It’s Always Better Around Corner 

June 8, 2003 

Fremont, Nebraska   

    Tomorrow it’s good-bye Nebraska, cross the Missouri and hello Iowa.  Iowa, where my cross-country bicycling adventures began almost thirty years ago.  I had purchased a bike for something to do on the days I didn’t run.  There were the occasional rides over East Orchard Mesa; I tackled the Monument with mixed results and once, while in Aspen for a 10k, rode from the Highlands Ski Area to the Maroon Bells parking lot. But multi-day bicycle trips had never crossed my mind.  Then the Iowa in-laws sent a newspaper clipping about this thing called RAGBRAI.  As with JUCO, RAGBRAI is an acronym.  Spelled out its Register’s Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa.

      Today almost every state in our nation hosts a border-to-border bicycle tour but RAGBRAI was the first and is still the largest and best known.  It started as the brainchild of Des Moines Register columnist Donald Kaul and Register writer and editor John Karras.  Mr. Karras, I’ve been told, has retired to Colorado while Mr. Kaul, a bitingly funny, extremely liberal, curmudgeon of a writer has moved on to the Cedar Rapids Gazette.

     As the story was told to me, and it could have been completely fabricated but sounds on the mark, Donald Kaul was looking for a way to discover the pulse of Iowa.  John Karras, an avid cyclist, suggested a river to river, Missouri to Mississippi ride.  Kaul bought the idea and in his column invited any reader interested to ride along.  Amazingly a couple of hundred peddlers accepted the invitation.  The ride, held during the last week of July, a timing that routinely delivers the worst in Iowa summer weather, struggled along for a couple of summers until one July over a thousand riders participated.  That fall, Michael Gartner, editor and publisher of “The paper all Iowa depends on” announced the Register was thinking of dropping sponsorship.  His reason, RAGBRAI had become much more than a bicycle journey across the Hawkeye State, witnessed in his words, by the riders having  “Way to much involvement in sex and drugs”. Of such pronouncements icons are created.  The next year over ten thousand people from all fifty states and a few foreign countries applied to participate in this “bicycle bacchanalia”. The sex and drugs thing never really took hold, we are talking about Iowa, but now thirty some years after the initial effort, over 15,000 people participate each summer.

    The Maynard’s and their relatives were a part of RAGBRAI number ten.  It was a family event.  Back then that meant it was a lot of work for the wives and lots of fun for the husbands, daughters and cousins.  It was during this ride our eldest fell and broke her wrist, an injury that bothers her to this day.  Despite this family trauma I had fond memories of my first RAGBRAI.

     Several years later I returned to the Iowa ride with my wife and Frank Wagner, local architect and athlete extraordinaire.  Frank, a Pennsylvanian by birth, had never been to Iowa but said he quickly picked up the local dialect.  You just rode through any Iowa hamlet and if somebody waved your direction you simply blurted out, “Go Hawks!” although when properly spoken in Iowanese comes out “Go-Awks   

    The latest two Iowa rides, some five years apart, I rode with a group of ancient reprobates from Grand Junction.  To protect the guilty I will only refer to them as the Bean Counter, the Fundraiser, the Fundraiser’s Evil Twin, the Doc and the North Dakotan.  This group is out and out scary.  The Bean Counter has never been seen asleep in the state of Iowa.  From the minute he crosses the Missouri River until 7 days later when he spots the “Welcome to Omaha” sign on the return trip no one has ever seen him as much as nod off.  The man is partying at one in the morning, at least that’s what the others tell me, and he is wide-awake when I roll out at 6 a.m.  The Evil Twin doesn’t bike that much except around the campgrounds and beer tents taking pictures of girls in halter-tops.  Since RAGBRAI is usually held in temperatures approaching the century mark the Evil Twin is a film processing labs dream come true.  The Doc, who rides with more ability in daylight than I do in my dreams, spends fifty-one weeks a year carefully watching his diet, but within the borders of the Hawkeye State subsists on nothing but biscuits and gravy and beer.  The Fundraiser has been known to stand for hours in the door of Iowa bars and ask everyone entering for their id.  And no one has ever asked him just what in the heck he’s doing.  Many customers do object to being i.d’ twice, once by the bartender and the other time by that guy with the glasses over by the door.  And the North Dakotan goes through life asking, “Anyone for Pinochle? Cribbage? Gin?”  The first two are card games.

    Each Iowa ride is at least 400 miles long over seven days.  Yet I have never gained less than five and once added a dozen pounds to my frame.  With over 15,000 riders going through the state every farmer, church group, high school booster club and entrepreneur along the route would like to separate each rider from a couple of bucks.  This task is accomplished with signs saying “Home Made” and “Fresh Squeezed”. Each and every riding day consists of, at a minimum, seven or eight stops for food and drink.

    Last year, on a Sunday morning around 9 a.m. I was fifteen miles into the day’s ride.  The temperature was hovering around 80 degrees and a soft wind was blowing down the main street of a small Iowa town.  I was sitting on the curb in that two-block business district enjoying a heaping plate of biscuits and gravy served up by the United Methodist Women.  Beside me sat a most well mixed Bloody Mary purchased from the local bar that had moved their business location to the street providing easier access to the riders.  As I savored my biscuits and gravy and relished the Bloody Mary, my eyes closed against the gentle wind and I knew in my heart, “Life will never get any better than this.”  Slowly I returned to my bike knowing this week, why maybe even life, was now in a downhill mode.  With a heavy heart I began to pedal out of town.  And, as I rounded the corner I saw a sign.  “Rhubarb Pie ala mode- All Home Made”, with an addition at the bottom “Support Lutheran Women.”