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RAGBRAI Route To Be Announced This Weekend

RAGBRAI

Once again, Davenport might be the last stop on a long trip through Iowa.  The Register's Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa, also known as RAGBRAI, will announce the route this weekend.  

Joe Taylor, CEO of the Quad Cities Convention and Visitor Bureau, hopes organizers will pick Davenport.

"The riders are hungry and thirsty.  They're going to be spending lots of rmoney on food and drinks.  So it could be a sbstantial ammount of dollars that are spent.  If you think 20,000 riders and they spend $50 each, that's $1 million right there.  So I think its substatial economic impart to the Quad Cities."

When RAGBRAI started in the 1970s, there were only 300 riders.  Last year, over 20-thousand bikers registered.

Taylor is thinking ahead about the 50th anniversary of RAGBRAI in four years.

"The reason to be excited about 2022 is that will be RAGBRAI 50 and so we certainly want that event to end in Davenport.  I think if we do a great job as I know we will in 2018, that will set the stage for perhaps even a better chance to be the end point for RAGBRAI 50."

The last time Davenport was the point where RAGBRAI bikers dipped their tires in the Mississippi River was in 2015.  

The entire route will be announced on Saturday night.  It'll be held the last week of July.