it was just amazing,” Lippincott said. 'We went to Hy-Vee together, and I got to experience what it is like to shop with a chef. I saw the way he cut his tomatoes and said to myself ‘Holy smokes! This guy is legit.'”

But before Lippincott could worry about his supper plans, he got a call a week before RAGBRAI from someone in Rochester, Minnesota. The person was with a RAGBRAI team of 50-60 people, who had tried and tried to find a place to camp but could not. Lippincott agreed to let them set up their tents on the lawn outside his house in the southwest part of town.

A short while later, Lippincott received an email from a high school friend named Eric Hernandez, who wrote to him saying how excited he was to be staying at Lippincott's house. This caught Lippincott by surprise, because he had no record of Hernandez registering to stay with him. Evidently, Hernandez had gotten connected with the team from Rochester, and that was how he heard about Lippincott opening his home.

More coming

By the time it was said and done, the number of people sleeping outside Lippincott's home had swelled to 87. At first, Lippincott didn't want the campers to come inside the house because it was already full with the 12 people from Iowa City.

'They came up to me asking if they could shower. I told their leaders that they couldn't shower in my house, but after seeing them dripping in sweat, I couldn't say no,” Lippincott said.

Lippincott estimates that 75 people showered at his house that day.

'The Fairfield Water Department is going to love me,” he chuckled. 'And every one of those 75 got hot water. I couldn't believe that. When I was growing up, I had one sister and two parents, and if you were the last one in, you got a cold shower.”

Lippincott said some people slept in school buses parked outside his house. Though it seemed overwhelming at first, he was happy to host so many people.

'It gave me a reason to get my house ready to go,” he said. 'I wanted to put a good foot forward for these people and show them some hospitality.”

Lippincott said this RAGBRAI was different for him this time compared to its last stop in 2013. That year, he was so busy on the square that he didn't get to spend much time with the people staying at his home. This time, he got to know his guests much better, learn about their background and talk about their impressions of Fairfield, of which they were complimentary.

The riders arrived at Lippincott's property throughout the day. The early birds wasted no time in racing the 66 miles from Centerville to Fairfield, and reached Lippincott's house before 10 a.m. Others stuck to a more casual pace, or got hung up at the parties and pass-through towns along the way. The last rider showed up at Lippincott's at 8 p.m.

By the next morning, however, everyone was up and at ‘em. Lippincott had breakfast with his inside gang, and by 10 a.m., his house and property were vacant.

'You couldn't tell anyone had stayed there,” he said. 'The only remnants of 87 people on the lawn was the clothesline a woman tied. I don't even want to take that down because it's a memory of an awesome night, showing off my town to these people.”

Lippincott's RAGBRAI adventure wasn't quite over yet. One of his guests got so sick that he had to abandon the ride Thursday night. That left the man's team with no driver for their truck. The team asked Lippincott if he would mind driving the truck to Burlington Friday, which was their next stop. Lippincott agreed.

'That let me take in a little bit more of RAGBRAI,” he said.

Lippincott said he thoroughly enjoyed RAGBRAI's visit to Fairfield, and plans to host riders the next time it comes to town.

'Maybe not quite that many, though,” he said.

Encore

And when might RAGBRAI return to Fairfield? It's hard to be sure, but as a general rule, RAGBRAI alternates between northern, central and southern routes. If it follows that pattern, it will return to the south in 2022, 2025 and 2028.

In RAGBRAI's early years, it made overnight stops in Fairfield on a nine-year rotation: the first in 1979, then 1988 and 1997. Michael Halley, one of the Fairfield RAGBRAI executive chairs, remarked that Fairfield probably would kept to its nine-year rotation by hosting in 2006, except the downtown was under construction that year.

Fairfield had to wait 16 years before RAGBRAI returned in 2013. Halley said that so much time had elapsed in between stops that Fairfield was basically working with a brand new committee of people to plan the 2013 activities. Those who helped in '97 had either moved away or were not interested in helping again.

That was not true in 2019. Halley said many of the people who helped in 2013 were back in the saddle for 2019's visit. He remarked that six years seemed almost too soon, or at least it felt that way after all the work the committee put in to prepare. He said he hopes Fairfield had return to hosting RAGBRAI on a nine-year rotation.

One interesting thing about this year's RAGBRAI is that Fairfield hosted on a Thursday night. The three prior times in 1988, 1997 and 2013, Fairfield had hosted on a Friday night, the last overnight stop (in 1979 it hosted on Thursday). Fairfield Convention & Visitors Bureau assistant director Terry Baker said it seemed like more riders chose to stay at their campsites rather than come downtown like they did in 2013.

'On Thursday, some people choose not to party because they're catching up on their sleep,” she said.

Baker said this year's crowd came to the square later in the day than last year's. She attributes part of that to the big push in 2013 to get riders downtown to break the Guinness World Record for most people wearing a fake mustache.

'I remember we started that [Guinness World Record] at 4 p.m., so that was a driver to get people to participate,” she said. 'Usually, riders want to find showers, get their tents set up, and come into town a little later.”

Late-arriving crowd

Those who can attest to being fatigued upon arriving in Fairfield were the trio of Dubuque residents Ted Lakeman, Dustin DeMuth and Justin Tauke. Just as many other riders had reported to The Ledger, they told of how grueling was the Wednesday, July 24 ride from Indianola to Centerville, which from their campsite at the beginning of the day to their campsite at the end was 94 miles. That meant they were slow to get on the road the next day on the route to Fairfield.

The three arrived in town late, but they made a point of exploring the downtown. They said they usually pass on the vendors that accompany RAGBRAI in favor of experimenting with the local cuisine, which they did last Thursday.