Comment by johnohara | Hacker News Reader

Comment by johnohara | Hacker News Reader

I've ridden the RAGBRAI (Register's Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa) three times. Each year, a different route brings you and 15,000 of your closest friends through small towns like Marne and Manilla. The chosen communities always enthusiastically rise to the occasion by providing food, water, beverages, entertainment, fun diversions, historical themes, hospitality, well wishes and much more.

Riding out of town after having a stack of pancakes at the firehouse or a piece of pie from the local Rotary Club, you have plenty of time to think about what it takes and how remarkable it is for some of those towns to accommodate everyone.

The RAGBRAI is a great way to experience the State of Iowa.

Cool! I thought Sibley, where my wife grew up, was small. Marne has under 150 people!

I was in Iowa visiting my grandparents when RAGBRAI came through their town one year: Oyens, Iowa.

Population 94.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Oyens,+IA/@42.8198478,-96....

Marne looks huge compared to Oyens... Marne has a restaurant and two stores! Oyens has a grain elevator and a closed church.

Do you know what is the building blurred by google street view, in front-left of the grain elevator ? I am curious.

Yeah in retrospect Sibley is in a totally different league. They have a Subway!

Northern Iowa is beautiful. The tops of some of those inclines yield spectacular vistas. You completely lose perspective of where you are. It is cool.

My nephew's wife grew up in Spirit Lake.

Especially for corn fields and huge skies lovers :)

When I did it one year, we went through a town with an official population of 6. Everyone was out helping, and apparently from neighboring farms/towns.

Can’t figure out what this has to do with TFA?

I can't either but it still was a satisfying comment to read.

Marne and Manilla are two of the towns that offer free land in the US mentioned in the article.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com