 All right, my friends, I'm gonna do this really fast. Well, maybe not that fast, but hey, this is a shout out for my Patreon. If you love my videos, please consider supporting my channel on Patreon. You'll get early access to videos, videos with no ads, and other fun Patreon-only exclusives like live chats and other fun stuff, and you're just gonna be supporting my channel. So please click the link below or here or wherever it's gonna be, and I appreciate you, you're the best. And if you can't do it, if you can't afford it, I totally understand. My videos will always be free on YouTube. Okay, now back to Iowa. Bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye. Good morning. Good morning. Oh, how'd you sleep? Ah, pretty well. Once the music stopped. Yeah, I was a little loud last night. Pretty rowdy. They like to party here. Okay. Well, speaking of that, let's go party. Look at that cool hairdo. Thanks. It was made by pool chlorine. All right, fry, fry, fry, fry. So everybody over here was in a charter, and these guys right here are packing up their tents for them. They're gonna transport all their gear. We are doing it ourselves. We don't need no charter, right? We don't need no stinking charter. We don't need no stinking charter. That was totally cool if you take a charter too. All right, Amelie's all packed up. No. She's putting on her green guru upcycled awesome panniers. Yeah. My friends, my friends in Boulder make these. Check them out, green guru all upcycled doesn't get any more environmentally friendly. They reuse old banners and make panniers. You ready for day two? Oh God. Come on, you can't say that. Ah, Ryan, we're gonna have to watch my mouth. F, yes, then. Good. Thank you. Beautiful piece of flat ground in the grass right next to the town library. I'm trying to make the grass. Are you fluffing it up? I'm fluffing the grass. Leave no trace. Start your watch. You know it. You know it. Here we go. It's a race. Woo, look at us go. Bye, pool. Thanks for cooling us off. Good morning, everybody. Woo. You know, I love waking up in Rag Bride World where everybody else is on bikes. Everybody else going the same place. Everybody else is psyched and happy. It's the jolly place to be. And I would like Rag Bride World to be every day in my life. Look at all these people on bikes. Everywhere you go. Good morning. There's the poop cleaner uppers. Good morning. So we haven't gotten very far. We went back to Casey's here. We love you, Casey's. And look at this. I've never seen this before. Breakfast, pizza. It has egg and, you know, a green peppers on there. What'd you get for breakfast? I don't know. Coffee. Mmm, coffee. We love Casey's. And so does everybody else. This is a very crowded place to be in the morning. I'm too sexy for my trike. Too sexy for my trike. Too sexy. It's what I like. So what do you have here? I have my main squeeze. I have my side chick. I have my wingman. Chicken patty, these Irish. The glamorous life of Amelia Boone. Like, what don't you do in a Casey's parking lot? You do everything here. Ah. Where are you going to spit? Look who I found. So is this just for today? No, all week. All week? You're going to dress up like this. I'm going to shoot for it. How many green and red shirts did you pack? Well, that's personal. You know what time it is? No flatties, no crashes, no whammies. Coffee on the bike. Little morning coffee. Let's go have another beautiful day in Iowa. Let's do it. All we have to do today is ride our bikes. Goof around. Four people whooped and hollered. They're ready. The rest are tired. We'll get there. Coffee line. Look at that line. Hey everybody. So what do we have here? So we have corn necklaces for all our regbri friends, wear it with pride, and enjoy the state of Iowa. You got your corn necklaces? I got my corn necklace. Looking good, mama. So are you from around here? Yes, I am. I live right here in the great state of Iowa, northwest to Iowa. My name's Jolene. I've been a farmer for forever. And I absolutely love the lifestyle to which I can claim. So we grow corn, beans, some alfalfa, and we grow critters. We are, we background cattle. My boys have a cow calf herd. There it is. Oh, it's a hawk. I know. It's a hand-off. It's a hawk. Thank you. Oh, they're a nice hand-off, yeah. You love living out here. What's it like? You know, I can remember coming through this part of the state when I was in college. And so obviously, I have a year or two out of college and just thought this area was absolutely gorgeous. And so I was so lucky to end up marrying a farmer from this part of the world. So life is good. How you doing, Amelia? Ah, everybody's waking up now. Everybody over here. Hey, buddy. Hi there, cutie. What's your dog's name? Schwartz. Schwartz. Is this his first rag ride? Yes, it is. It's all his first rag ride. What are you thinking? Loving it. Loving it. It's pretty cool. Look at him back there. What's up, brother? How you doing? Hey, I'm doing good. What inspired you to come out here and do this? I've got tons of friends still up in Iowa. And my two friends from Florida say, hey, let's go do this thing. And I say, all right. All right, fine. It's going to be a suffer fast. But why not? Have you been training? Nope. You guys want to meet my favorite paramedic and all of rag ride? There he is. Land shark left. So what kind of things do you see out here with people? What's happening to our fellow riders when they go down? One of the biggest things is obviously people don't get unclipped quick enough. They fall over. They get scraped up. We do a lot of just cleaning up wounds. So usually you're rolling around in an ambulance. It's a traditional ambulance. But today you have the e-bike ambulance, huh? Yeah. Care ambulance is the official rag ride ambulance. This year, Matt Pippin and Bob Libby put together a program along with Trek and Bickles Bike Center in Burlington, Iowa where we got these phenomenal Trek service bikes. Yeah, man. And I mean, I'm not sure, but I think this is the only ALS bicycle in the state of Iowa right now. So amongst the 20,000 plus people, I somehow just met the new director of Rag Ride. How's it going, buddy? Hey, how are you? So how are you feeling? This is a pretty exciting thing to be in charge of. I'm pretty blessed. I mean, you look behind me, there's bikes for everywhere, everywhere down the road. I think we're back for sure with Rag Ride. The weather is amazing. I mean, everybody is so excited that the weather is going to hold all week. Everybody's smiling. There's nobody frowning. They're not working hard at all. I mean, the hills are behind us and we have great food ahead of us. And it's going to be a great finish at the end. Why is Rag Ride so special to the state of Iowa? It's the biggest family reunion you're ever going to see. People come from everywhere across the world to meet friends from the past and new friends from the future. And it shows off Iowa. Or people fly over Iowa. You need to come and enjoy it. Yeah. What's it like being the director of something like Rag Ride, where there's so many people in logistics and an entire state involved? Well, it gets bringing people to Iowa a big deal. I mean, people, like I said, they fly over and they come and enjoy it and they hear about Rag Ride. They want to come back and ride it over and over again. And when you wear a Rag Ride shirt and you're in a different state or different country, someone knows of Rag Ride. But it's Iowa nice. I mean, you got these people that open up their houses that are complete strangers and by the end, they're family. So it's pretty special. And what are some of your goals being the new director? What are you going to bring to Rag Ride going forward? Well, next year we have Year 50, which is going to be probably one of our biggest parties we've ever thrown. I want to get us on major roads that we've never been on before in big cities and show a case that, you know, Rag Ride's not going anywhere. It's here to stay. I've seen a lot of cool playgrounds in my life with playground equipment. This is the absolute coolest. Oh my God. Look at that. This is so fun. I love this thing. So I've been looking for this team. I've heard amazing things about what they do in the world. I just found the director, Brian, very cool name close to Ryan. How's it going, my friend? It's going really good. Nice to talk to you, Ryan. So tell me about the Dream Team. The Dream Team is a nonprofit organization in Des Moines, Iowa. We take at-risk teenagers. We've got about 28 this year. We mentor them for five months on a bicycle, and then we bring them here on the full week of Rag Ride across the state of Iowa. And how long you've been doing this? Dream Team has been in existence for 25 years. This is our big 25th year, and I've been doing it for 11. Okay. And why is this important to the kids? What do they get out of it? Oh my gosh. So first of all, they don't need anything. We provide the bikes and the helmets and everything and all the training. And then they earn the bike at the end. If they do every single mile of Rag Ride, we don't sag, we don't skip a day. When they reach the Mississippi River and dip their front tire in the water, it becomes theirs. But along with that, it's the confidence. It's the team building and the camaraderie, learning how to set goals, achieve goals, dream big. And we see them just improve so much over the years, gain that confidence in themselves, come out of their shell, and the change is just staggering. And why bikes? Well, you know, I think bikes is a good metaphor for life, honestly, because it's not a team sport. There's only one person that can do your life, and that's you. And when you're on a bike, it's all you. It's you getting yourself across the state of Iowa. But there's a team aspect to it, where you surround yourself with people who say you can, help you, you've got a support crew. And that's important in life, too. You want to have a good support crew. You don't want to be around the naysayers who say you can't do that or you're not good enough. Surround yourself with people who say you can, you are good enough, you're valuable. That's what Dream Team is all about. So, Rachel, you're part of the Dream Team. Yes, I am. Tell me how your experience has been. It's been a while roller coaster. It's been a while roller coaster from start to finish. I started off not being able to balance on my bike. Now, like five months later, I'm here riding ride-bride. All 462 miles. Wow. It's pretty great. And so today is day two. How do you feel? I don't feel bad, so to say. I feel really excited. Kind of slightly nervous, but since I've already started out, you know, it's like the nervousness has gone away. I'm just really hyped up. You're hyped up. And why do you love bikes? Bikes. Biking, it's a different kind of freedom. It makes me feel like I'm flying when, you know, I have tires. And you feel like a car. I mean, you're going 30 miles per hour downhill. You're zooming. The air is in your face. You're like, wow. And going forward, how do you think the bicycle is going to play a role in your life? Definitely as a way of just, like, relaxing, de-stressing, because I've heard adult life. It's pretty crazy. It is crazy. Oh, it's pretty crazy. So I'm hoping with the bike, I can hopefully lead a healthy life on it. Right on. Well, I'm really proud of you. Congratulations. Thank you. Have fun on Rack Rack. Thank you. You too. Savannah, tell me about your experience on the Dream Team and what it means to you. So this is my first year doing a Y-Bike. So my Dream Team has been really supportive and really awesome for me because going, like, seeing different people on your team and encouraging them is like really awesome and going up the hills and watching people walk the hills. It's just funny because reaching for a thousand miles and we know we can go up the hills and the people are just walking up the hills. So yeah. It has been really amazing because it's like really helpful and I get to help other people on my team and, like, get to be the leader on my team and coach everybody else. Yeah. And how do you think bikes are going to play a role in your life going forward? Are you going to ride a bike forever now? Yeah. So, I think this was really a journey for me because I'm going to continue to continue riding bikes because it has been like really amazing to me. Well, I wish you all the best. Thank you for talking with me. You're welcome. Alright, bye. Have fun. Good luck. Bye. How's it going, Rachel? It's going great. Right on. Yep. Looking good. Thank you. Woo. You having fun, Savannah? Yeah. Loving it. Looking good. So you're a dream team mentor. What does that mean? So this is my first year with the team actually and it's been very inspirational. Seeing kids from not knowing how to ride a bike to riding now, riding with me is pretty incredible. Yeah. So do you tag along one person? We have a group of four. Three or four youths, usually to two mentors every day. Have fun. Go chase Savannah. She's getting ahead of you. Yeah. Thanks. Bye. There's my girlfriend. There she is. How's it going? Woo. You're looking great. Woo. Look at those teeth, by the way. Let's see the teeth. Man, those are white. Ah. You know, a lot of people avoid the rumble strips. I think they feel kind of nice. Right? It's like a free butt massage. And I mean, it's the one time during rag-rye I can shine with my shocks. Yeah. Put those shocks to use, girl. There you go. Here we go. Ah. Rumble. Rumble. Big fan. Right on. Follow you. We got our videos from you and through email. Right on. Well, thank you. I appreciate the love. Wow. We love you. All right. Have a good one. Say hi to your mom. I will. Bye. We still have cloud cover, which means it is so nice and cool. No sweating today. Do you wear this every day? Yeah. You do? Yep. That's impressive. You guys are awesome. Look at you. Yeah, buddy. Thank you. All right. Let's do it. Let's do it. It's time for a donkey show. All right. Amelia, what are we going to go do? Ah, we're going to the donkey show. Go into a donkey show. Yeah. They've been advertising this donkey show all morning. And here we are. There you go. Yeah, buddy. All right. Amelia, it's your turn to go into the donkey show. Donkey show. You are part of the show now. Give them a kiss. They're a donkey kiss. So cute. My favorite donkey. So what is a donkey show? Tijuana, Mexico. So this is a different version. This is a PG version. PG version of a donkey show. Yes, sir. Oh, you look so cute at a donkey show. You look so cute at a donkey show. You look so cute at a donkey show. You look so cute at a donkey's behind. Oh, look. Road apples. Only a quarter. Oh, sweet. I need some more fiber today. Road apples. 25 cents. They're pretty light. They don't weigh much at all. Thank you for the donkey show. Yeah. Donkey show. How'd you guys come up with this crazy idea? Sit down at a birthday party and we just had to come up with something for Ragnarai. So, hey, let's have a donkey show. Right? Hey, friends here at Ragnarai. I have a new one named Andy. Andy, how you doing, bud? I'm doing pretty good, Ryan. How are you? Good. So, how you feeling out here? I feel absolutely great. I'm so happy to meet you. You're my inspiration for doing this ride. I saw the video a couple years ago. I saw how you interact with people. I love all your cycling videos, the cross-country ones, all like South America, all that stuff. So, I started getting in shape, eating better, cycling a lot. I ended up losing about 180 pounds over the past year and a half. And I finally feel like I'm in good enough shape to do this. So, here I am. And what do you think? I love it. Love it. There's no other place I'd rather be right now. Then in Iowa, riding bikes with riding van dozer. High five, buddy. All right, man. I've been waiting for a slip and slide and this is the first one of this year's Ragnarai. Check it out. Good. Time to give it a try. All right. Getting warmed up for the slip and slide. It's time. How y'all feeling? Good. How y'all feeling? Let's do this. Let's do this. How y'all feeling over here? Scared. Scared. That was pretty awesome. Are you proud of me? I'm so proud of you. You went down that big slip and slide. Wow. I went down that big hill. You got big go all by yourself. I'm going to say it right here. This is the best slip and slide I've ever seen do with the hill. Oh, dear Lord. Oh, dear Lord. What is happening? What is this? Stay on track. Stay on track. Oh, man. That was beautiful. That was beautiful. So Ragnarai is a ride. It's not a race, but to these two, it is. My friends, you're the champions, right? Yeah. Defending champions. That's correct, right? Last year, we won the whole thing. Clearly, we were ahead of even the second place so far. But we were ahead of even the second place or by long shot. Yeah. The trophy from last year. Look at that. You won Ragnarai. Drinkers with a biking problem. That's what we are. Thank you for cheering us on. Yay. Hello. Thank you. So I was supposed to be in Sweden, but the next best thing just rolled up. A real swede of biking. How you doing, buddy? Yeah, I'm good. You loving this? Loving it. And I'm happy to see you in the next video. I'm happy to see you here. I would have missed you in Sweden if you were there. That's true. That's true. So here we go. I'm just singing. Classic Swedish rock now. Emilia, are you loving life? I'm loving life right now. Yeah, you are. It feels great outside. We got a little rain, but it's warm. And we're ready to go. We're ready to go. We're ready to go. We're ready to go. We're hot and warm. And we're cruising, it's like flat and just like good crew out here. No headwind. No headwind. So I just met a fella named Arjen and he's doing something rather unique. What's going on here? I'm riding across the country. A year after being in a car accident, then nearly killed me. Oh, no. You're carrying all your stuff. Yeah. Do you have a badminton net? Yeah, yeah. You have badminton. You gotta have a badminton set up when you're riding across the country. Clearly. Clearly. How has it been? You loving it? Yeah, it's been awesome. It's been such a delight. What's the, what are you finding as you ride across the country? The kindness of strangers, you know? And people know that this is like a hard thing and they kind of like see what I'm like and they're like, oh man, can I get you a glass of water or anything, you know? Yeah, just kindness of people, really. That's awesome. Here we are walking into a field, trying not to step on stuff. Yeah, you're good. Okay, so what's your name and who you're with and what do you do? My name's Dan Paulson. I'm with the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service and I'm a soil conservationist. So what we do is we work with private landowners to install conservation practices on their land to conserve soil, improve water quality and wildlife habitat. And why is that important here in Iowa? So 99% of the state is in agricultural production of some sort. So they're all of our land base or most all of our land bases in agricultural production. So we have a great big land base to work with and that's why it's important. We have some fragile soils and some areas that need protection. All right, so we're standing where? We are in a soybean field outside of Newell, Iowa. And we're gonna look at today is a soybean crop that was no-till planted into last year's standing corn stalks or corn residue. Wow, okay. So you can look down here and see that this field, when they planted these beans, they didn't till the soil up from the prior year. They just planted it right in there. So you see all this residue from last year that protects the soil from erosion and also conserves moisture. You can see just as we pull that back a little bit, you can see good moisture. We work with the private landowners to teach the methods. We have financial assistance programs where we can help provide financial incentives to them too to help pay to get started with some of the conservation practices we do. And obviously there's a lot of corn in Iowa or some of the other crops. Well, the two main crops in Iowa are corn and soybeans. So pretty much that's what we have here. There are a few small grains and then some alfalfa that we also have here. And of all the corn that we're riding past, how much is it kind of a human's eat? Or is it for animal feed? All of you, everything that you see is for feed and probably ethanol production. Very little of what you drive by is for human consumption. So now we're looking at another conservation practice. It's called a filter strip, which is basically a strip of perennial vegetation grasses in this case that provides a buffer from the cropland to a water body. And why is that important? So that's important because the strip can take up nutrients and keep sediment out of the streams. So it's a great practice for farmers to implement on their farms. We got the dream teamers. What's up? How you feeling? Good. Woo! You're just riding in the rain, singing in the rain, pedaling in the rain. Hey, Amelia, what did you just say to me? What's that? I'm at 57 miles. 57? Yeah. And my butt is still intact. Her butt's feeling good. I'm proud of you. I love you. I think it's time for my first slice of pie. Here we go, rhubarb pie. My favorite kind of pie is pumpkin pie, but it's not pumpkin season, so I'm gonna go with this. This is church lady pie. Not to be confused with Amish pie, but it's still pretty solid. So Amelia is not a big pie fan, but she's gonna go for it. Not, I've been told. I gotta try it. Give it a try. What do you think? Rhubarb. That's actually really good. I don't like rhubarb in general, so. It's the magic of Iowa. I don't know. So I'm sitting here eating pie, and this guy's like, Ryan, what's up? And I'm like, oh, it's you. I follow you on Instagram. I want you to meet a very inspirational guy, and he's gonna tell us all about what he does. Danny. What up, everyone? I'm Rod with Dan USA. Everybody called me Lieutenant Dan, and I just got done bicycling with lower 48 states for suicide awareness, and I'm here at my first rag bride. I have a nonprofit called The One Penal at a Tie Movement, and it's just amazing stuff, man. And what inspired all this? So I attempted suicide three times. I was planning a fourth, and a friend said it's one pedal at a time to me that changed my life. I used to be 270 pounds. I was mentally unhealthy, and cycling saved it, changed it all. And so I started bicycling with lower 48 after eight months of cycling, and yeah, it was life changing for me. And going forward, what are the plans with the organization? Well, so unfortunately, there's a lot of kids, especially in Colorado and around the country, that commit suicide. 14 to 28s are highest risk suicide, so I'm hoping by the end of the year to start focusing more on children. Make a stranger smile. I'm the smiley face guy. Yeah, buddy, look at that. Yeah, look at that, that's impressive. That's so cool. That's awesome, dude. I'm hot. It's awesome. Congrats on what you're doing and what you've overcome, and I wish you the best on everything in the future. Thanks, man. I appreciate it enough. Hey, we'll be riding, hopefully, at some point. Yeah, you better come to Boulder to do the cruiser ride. Of course, at some point. Final five miles. We got this, people. We got this. Five miles to go. There's Danny, he's flying again. We made it to Pocahontas. Good job, Amelia. Booty check, how you doing? Pretty good. Pretty good. We're about to go over here. The last few miles in, we're a little bit, but feeling good now. We're on a camp on the left field? We're gonna camp on a baseball field. It's been a long time since I've camped on a baseball field. You know what baseball field is good for? Flat ground. High five. High five. Boom, day two. So we started our day at Casey's and now we're ending it at Casey's and as you can see, there's a lot of people here. This is where everybody comes to get cheap beer and just hang out in the parking lot. And you know, there's a lot of fun places to hang out at Rackbribe. For some reason, I have a special spot in my heart for Casey's, I love it. We got some really good food at the Casey's parking lot party. And day two, good job. Good job. Way to go, 71 miles. 71 miles. Biggest day of your life on a bike. Boom, boom. Until we do 100 miles. In two days. Rackbribe, we're just camping out with all of our buddies now. Hope nobody snores. Church stuff can be generally very ornate, but I've never seen it ornate in terms of using geodes and rocks and whatnot. You know, you normally see a lot of gold and things. So this is like the most unique thing that I've ever seen. Yeah. I'm not gonna lie.