I know I could do RAGBRAI without a charter but this being my first (and the 50th) I wanted to have the best experience as possible. I want to have the ability to not worry about things like power for charging my electronics (phone, computer, camera, lights….etc). I also did not want to worry or stand in to long of a line for showers (and want to have hot water). Showering after a long day on the saddle, I want to have a nice shower.
I went with Pork Belly Ventures from all the positive reviews I have read online and from others they sound amazing. For the cost, I think it is worth every penny. From reading what they provide it seems so worth it. I also opted, for an additional fee, the ride from the end town to the start town on Friday or Saturday. I will be parking my vehicle at the end town since I live in SW Wisconsin, it just makes sense to do that. Just take a look at what is provided in the weeklong accommodations.
Now with this being the 50th RAGBRAI and all, there were some issues and one would expect with getting signed up with just about any charter. Pork Belly, opened their registration just after the route announcement. I was watching the site like a hawk and once I saw that registration was open….I registered. I got registered, but then had problems with the payment side of things. And then the site started timing and erroring out. I tried one more time and accidentally created a second registration. So I felt good that I was registered, but payment did not go through. A little later in the evening there was a post on one of the facebook groups I am following for RAGBRAI and they confirmed that if you got to the payment page that you were registered and they had to do some database clean up and will work on getting payments through.
Pork Belly Ventures throughout all of this high demand for their services and technology issues has been great. They have been reassuring and cool, calm, and collected throughout the entire thing. That right there shows that I picked the right charter for my first RAGBRAI and the 50th one at that.