R16 27 Goose Chase & Marne aka How the Rollout Got Crazy (Guest blog from Pochy)

With Norman and The Boss already holding down the fort at our Glenwood homestay, it was up to Too Much, Masinga, Deb & Dale, and me to ensure that all those virgin beavers were properly initiated on the Rollout - big task!  I wanted to show up to the RV being the Champagne-Guzzling Eager Beaver that everyone knows me to be, but instead, I showed up stressed out and cranky because I had been dealing with an angry dog-sitter all morning (apparently our husky was terrorizing her cat and she was threatening to back out on our dog-sitting deal).

As quickly as I could, I tried to manage the stress, crack open a beer, and get swept up into the magical chaos that is The Rollout.

Bikes, bags, beers, and mountains of random gear were being unloaded out of cars and piled into every available space of the RV and Smitty's van.  All in all, it seemed like a very efficient RV-packing experience and I really loved the new location!

Now, on to the fun part.  There were 2 new things that made this year's rollout experience unique; 1) GooseChase - a scavenger hunt app where submissions can be viewed and new scavenger hunt items can be created remotely, which allowed The Boss and Norman to essentially micromanage our Rollout and laugh at us/with us the entire time, and 2) Marne.

1) GooseChase
Norman and The Boss know this team like the back of their sneaky little hands and I'm sure they had a blast creating all of these scavenger hunt items.  The entire RV ride (which seemed to go really fast) was consumed with winning points on GooseChase, drinking, dancing, and randomly shouting "rules" at the virgins.

Champagne Shenanigans:

Like A Virgin:

Gold Digger:

Choose Your Own Adventure:

2) Marne

Here's the backstory: Luke and I were riding bikes one day and we ran into some guys (I think they were from Team Wind?) who asked if we were stopping at Marne.  I had never heard of Marne, so they told us a story about a RAGBRAI of years past (I found it, it was 2001, you can read about it here: The 2001 Route Change Incident) where the small town of Marne was suddenly left off the RAGBRAI route due to a last-minute route change.  Marne had prepared for RAGBRAI and the people there were really sad.  The riders felt bad for them, so decided to go off-route and descend on Marne for the greatest party of 2001.

Now, every year, buses full of RAGBRAI riders stop at Marne for a mid-day rollout party on their way to the official start down, regardless of where the start might be.  This year, Marne was right along our route, so I convinced everyone that we had to stop and see what that party is all about!

I guess the party in Marne doesn't really start until after 9:00am.... or until Team Beaver rolls in! When we arrived there was only one other bus (Delaware Blue Hens), but we rolled into that bar with all of our gear on and promptly slapped on stickers and ordered shots, followed by a nice mid-morning game of sand volleyball.  Soon enough, other teams started to arrive!

Team Beaver definitely started the party in Marne, and I would love to see the Marne stop continue to be a Team Beaver Rollout event!