DUNNING — On the first day, there was rain.

Followed by thunder.

Followed by the sound of an air-horn.

Followed by instructions to the occupants of hundreds of tents set up on Callaway football field to leave their dry (or semi-dry) sleeping bags and take shelter in Callaway High School locker rooms.

A tornado had been spotted outside of town. Hail was reportedly on the way.

And the event that had drawn campers from across Nebraska, from Alabama, Texas and Missouri, from as far away as Canada, hadn’t yet begun.

But of the 600 souls who will spend a week on the Bike Ride Across Nebraska, many are repeaters used to bad weather, said Fred Jalass, who’s participated in the ride in some way each year since 1986.

There was a tornado when the group camped in Loup City in 1997. Two year before, cyclists rode through a June snowstorm, emptying hardware stores of gloves between Creighton and Ponca.

Every year, he said, there’s something.

“It’s a BRAN tradition.”

It’s a tradition that hasn’t kept cyclists from returning to the ride year after year. More than 60 percent of this year’s riders have done at least one BRAN before.

Apparently, it hasn’t scared away new riders either.

BRAN turns 28 this year. By the time the annual ride ends on Saturday, cyclists will have pedaled 454 miles and camped in seven small communities along the way.

Sunday morning, after tearing down their tents (the worst of the storm, including hail and tornadoes ended up bypassing Callaway), the cyclists set off on the road to Dunning, 54 miles to the north.

They stopped in Arnold for doughnuts. They photographed the canyon at the top of a long, winding hill just north of town. And when they rolled into Dunning, where they were to camp that night, most of the town was there to meet them.

The 2000 Census lists Dunning’s population at 109, but 2006 estimates put it at 92. The community has been preparing for the riders since January.

At first, said Dunning resident Lori Zutavern, a group met monthly to decide how to feed and entertain a group more than six times larger than the community. The monthly meetings became fortnightly and then weekly.

A church group planned an enormous pot-luck dinner. Volunteers gave tours of nearby Halsey National Forest and took groups tubing on the North Loup River.

Kids wandered through the throngs of spandex-clad cyclists passing out mints.

“A very few do a lot,” Zutavern said.

BRAN committee chairwoman Elaine Zutavern (there are a lot of Zutaverns in Dunning) spent Sunday shuttling cyclists around town in a Gator. She took one cyclist home to use a shower.

That’s part of the beauty of BRAN said Jalass, who after several years as a rider became one of BRAN’s co-chairs. “Everybody is more than willing to help you with whatever you need,” he said.

“Even total strangers.”

Jalass lived in cities all his life before marrying a girl from Bancroft. He had never camped before his first BRAN, he said. But he liked the experience so much, he now plans the routes, making sure to return from time to time to some of the favorite towns.

And BRAN in some ways, is like a town, too. Lots of people stop and talk to Jalass as he sits on the Dunning football field bleachers, eating a $3 steak kabob. One of them wears a BRAN 1990 T-shirt. Another wears a BRAN 22 shirt.

Jalass doesn’t know everyone who is riding this year. But he knows a lot of them.

One he doesn’t know is Bob Shriner of Lincoln, doing his first BRAN. Shriner said he was pleasantly surprised to be met by the Dunning children bearing welcome mints. He signed up to take a tour of the forest that afternoon.

And Sunday night, he planned to sit outside his tent on the football field, just talking and maybe throwing a frisbee around and meeting his neighbors.

“And then go to sleep when the sun goes down.”

Reach Cara Pesek at 473-7361 or cpesek@journalstar.com.