The RAGBRAI, which stands for the Register's Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa, is the oldest, largest and longest bike tour in the nation. It's been going since 1973 and annually attracts 8,500 registered riders for a 450-550 mile meander through the corn fields and small towns of this Midwestern breadbasket state.

As many as 23,000 riders have been recorded on a single leg of the trip, since anyone can slip in and join the ride between towns. They just aren't eligible to have someone else carry their sleeping bag and arrange a place to lay it down in some small town up the road.

Come July 20, I'll be among the few, the chosen, the select 8,500 random happy riders pushing off at Missouri Valley, Iowa, on a six-day ride to the Mississippi River and the town of Leclaire.

I've wanted to ride this event ever since I first heard about it, probably 25 years ago.

This is the year.

I'll be riding with an old Army buddy who was best man at my wedding, an IMB missionary in Taiwan and now a pastor in Colorado.

Steve is an Iowa native, not that that will prove any advantage. I understand there is so much sweet corn and pie for sale in the towns we'll pass through that even a stranger can find his fill.

We applied online and made the cut. I've been anticipating the "someday" of this ride for half my life. I expected to make it this year, yet halfway hoped I wouldn't so I didn't have to trigger the logistical storm of getting there, storing the car, shuttling from the east side of the state to the west and riding back to the car, gathering camping equipment, bike gear, etc.

Anyone want to share a ride to Iowa?

Yet what amazes me is the absolute thrill in my gut knowing I'm going to do it.

At last.

I already wrote my one-year-old grandson to tell him we're going to do it together in 2021 when he's 14 and I'm...13 years older.

Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman star in a movie about to be released on DVD called Bucket List. Nicholson, an irascible billionaire, and Freeman, a scholarly mechanic, both get the news in the cancer ward that they are terminal. They break out of the hospital to accomplish their list of things they always wanted to do "before they kick the bucket."

RAGBRAI will be one thing off my list. And you know, I think I'm going to start checking off others. Anyone up for sky diving?