Big BAM Ready For Maiden Voyage Here

By ERIC X. VICCARO

EVICCARO@STEGENHERALD.COM

For the first time ever, the city of Ste. Genevieve is a featured tour stop for the Big BAM ride.

BAM, simply enough, stands for Bicycle Across Missouri.

Danita Allen Wood, editor-in-chief of Missouri Life Magazine, doesn’t shy away from admitting she got the idea for the bike ride while living in Iowa.

See, Iowa has been home to one of the top recreational bike rides in the country — RAGBRAI — which stands for the Register’s Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa — with the Des Moines Register newspaper as title sponsor. The event began back in August 1973.

“We move around the event every year,” Wood said. “We had not been to Ste. Genevieve yet, and it’s one of my favorite towns, it really is.”

Wood said she enjoys the bucolic setting of Ste. Genevieve, staying here previously at a “bed and breakfast” along Main Street.

The Rocheport-based Missouri Life Magazine is a family operation for the Wood family. Greg Wood, Danita’s husband, serves as the publisher while their son, Evan, is editor.

This will be the first Big BAM in two years, with last year’s event cancelled due to the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic.

Communities along the 2019 route were Columbia, Perry, Macon and Moberly, the last has twice been a tour stop.

The final day of the Big BAM is set for this Friday, with riders completing a 42.5-mile trek from Farmington.

In Ste. Genevieve County, these bicyclists will traverse Routes AA, F and B, rolling through Coffman, River Aux Vases en route here.