RAGBRAI went through Kalona July 27th. Photos by Sam McIntosh.

With a bicycle in one hand and a Kalona Bar in the other, thousands of visitors made their way through Kalona Friday as the meeting town stop during day six of RAGBRAI.

City Administrator Ryan Schlabaugh shares how organizers felt as months of preparation culminated in the state-wide bike ride’s first ever appearance in Kalona, “We were nervously optimistic with having RAGBRAI come through not having ever experienced it in Kalona. You don’t know the magnitude of it so it’s gone very well we had a nice plan, nice committee that did really good work. We had some local businesses that stepped up to create some neat experiences for the riders today and we’ve always got good food here in Kalona. So we had 30 plus vendors here to meet the needs of the riders and I think the weather couldn’t have done any better here today so it’s been a neat day to see it all come together.”

Several local organizations fundraised with vendor booths including the Iowa Mennonite School softball team coached by Kathryn Ney, “We have some of our players that are here selling for us. A lot of players are on vacation this week. At the end of softball a lot of players tend to go off and a lot are gone, so these players that are here are dedicated to the team and want to help out and so they and their parents are here selling Kalona Bars as well as Gatorade and water and bananas.”

Schlabaugh mentions how the city partnered with University of Iowa business students to learn of RAGBRAI’s economic impact, “We’ve got some students here in town today that will be meeting with vendors and talking them about what that impact is, and I’m sure in the near future they’ll present a nice little report to us so that we can derive what this actually means to the city financially for those businesses.”

The KCII Big Red Radio broadcasted live from Kalona during RAGBRAI as part of the KCII Summer Town Tour.