Rick Paulos didn’t go to his sister’s wedding because the ceremony was during RAGBRAI.
In all fairness, he says over dinner in Coralville, he told her right after the engagement that the last two weekends in July were off limits. She called his bluff — but he wasn’t bluffing.
A few years after that, he herniated a disc — a chunk of it jammed up against his spinal cord, he says — while training for the ride in the spring. The surgeon told him if they operated, he wouldn’t be able to go on RAGBRAI.