Best way to do this?

[eluser]pbreit[/eluser]
You might try adding + to permitted_uri_chars. Can you see which character might be the problem?

My understanding is that enable_query_strings does switch your URLs from segments to querystrings so that's not a great option (http://ellislab.com/codeigniter/user-gui.../urls.html). There are some threads on the forums about how to get around CodeIgniter's annoying lack of querystring support.