Almost as incredible as the fact that Linn may have been the youngest rider is that he never rode another RAGBRAI full route, or even one full day or one mile. While many 1973 riders began a string of years and years of riding across Iowa — and hundreds of thousands of subsequent RAGBRAI fans followed in their wake — Linn never returned to RAGBRAI.

Well, not until Monday of this week, when he caved to encouragement from some Fort Dodge area friends to pedal in the 50th anniversary RAGBRAI event.

Linn made almost the entire planned route of 55 miles from Storm Lake to Caroll, bowing out with five miles left due to some discomfort.

“I thought the route was wonderful. The roads were good to ride on. Iowa Nice people, who were again handing out water and treats, were a welcome addition. In all, my body held up pretty good, the group I rode with was very helpful and supportive,” Linn said.

-Submitted photo
Larry Linn, of Fort Dodge, preps to bicycle Monday, for the RAGBRAI ride from Storm Lake to Carroll.

Pat O’Rourke, of Fort Dodge, is a close friend of Linn’s. O’Rourke said the Linn family of four was certainly a part of Iowa history, and believes the only other Fort Dodge person who participated in the 1973 ride was Father Patrick Walsh, a priest who served in a local parish before moving to Sioux City.

“Larry rode in the first RAGBRAI, Missouri River to Mississippi River, on a three-speed bicycle, which had to be an amazing feat in that era,” O’Rourke said. By the late 1980s bicycle technology took leaps forward, and for decades people have ridden bikes with 21 or more gears, for more choices when tackling steep inclines. Linn had none of that.

Linn said the 1973 participants could not have foreseen that RAGBRAI would become a rolling party of thousands of bicyclists who came from all 50 states and many nations.

“Now, it is all commercialized. You have food vendors across the state,” he said.

Linn said his most lasting memory of the ride was how kindness from rank and file Iowans helped during trying times.

“People gave stuff out of the kindness of their heart,” he said, then cited the most memorable being near Fort Dodge, when the high school softball team from Stratford handed out free watermelon.

Linn said there wasn’t a lot of family discussion on whether to take part. His parents, Dean and Nina Linn, told daughter Cindy Linn, then 16, and their son, “‘Hey, there is this bike ride across the whole state, and we are going to do it.’ We started practicing riding on the blacktop,” Larry Linn recounted.

The Des Moines Register newspaper organizers set the 1973 route from Sioux City to Davenport. In a wrinkle that a lot of present day RAGBRAI riders may not know, for the first few years the ride took place in August instead of July. In fact, the inaugural ride took place the latest of any year, from Aug. 25 to 31, which meant the two Linn teens got out of a week of school.

The Linn family logistics involved one of the two parents driving the pickup ahead to the overnight city to get a hotel, while the other three bicycled the day’s route. The second overnight was special, because they got to sleep in their own southwest side Fort Dodge home.

“I just got on my three-speed and just rode and kept going across the whole state. … I rode a lot faster than my parents. I was five miles ahead a lot, then I would pull over and wait for them,” Linn said.

He doesn’t recall any toughest stretch of highway or worst hill, but said “there were some brutal days,” including one day when the route was 100 miles. Linn now recognizes that he had a front seat — a bike seat — to take in a historic moment in Iowa history

“I enjoyed it more looking back now than when I did it. At age 13, I maybe didn’t appreciate it,” he said.

O’Rouke has ridden RAGBRAI several times himself, beginning in 1988, and said it is great that Linn could participate in the 50th anniversary ride.

O’Rourke helped with logistics to get Linn to Storm Lake, and they were among about six friends who kept tabs on each other riding together. Linn, who from 1998 to 2021 operated a Domino’s Pizza franchise in Fort Dodge with wife Sue Linn, has rarely biked in recent decades. The most recent bicycling Linn had done was about 15 years ago on some Dickinson County trails.

Linn recounted what he told O’Rourke, “Pat, I haven’t even practiced. I don’t even have a bike. Pat said, ‘Well, we are going.'”

Nonetheless, O’Rourke figured Linn would be able to pull off the 50th anniversary day of bicycling due to grit, plus one other interpersonal characteristic: “He is a stubborn son of a gun.”