Bubble, Bubble, Toil and ?????

Dear Blog Reader

I hope that this finds you doing well. I am fine. I am recovering nicely from the Register’s Annual, Great, Bike Ride Across Iowa (RAGBRAI). Didn’t the lovely Miss Beverly expertly keep you abreast of the comings and goings, the hospitality of the magical Miss Patty, and the myriad of options provided by Pie-owa as the guest blog writer?

I must confess that I have been at a loss for words to describe the week. Actually, I have too many words to describe what happened. I have started the blog three times (now four) and had to abandon the efforts. There was just too much to describe. I have had to return to the cutting room and lop off this or that. While interesting, it is superfluous to the experience.

So I have worked to distill the week and 482 miles to one experience. So hand your device to a loved one, (preferably one who is always too busy to read “You said what; Roger?”) Sit back on the couch. Close your eyes and listen as they read. I will try to paint a word picture and show you what RAGBRAI meant to me.

It is Tuesday morning. We have been riding for 3 hours. The relief from the rain the night before is keeping the temps in the low 80’s with low humidity and light westerly breeze pushing us along. Riding into Alden, Iowa, the lunch town, the brick faced store fronts are festooned with streamers. The organizers have combed through their garages and found those bikes that will never be ridden again. They have painted them yellow, orange, green, and red and bolted them to light poles up and down Main Street. It must have been a shock for the town workers who had previous decorative duties was to hang tinsel and garland for the coming Christmas season. But there they were sporting 20 year old Schwinn’s and Huffy’s in a rainbow of colors.

In the middle of 5000 bike riders, who are in lines buying all manner of refreshment, listening to live local entertainment, and hunting a softer seat, is a 8 year old girl sitting on top of the town’s fire truck; sitting right there on top of the light bar, holding a bottle of bubbles, blowing gently through the wand, covering us in bubble blessings as we make our way through town. The bubbles are cascading out of her wand, catching the light breeze, hovering for a moment over our heads and then spiriting away to the East toward our final destination; the Mississippi river in Davenport.

Go ahead open your eyes. Take back your device. That town, those riders, the girl, the fire truck, the bubbles are were part of what made RAGBRAI so special for me.

RAGBRAI is so many things to so many people.

To those of us who just want to ride, it is 482 miles of sometimes challenging, sometimes easy riding.  Everyone who heard me talk about the ride, suggested how flat it was going to be. There were two days of flatness in the middle; heading East on a board flat ribbon of 2 lane highway between two fields of corn or beans. However, the first day had more climb than the Hilly Hundred at 4900 feet of elevation. We went down a hill into Washta going 45 miles an hour; a personal best for me. The hills were called rollers. At one point while rolling upward toward a town, we passed a mile marker declaring our goal was 5 miles away. I could look ahead and see that I was at the bottom of ever increasing humps that did not crescendo until they crested at the base of a water tower in the town of our goal way up the road. I heard a groan go up around me as we shifted into an easier gear and prepared for the unending crest in front of us.

For those who wanted to participate in the great rolling party called RAGBRAI, there was each day’s first stop with Bloody Mary’s a few miles down the road. Several stops had free beer. We know that contrary Mary’s garden grows with silver bells and cockle shells. It appears that gardens in Iowa grow with beer. Every wide spot in the road had the last beer garden until the next wide spot in the road. One vendor made a deal with seven farmers, each about 5 miles away from each day’s stopping point. Consequently, they offered the last beer of the day. If a beer every ten miles was too far between refreshment, some enterprising vendor had developed insulated bike bags so you could keep your beer cold and with you in case of emergency.

For those who wanted to spend times with friends, telling stories and creating memories, there were teams of all sorts. From buses with bike racks on top that could hold 50 bikes to the family Subaru with a roof rack for tents, and a hitch rack for three bikes, tribes roamed the prairie once again. There was team Shagbrai, Team Wind, Team Liverstrong (they had a T-shirt with a drawing of a liver on it and a tap dispensing beer), Team Hee Haw, Team Good Beer, and team Grin and Sharritt just to name a few. What were my favorites? The Donner Party (slogan “we eat the slow ones.”) Team Air Force; this team of around 40 active air force members, took it upon themselves to be a rolling bicycle shop for stranded cyclists. Every time that I saw a cyclist with a flat tire or broken spoke, a gaggle of Team Air Force  would surround them and get their bike going again.

The introverts were well represented also. You could see them with bike trailers pulling their tents, bags and gear behind their bikes all 482 miles. They would be up early packed and ready to go on their lonely trip across Iowa with 20,000 people surrounding them. None of them were riding tandem bikes.

For the 48 small and medium sized towns across Iowa, they were the center of the recreational bicycling universe for a day. I am guessing, that on average, $250,000 was dumped on each of the towns that we stopped in. For that kind of economic development, I would find old Schwinns and Huffys to donate for the cause also. Vendors were so thick in the streets that the bikers would have to get off of our bikes and walk through downtown, emerge on the other side, climb back on our bikes and pedal slowly out of town.

For the Iowans, sitting in their lawn chairs under a shade tree, RAGBRAI provided a spectacle. While watching it pass by, they provided a children to spray us down on a hot and humid 92 degree Saturday. They were reminded that their rural Iowa home provides a tableau that defies the fly over naysayers. People from all 50 states and 13 countries rolled past their driveways. They watched people slam on their brakes when offering free apricot date cookies at the end of their long old farmstead driveway. They asked for our state names while filling out their 50 state bingo sheets. One couple knew that they had the most beautiful cut flower garden I have ever witnessed and didn’t mind when we laid down our bikes for a brief walk through the beauty. They heartily cheered after watching recreational bikers climb to the top of another hill near the end of a day’s ride not for the first or second wave but for us slow ones near the end.

For me, it was the trip with Ben, Chris and Bev, inspired by a niece named Renea, supported lovingly by Miss Beverly and graciously by Miss Patty. A trip that if praised enough and the timing is right will take other family members in the future. A trip of a thousand instances and moments that spun past with each turn of the crank and coasting down the next big hill. I can’t wait until next time.

For the girl on top of the fire truck in Alden, Iowa, it was a day when the world came to her door and she was able to bless it with bubbles borne on a gentle westerly breeze marking the way home.

Take Care.

Roger