The CUBS of Chicago (not the baseball team)

A half-dozen or more of the teams and clubs that go on RAGBRAI® every summer send “advance parties” to the overnight host communities, once the riders have received their RAGBRAI® credentials, and the first of those delegations was in Jefferson on Friday, May 2. Several others are expected in the next few weeks, as preparations continue for Jefferson to be the July 21 overnight stop during RAGBRAI® XXXVI.

The team that was here late last week was the CUBS from the Chicago area, and no, they are not the major league baseball team. Rather, they are the Chicago Urban Bicycling Society, a group of 65 mostly veteran cyclists from the Chicago area.

The CUBS, founded in the spring of 1996 just in time to go on RAGBRAI® that year and participants ever since, will be camping in the lawns between and around the homes of Mavis and Mark Sawhill, Sue and Mark Rasmussen, and Nancy and Tom Winger in the west part of Jefferson.

The advance group included CUBS team coordinator Jerry Turry, 63, an early-retired high school athletic director who is now mayor of the suburb of Lincolnwood, Illinois. Traveling with him last week were attorney Brad Prendergast, 54, nurse Dana Nelson, 43, and social worker supervisor Rickie Cowin, 57.

Members of the CUBS go on training rides in Chicago, but RAGBRAI® is their one big group tour. They have designated Camp Courageous of Iowa, a privately funded camp in Monticello that helps people of all ages who are disabled, as the recipient of team fundraising activities, and have donated more than $20,000 the last three years to the camp. That includes their personal donations, an auction held during the team banquet one night of RAGBRAI®, and occasionally organizing games of “porta-pot bingo,” in which RAGBRAI® riders standing in lines for the portable toilets in the campground guess which door will open next.

The roster of CUBS team members and their occupations gives a good look at what the make-up of many RAGBRAI® groups is like. The CUBS range in age from 30 to 72. The team includes seven attorneys; three university professors, an admissions counselor and a dean; several nurses; a physician; two dentists; several social workers; two insurance brokers; two stockbrokers; an architect; a chef; two homemakers; a Chicago police officer, and a journalist, among others.

“This team is a great example of the wide range of riders who come on RAGBRAI® in groups – whether you’re talking about professions, age, couples, family groups, friends, whatever,” said Carla Offenburger, one of the co-chairs of the Jefferson RAGBRAI® Committee, who hosted the CUBS on their visit last week.

“And most of the teams and clubs do it right, like this one does. They follow the rules, they appreciate the hospitality everywhere they go, they look up and visit with their occupational counterparts in towns, they spend a lot of money while on their cycling vacations, and in fact they even raise a little money for some of the communities they go through. We’ve got to be proud that a group of people like the CUBS will spend some time here with us in Jefferson.”