COOPER, Iowa, June 6, 2010 –  The other day, we found ourselves wondering why more of you have not yet signed up yet for this year’s “Tour the Raccoon” bike ride.  The event, sponsored by the Des Moines Cycle Club, is open to the public and happens next weekend — June 12-13.  You can read about it in the story below this one in the RRVT News, and it also tells you there how to do online registration.   So, let us share with you our ”Top Ten Reasons You Should Stop Procrastinating and Sign Up for the ‘Tour the Raccoon’ Ride.”

10. Waukee’s Eason Elementary School will be an excellent launch point, and it’s a secure place where you can leave your vehicles overnight.

9.  All nine towns along the trail will be making special efforts both days to provide extra hospitality.

8.  Wildflowers are blooming spectacularly all along the trail now, and the farm fields are as lush and deep green as you’ll ever see them.  You really need to stand in a cornfield along the trail and measure how the crop is doing toward meeting the traditional “knee-high by the 4th of July” standard.  That’ll make a great photo to send to your far-flung relatives, because you’ll probably find that the corn will already be closer to waist-high than to knee-high.

7.  You can do a loop around the fabulously renovated, historic courthouse in Adel, one of Iowa’s best, and on Sunday afternoon, Kinnick’s Tavern will be sponsoring another “BRA” (Bike Ride to Adel) event, with live music, food and refreshments outdoors on the street on the south side of the courthouse square. “Tour the Raccoon” riders are special guests.

6.  Redfield has several restaurants, it has ice cream, there are homemade cookies at the Redfield Depot, and you and your sweetie can take the spur trail on a very short looop into Hanging Rock Park, which on several shaded benches there offers what we think is the best place to neck in all of west central Iowa.

5.  Catch a break in the new shelterhouse trailside in Linden (not London).  Someone has done a beautiful job of planting bushes and flowers around that shelterhouse.  Then you’re on to Panora, and there’s more ice cream at P.J.’s Drive-In than you can eat.

4.  Gotta check out the progrss at Sarah Brewster’s “Windsor Hotel” renovation in Yale, and catty-wampus from the hotel, stop on Saturday at Just Ethel’s, the fine eaterie & bar that keep lots of RRVT riders fueled.

3.  And on north on the trail are Herndon, where you can check out the junction where the new “North Loop” of the RRVT will connect to the current trail, and Cooper, where the town slogan is “Everything’s super in Cooper!”

2.  Then in Jefferson, you will ride right into the middle of one of Iowa’s finest small town celebrations, the 31st annual Bell Tower Festival, and there’ll be more fun, food and entertainment than you can possibly get to in one afternoon and evening in the community.   The theme for the Bell Tower Festival is “Let the Good Times Roll,” and what may have inspired that is the thought of a few hundred bicyclists rolling into town.

And, finally, the No. 1 reason you want to sign up for “Tour the Raccoon” may be this: The best glazed donuts in the world are made at Bunkers Dunkers Bakery on the square in Jefferson.  What better reason could there be?  Sign up now!