Where are they? I've driven up and down these roads for quite a spell and I can't find them. How hard can it be to find 2,000 people in shorts and t-shirts tooling around on their bicycles?
That was the question I asked myself and a handful of bystanders as I roamed the untamed roads of western Council Bluffs around the levees that shielded the city from the Missouri River. I was sports editor of the Council Bluffs Daily Nonpareil that summer of 1974 and I figured that if thousands of bicyclists were gathering in my city to attempt a trip on two wheels across the state in the dog days of summer, well, that might be worth a story.
That zany state-crossing trek was actually accomplished a year earlier, by Donald Kaul and John Karras of the Des Moines Register. This time promised be be an even bigger deal as the doors were opened to the masses for what was being dubbed SAGBRAI (The Register's Second Annual Bicycle Ride Across Iowa.). Well, the riders pulled it off, but I didn't. Those 2,700 riders could have been in the witness protection program as far as I knew. I never found them, a lingering stain on my reputation as a journalist.
Fast forward a decade and I'm now working at The Register. Kaul and Karras are now co-workers. I have my finger on all things RAGBRAI. I decide to give it a try myself. In the second half of the 1980s, I rode four RAGBRAIs -- the first three with my oldest son; the last one with my daughter. I learned a lot from my RAGBRAI experiences even though I didn't reach the Mississippi River finish in 1986 or 1989.
I was introduced to the one-man-band Patrick Hazell and The Blue Band on RAGBRAI. I learned that cold showers are better than no shower at all, that cornfields are poor substitutes for restrooms, that pork chops taste mighty good at 8 a.m. and Iowa pies taste good any time, that naked women are a far sight better than naked men (actually, I already knew that) and that the worst night sleeping in a camper beats the best night's rest in a tent.
My son, Aaron, and I began our virgin RAGBRAI from a campground on the site of Lewis Central High School in Council Bluffs. Our goal that RAGBRAI XIV was Muscatine, 479 miles of idyllic Iowa highway to the east. But somewhere between Audubon and Perry, I witnessed a nasty wipeout on a steep downhill when a rider just ahead of me took a tumble at high speed. Fortunately, he appeared to be just shaken up with some wicked road rash and a cracked helmet, but that's when I decided Aaron and I should have helmets, too. (Yep, we started a 479-mile bike trip across Iowa without helmets. Crazy.)
I called my wife, Linda, to pick us up in Perry so we could buy helmets back home in Urbandale. (Plus, get a night's sleep in our own beds!).
Another lesson I learned from that first RAGBRAI: Don't try it with inferior equipment. The helmet issue aside, I should have paid more attention to my bike, especially the spokes. I'm a large man and the frame of my bike was appropriately large. But my poor spokes couldn't handle the stress. Over the next two days after Perry, several spokes snapped. causing delays while I waited for repairs. By the time I limped into Conrad, I'd had enough. I called Linda. Again. This time, though, it was the end of the road for our first RAGBRAI.
The next spring, I made two crucial moves: I had my bicycle wheels re-laced with sturdier stainless steel spokes and decided to finally take care of an old running injury, opting for arthroscopic surgery on a knee to clean up a torn meniscus. Not sure how my knee would hold up on a long bike ride, I began what would become an annual ritual: a pre-RAGBRAI test ride from Guthrie Center to our Urbandale home, a 44-mile ride that provided just enough hills and traffic to make it a worthy indicator of our fitness. After passing that test, I took another big step: I asked my parents if they'd like to go with us that summer on a 437-mile jaunt from Onawa to Guttenberg? Oh, yes, could you bring your camper, too? This began another tradition that also included my young daughter, Meghan, who could enjoy some bonding time with her grandparents while Aaron and I hit the backroads of Iowa.
So, for the next three RAGBRAIs, we enjoyed the relative luxury of sleeping in an RV. For my fourth (and final) RAGBRAI, Meghan became my cycling partner, having passed the Guthrie Center test. As we relaxed in the air-conditioned comfort of the UNI-Dome in Cedar Falls, listening to The Blue Band, I thought to myself, "This is as good as it gets." So I told my parents to take us home. We'll just skip the final two days. And my RAGBRAI days were over.
Aaron went on to ride one or two more RAGBRAIs in the 1990s (including at least one with his brother, Bret), but I limited my future bicycling to the growing network of excellent trails in the Des Moines area. My bicycle now sits in my garage, unused the past few years. I'll get rid of it eventually, but for now it's still a reminder of those days when just stretching out under the shade of a tree in some farmer's front yard, weary fellow riders lined up for their turn at a gurgling hose and a gauzy haze hanging over a nearby field was, indeed, heavenly.
Author Larry Lehmer's book about Dick Clark and American Bandstand -- Bandstandland: How Dancing Teenagers Took Over America and Dick Clark Took Over Rock & Roll --is available from Sunbury Press. His book about the last tour of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens -- The Day the Music Died: The Last Tour of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens -- is available at Amazon.
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