Howdy and thanks for the comment. We definitely pack a lot, but we use it all and it adds to our experience. And yes, we are old and have earned the creature comforts but then again why wouldn't everyone want to enjoy a little comfort? Thanks for the great comment, it made us both laugh. Enjoy the Ride See you at RAGBRAI.

Hey Krissy, Thanks for watching and for the comment. Great to hear you'll be Iowa this year and congratulations on selecting PBV. We LOVE them and this will be our 9th year with them. We'll be in one of the rental tents. Please look for us at camp, we'll be the two people walking around with Disco (our 4 pound toy poodle). :) Also, if your interested, watch our Instagram (@busesbikesbeers) for a few meet up times where we want to make ourselves available to hang out with friends, viewers and subscribers. We are glad you found this helpful. We are contemplating making an update to this video so stay tuned. Also, we made two videos last year on Pork Belly's amazing process to support the riders, check them out: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/o9V3m6R4vLq1k4E.html kzfaq.info/get/bejne/aLOlY82QlsXNipc.html Thanks again for the comment. Enjoy the Ride

@@BBB_Adventures Great!! I'll be in one of the rental tents too! I'll definitely look for you all! I've been watching your videos for a while now and really enjoy them- I found out about you all from Ryan Van Duzer and have loved following your adventures! And I think about half of the views on your videos documenting PBV last year are from me LOL! That's what really got me excited to sign up to go with them now that I'm (mostly) riding solo this year. My little girl, Evelyn will be with me for 1 (maybe even 2 days) so we'll be on the lookout for you all! Hope the training with the Red Dragon are going well! See you in July!

@@krissyreed897 Awesome. If you want, you can give Pork Belly BBB Adventures as your team name and they will try and put your tent near ours. If you already have a team, no worries. Looking forward to seeing you in Iowa.

I'm solo too. Hope to bump into you!

@@picklesma for sure! Are you going with pbv?

Hi Steve. Thanks for watching and nice to hear from you. Happy to hear you're considering RAGBRAI next year. I'm confident you'll thoroughly enjoy the experience. Enjoy the Ride Wear a Helmet

​@@BBB_Adventures Always wear the brain bucket! I've watched a few videos now, all super positive. What is the one thing you don't like about RAGBRAI?

Me too. I hope I can.

Come join all of us - looks like so much fun

Thank you. I'm happy you found this useful. The list isn't perfect but it represents our learnings and how we have figured out how to optimize our experience, particularly with Pork Belly Ventures. Enjoy the Ride

Nick, Thanks for watching BBB and hopefully you've subscribed so you can follow our on-going adventures including our upcoming ride across the US in which we'll be including RAGBRAI 2022 as part of the journey. It's good to hear you'll be riding RAGBRAI again in 2023 and sorry you'll be missing this year. Also glad you enjoyed the service provided by PBV. We certainly believe their efforts and infrastructure make our overall RAGBRAI experience much better and I totally agree, getting a nice shower after a day's ride is amazing. We appreciate your positive feedback and your support. Enjoy the Ride

Thanks for watching BBB and for leaving a comment. We love hearing from our RAGBRAI and Iowa friends. Ending in your hometown would be super exciting. We are so looking forward to spending a week in the corn. We really missed it last year. We'd love to see you in Pork Belly camp. Message us on Instagram and we can try and connect. Our Instagram handle is @busesbikesbeers. Enjoy the Ride Wear a Helmet

Thanks Jeff and it was great to meet you. We've made it to Madison Wisconsin and are taking a few days off and hope to get episode 4 of The Apollo Mission published. We're happy to hear you found the packing video helpful and we hope your RAGBRAI experience was a great as ours. We are already looking forward to next year. Thanks for following along our adventure and if you haven't already done so, you can follow us more real-time on Instagram (@busesbikesbeers). Thanks for watching. Enjoy the Ride

Thanks for watching and for the comment. We are happy to hear you found some useful information. We also hope you had a great RAGBRAI experience. We are already looking forward to next year, the 50th RAGBRAI! Also, if you haven't already done so, there are many other videos on BBB Adventures that you might like including the first few episodes of The Apollo Mission, our bike ride across the US which included RAGBRAI as part of the route. Thanks again for watching. Enjoy the Ride

Hello Neon Uprights!! Thanks for watching Buses Bikes and Beers. We really appreciate it. It's so cool to hear your team found our packing video useful. Hopefully you found the link in the description of that video to the spreadsheet with the full list and links (some a year old now so hopefully the are still valid). I'm confident you'll be happy with the decision to hire Pork Belly Ventures. It's a great service run by great people. How many RAGBRAI riders are in Neon Uprights? Groups/Teams are a blast. We will absolutely be riding RAGBRAI this year and have secured the full tent service. We are riding our bikes across the US this summer and are incorporating RAGBRAI as part of that ride. You'll definitely see us around tent city and near the beer at camp. Please stop us and talk to us. Thanks again for watching BBB and for the comment. Enjoy the Ride

First, thanks for watching and for leaving a comment. We appreciate hearing from viewers and getting feedback. Second....22 times...WOW. That's impressive, congratulations. This will be our 7th time and are so excited, we really missed it last year. We totally agree with you that it's easy to overpack. Thinking ahead and being objective about what you really need and then being organized so you can find what you do bring are really important. Hope to see you at camp. Enjoy the Ride.

Hey Stephen. First, thanks for watching and supporting Buses Bikes and Beers. Second, great to hear you're planning on riding RAGBRAI next year. I'm quite sure you'll love it. I believe you have a good chance of getting a spot, particularly if you apply early. We also highly recommend Pork Belly so your on the right track for sure. We did post a video on how we pack for RAGBRAI and specifically for folks using Pork Belly, check it out. If you end up with any questions about RAGBRAI or Pork Belly, let us know and we'll do our best to answer them. Enjoy the Ride.

Hi Ken, Thanks for watching BBB and for leaving a comment. It's so nice to hear from viewers and to get the feedback this video is helping people get ready for the absolute best week of the year. And yes...it's 2 syllables! :) Hope to see you in camp. Enjoy the Ride.

Hey Gabriel, We are glad you found our packing video and hope you discovered the other videos on BBB Adventures. Congratulations on deciding to do your first RAGBRAI, I'm sure you'll discover it was one of the best decisions you made in a while. It's OK to be nervous but it's going to be epic, so don't worry too much. We'll see you in Iowa. Enjoy the Ride

HI Richard, Thanks for watching BBB Adventures and for the comment. We learned a lot over the first 7 RAGBRAI's we participated in and wanted to share our learnings and experiences. It's great to hear you found some value in it. It helps to plan for the the same event multiple times but we also leveraged our RAGBRAI experience to prepare for The Apollo Mission, our bike ride across the US. There are some videos on the channel about preparing for it and we have a few episodes of the adventure published. Thanks again for watching. Enjoy the Ride

@@BBB_Adventures Now I'm in crazy envy. Always wanted to cycle across the US. Never got into the sport seriously though until after I retired. I did the Indiana RAIN ride (Ride Across Indiana), 165 miles, one day, one way a few years ago and didn't have any issues with it. Trained to do it a second time but that year it took place on a day when the heat index was 115. My mother's second child was no fool so I didn't go. But a week of rides with only one century among them, I don't think I'd have any problem with that and I sleep in a lot of tents each year while motorcycle camping. SO, Next year, at age 72, hope to see you at RAGBRAI!

@@richardmourdock2719 It's great to hear your mother's second child isn't a fool. How about the rest of her children? Ha Ha. Based on your response and the cycling you've been doing, RAGBRAI will not be a problem for you so you should definitely plan on going next year for the 50th anniversary. Baring any disasters, we'll be there with the Red Dragon (our tandem bike). Hope to see you there.

We had a good time putting this together and we needed to pack anyway so for the most part we are going to leave the bags packed in preparation for the big event. Making this video and packing has significantly increased our level of excitement and anticipation for RAGBRAI. Good to hear you're starting to get prepared now, particularly since this is your first time with PBV. Here's how the first part of this will go for us. Friday July 23: We'll plan on parking at the end town versus parking at the start town, even though we are coming from Idaho because we plan on visiting some family in Wisconsin after RAGBRAI. We plan on arriving at the end town (Clinton) sometime on Friday and we'll either sleep in the car or take advantage of PBV's indoor sleeping accommodations near the shuttle bus loading area. We will also hand our bike over to the PBV folks on Friday for the haul across the state. We'll also be using PBV's the week-long parking accommodations in Clinton. Saturday July 24: We'll take the earliest shuttle bus possible which will get us to LeMars early afternoon. By the time we arrive, PBV will have the tent city set up so after we check in we'll drag our duffle bags to our tent and get it set up. Then we'll go find our bike and ensure it's all good. The rest of the day we'll spend at the RAGBRAI Expo. So we'll sleep in the tent the night before the ride starts. Sunday July 25: We'll pack up our stuff in our duffle bags and hit the road!!!! Our first day kit will be in our duffle bag, so we pack 7 full kits. The cloths we wear Saturday on the bus will be shorts and a t-shirt which we'll pack in our duffle bag as we take out the first day cycling kit. Let's try and connect Saturday afternoon in LaMars. You can message us via Instagram our Instagram handle is busesbikesbeers. We are definitely going to Enjoy the Ride.

Unfortunately we were not in Storm Lake that day. We came close to there on RAGBRAI last Monday but not all the way into Storm Lake. Hopefully a future RAGBRAI will take us there and we can stop by your store. :) Thanks for watching. Enjoy the Ride

Hi. Nice to hear from someone from Iowa. RAGBRAI has become such a special experience for us that we have developed a love for all things Iowa. We are looking forward to Waterloo. Hopefully you can keep riding, stretching, doing knee exercises and get your range up again. We'd love to see you on RAGBRAI sometime. I've had several knee surgery's and have been successful in getting back to long distance riding. I wear knee braces when I ride and still have knee pain frequently but I live with it because we love riding so much. And a few beers at the end of ride helps. :) Thanks for watching BBB and thanks for the comment. Enjoy the Ride.

Hi! Thanks for watching! And yes! Most definitely in many locations along the route those items will be readily available. Enjoy the ride!

Hey Todd. It's just a spreadsheet. Over the years, I've learned to engineer most of my life with the use of spreadsheets or digital lists of some sort. Our travel checklists help us learn from our mistakes and ensure we don't repeat them...like leaving your passport at home. RAGBRAI should absolutely be on your bucket list. Warning: if you do it once, you'll really want to do it again...and again...When RAGBRAI makes it to the top of your list, be sure to let us know and we can help you figure out all the logistics. And you are spot on...great food and drink are omnipresent on RAGBRAI so lots of cash required. Thanks for the comment. Enjoy Every Ride.

Hey Steve, Great to hear you're all ready to go. We're happy the great folks at PBV put a link to this video in their latest update and we're happy to hear it's helping people get ready for the best week of the year. We like the idea of organizing some sort of meet up, we'll put some thought into how to communicate that, probably with a quick video on BBB and/or an Instagram update. Thanks again for your support of BBB and we are looking forward to seeing you in person. Enjoy the Ride.

Hi and thanks!! We are so pleased to hear you enjoyed it and hopefully found it useful. Feel free to reach out if you have any specific questions about how to prepare for RAGBAI and we'll do our best to answer. Thanks for watching. Enjoy the Ride

Hi Glen, Thanks for the kind words and thanks for watching BBB. If you utilize Pork Belly Ventures as a charter service, they set up camp at the start town so when you get off the bus, camp is right there. Some people get a hotel but they fill up fast. If you are carrying your own gear or are using the RAGBRAI bag service, there are tons of places around the start town to set up your tent. Let me know if that doesn't answer your question or if you have any other questions. It's exciting to hear you'll be doing the ride this year!!

Hey Donna, Can't wait to see you in Iowa. Great question! The answer is yes. After our experience on The Apollo Mission with our clothing choice, we've changed our strategy. We will not be packing 7 kits like we have in previous years. We really enjoyed the simplicity and functionality of the Merino Wool shirt and high quality, long sleeve sun shirt (actually a fishing shirt) and plan to repeat that on RAGBRAI. We'll be bringing a couple of Merino Wool t-shirts and a couple of high quality cycling shorts with good chamois. However if people interested in participating the various days or want to show off some of their jersey collection, then packing the way we discussed in this video is still a good method. Other than that, I think we'll be packing pretty much the way we showed in this episode. Plus all the crap we'll be bringing to support Disco. Thanks again for the great question. See ya soon. Enjoy the Ride

Hey Mark, Thanks for watching and thanks for the comment. We love hearing from viewers. We haven't used the Pork Belly laundry service they offer during the week but the way it works is you put you dirty clothes in a bag and hand it over to them in the morning and that evening they get them back to you clean. We have washed some items by hand in the shower or at a sink/hose. In those cases we have hung them up on the tent. Bringing a clothes pin or two is a good idea. The showers are not available in the morning, only in the evening. After about 9 or 10 pm, they take down the shower trucks and start to move them to the next over night town. I'm guessing it's easier to move those big rigs at night when there isn't as much RAGBRAI driven traffic. Please don't hesitate to reach out with more questions. We hope you are going to participate in RAGBRAI next year since it will be the 50th anniversary. Thanks again for watching. Enjoy the Ride

(But I will confess I frequently wear “less than clean “ clothes when I travel) :D

Hey Eric, Thanks for watching Buses Bikes and Beers and our RAGBRAI packing video. it's also great to hear you found it useful. We are getting excited about biking adventures this summer including RAGBRAI. Enjoy the Ride

Yes...as do we. During our ride across the US this summer, I'm sure we'll be taking full advantage of the "less than clean" clothing strategy. :) Thanks again for supporting Buses Bikes and Beers. Enjoy the Ride

RAGBRAI really is super fun. For us it's the best week of the year because you are surrounded by like-minded cyclists, the roads are free of cars, there is plenty of high quality craft beer and food along the route....it's just a blast. If you haven't done RAGBRAI, you should put it on your bucket list. Thanks for watching and for the comment.

@@BBB_Adventures have not done RAGBRAI per se, but have ridden across country a few times (RAAM). But a wandao around Taiwan is tops on my bucket list. Be safe and don't overlap unfamiliar wheels!! you guys are great!

The 2 cycling trips around Taiwan will always be highlights of our lives. We are so looking forward to being able to get back to Taiwan and do some more cycling. Taiwan #1!!!

Hey Kim. Thanks for watching BBB Adventures and for the comment/question. The quick answer is to ride what you're more comfortable with. We've done RAGBRAI on road bikes with 23 mm tires, a tandem (The Red Dragon) with 32 mm tires and this year we included RAGBRAI as part of The Apollo Mission, our bike ride across the US. We rode touring bikes with 40 mm tires. Each bike worked well. But there are a few things to consider. Gravel loop: if you're planning on doing the optional gravel loop, a hybrid would be better. Gearing and climbing:. Typically hybrid bikes have lower climbing gears so depending on your comfort hill climbing, a road bike might be a bit tougher. With a very few exceptions, RAGBRAI is on good paved road so road bikes work very well. Thanks again for watching. Enjoy the Ride Wear a Helmet

Hey Krystal, Thanks for watching Buses Bikes and Beers and for the question. In the description of this video on KZfaq, there is a link to a spreadsheet with all the details of the stuff on our packing list. Please let us know if that doesn't answer your question or if you have any other questions. So exciting to hear you'll be joining RAGBRAI in 2022. Enjoy the Ride

Totally agree and it is also hard to describe it or completely capture it on video but hopefully our RAGBRI videos in concert with the others you've watching gives you a good enough idea to decide you want to give it a try. Enjoy the Ride

Quickly, our backpacks are 50L. A more detailed reply to your previous comment will follow!

Also, download the list we posted in the description. There is a link to the exact backpack we use.

Thanks for continuing to watch and for the comment. The Buses in BBB represents a plan we have to build a school bus or van conversion so we can travel around the US in search or good cycling and craft beer. But the bus ride across Iowa as part of our RAGBRAI experience is always fun. Enjoy the Ride.

Hey Trey, Thanks for watching our packing video, hopefully you found the other videos on BBB Adventures. We live in Idaho. Enjoy the Ride

When you pay for Pork Belly, then does that cover the cost of Ragbrai, or are they 2 separate costs?

@@treydipple4579 great question! They are actually separate. And Pork Belly requires RAGBRAI registration, once wristbands are assigned, they will want your RAGBRAI wristband#.

Cool, thank you!

Another question is, if my wife and I are going together, it the price for pork belly the price per person, or would it be the price per tent?

Howdy, You got that right!! Very strange, but awesome. :) Thanks for watching. Enjoy the Ride