| Last night, I wrote a rather lengthy letter to my family on my
RAGBRAI XX experience. I'm posting that letter here for those of you
who were not fortunate enough to go. It was my first and it won't be
the last. It was a great week!
A little explanation around the players described below. Karen is my
wife, Tim is my 15 year old son, Joe and Jeff are two of my 5
brothers. All other names mentioned are members of Team Skidmark.
Again, this is a tad long (400+ lines). When you come from a large
family you don't get to speak very often so when you get your chance
you take it for all it's worth. It may give newcomers a little
different "taste" of what RAGBRAI is about.
Enjoy...
dennis
RAGBRAI XX is but a fond memory as I sit here - gingerly sit here -
recalling the highlights of one of the best vacations we've had in
years. This letter is not meant to intimidate you into riding it
with me next year, although the non-wimpy members of our family (Joe,
Jeff and Tim) are starting their conditioning next week. It will be
held July 18-24, 1993, and I plan on doing it at least one more time.
It really wasn't that bad a ride. The challenge became one of
limiting the number of food stops one made so as to not be late for
dinner at the camp site each night. My conditioning was not all in
vain - by the time July 19th rolled around, I'd put about 650 miles
on the bike since the first of January. Most of that was hills,
remembering how "flat" Iowa isn't. The real pain, so to speak, came
in the distance riding - being able to stay on the seat for hours (on
end?) and have the nerve to get back on the next morning to do it all
over again. I'd taken a bicycle conditioning class from our local
Park and Rec department in April and remember thinking how long their
first ride was - 19 miles. The longest ride in that class was 48
miles; the longest day I had last week was 101.4 miles. Piece o'
cake!
The other part of the bike conditioning class was how to do minor
maintenance on the bicycle for those unavoidable road hazards. I
remember thinking during the section on changing flats that I didn't
really need to do this tonight. If I ever got a flat, I could figure
it out. I practiced anyway, just for the fun of it. Little did he
know...
The week prior to RAGBRAI, I was all set to ride this thing alone (as
alone as one can be with 7,500 other cyclists). The day I sent in
the check for the Charter service (carries the gear across the state
for you), I got word from some other local people that they had an
opening on their team and I was welcome to ride with them. That
night when I got home from work, there was a call from Joe that some
people he works with at ACI not only had a need for another rider,
but desperately needed a driver for the vehicle to haul gear across
for them. Karen and Tim had previously planned on staying with Mom &
Dad while I rode but this was right up Karen's alley - setting up
camp for 10 other people, taking all day to get to a town 30 minutes
away, lying around reading and lounging all day. We chose the team
from ACI and from then on became known as part of Team Skidmark.
Karen, Tim and I arrived in Council Bluffs on Friday before the week
of the ride. Had to take a day to rest and get stocked up on those
carbohydrates. Joe brought a tape over to the house that night of
last year's ride and after everyone watched that, I was psyched. We
also learned that arrangements had been made for every night of the
week to stay with a family or friend or some other more comfortable
arrangement. What normally happens is that everyone stays in a huge
camping area in tents and it's unusual to have other arrangements.
Our arrangements included inside sleeping accommodations on 2
separate occasions and comfortable, quiet back yards on the other
nights. Not a bad way to spend your first RAGBRAI!
Saturday afternoon, Joe, Tim, Karen and I piled my bike on the Jeep
and made the ride to Glenwood. Okay, I realize I'm approaching the
over-the-hill age, but as a parent, I understood how Dad & Mom must
have felt, watching their "child" drive off, committed that he was
going to ride his bicycle across the state of Iowa in the middle of
summer. Get real! Believe me, I got a fair share of warnings about
the humidity and heat and water and Mills county drivers. But I
wasn't worried for a minute - I had Karen with me!
Anyway, we got into Glenwood - remember little quaint Glenwood? -
about 4:30 p.m. We were supposed to meet the rest of the ACI gang at
a house behind the high school. I'll never forget driving into
Glenwood - we came up over the hill and saw one bicycle. Then two.
Then five. Then 20. Then thousands! It was as if this little tiny
town had been invaded by a swarm of creatures with funny looking
helmets (brain buckets) and they were eating everything in sight!
We found the house okay but no one else was there yet. We all walked
up to the door, rang the bell, and we were promptly greeted by this
lady in curlers. Introductions followed and it was immediately as if
we'd become part of her family. "Okay. The house will be open all
night. We're going to the class reunion and won't be back until 2:00
or so but you can help yourself to anything you like. There's
zucchini bread and brownies on the counter - I don't want anything
left when you leave in the morning. Tea's in the cooler. Showers
upstairs and down. Air conditioning is on. TV's all yours. Don't
wait up." Forget the 500 miles - I'm staying here!
After the initial shock had subsided, we said farewell to Tim - Joe
was ready by now to just steal a bike if it was the only way he could
go on the ride. But, we figured his wife might be a little upset
seeing Tim drive Taylor [Joe's year-old son] back home in our Jeep,
so Joe decided to wait until next year. We threw the gear in the
garage and back yard and proceeded to get the tent set up just as the
rest of the ACI crew drove up. I remember being a little worried
when I first saw these guys because some of them looked like serious
cyclists; serious, meaning that they all had their Lycra License.
But they all seemed like polite gentlemen - the type that would
apologize for leaving you in the dust. We spent the rest of the
night lying around the yard, eating, checking out the town of
Glenwood (not nearly the way you remember it from the days of
visiting with Grandma and Grandpa) and welcoming more new members of
Team Skidmark. We were sharing the house with Team Pie that night so
we got to meet them as well. They were given their name a few years
ago because they were always seen sampling pies across the state (6
pieces in one day was a moderate amount which allowed them to live up
to their name). Other than the lightning bugs, minor rain showers,
fireworks, and occasional primal screaming, it was a pretty
non-eventful evening after that. I think everyone was in bed by
10:00.
By 5:30 a.m. Sunday morning, everyone was up and feeling a little
nervous. At least I was. The Hostess fixed us breakfast (after a
soothing 3 hours of sleep) and by 7:00, we had all the bikes ready to
roll. The next hour seemed like an eternity, looking back on the
week. There are no words that I can find that appropriately describe
the feeling I had riding out onto the main street of Glenwood and
then the highway out of town with approximately 13,000 other
bicyclists. For as far up the road, in both directions, all you
could see were bikers. We had the highway full - at least four-wide
and more in some places, as we rolled out of town. The ride
officially started at 6:00 a.m. and it had been that steady for the
first hour; it would continue to be a steady stream for probably two
hours following our departure. It was truly an amazing sight! All I
could think of was, 'did I remember to put on clean underwear in case
I'm in an accident'. No. Wrong thrill. I was really finding it
hard to believe that it had finally arrived - the beginning of the
event I'd been getting ready for during the last 10 months had
arrived and I was right smack in the middle of it.
Karen had received a map to the next town and proceeded on another
road with the other drivers and support people. The first day was a
relatively short route from Glenwood to Shenandoah. At one point she
said she was on a parallel road to us and could see miles and miles
of bicycles and still didn't see the end of the line. The weather,
at this point, was a cool 65 or 70 degrees and perfectly clear. What
a great day for a ride. Little did he know...
I failed to mention earlier that just two days before the ride, a
friend suggested I get a pair of slick tires instead of the 'knobby'
mountain-bike tires I had on. He said it would probably save me a
few miles an hour just in reduced friction. Since they weren't too
expensive, I decided to save an extra few minutes. I needed all the
help I could get. What I didn't know then, that I do know and would
be happy to share with everyone, is that the first rule of long bike
rides is that you never take new equipment without testing it first
around town. It didn't take me too far out of Glenwood to realize
why someone had created this rule. As I was riding down the road,
still flowing as fast as my adrenaline would take me, I realized that
the bike was handling a little 'spongy' like. I asked Paul, who up
to this time had been teaching me all the rules of the road in the
way of what to do, say, watch for, call-out, etc., to drop back and
check my tire. 'Flat' he said, as he bellowed out "coming off!".
With 13,000 other bicycles on the road, it's important that you make
your intentions perfectly clear. I remembered thinking afterwards if
that's where he came up with our Team name.
Thanks to my keen sense of vision, I remembered how to change the
tire. Rather than take the time to patch the old one, I threw the
new spare on, pumped it back up and hit the road again somewhere in
the 5-minute time frame. A little greasy and sweaty but, hey, no one
said this was supposed to be a fashion show! Back into the flow of
RAGBRAI as Paul hollered out "coming on!". My enthusiasm started to
quickly fade though as not more than a mile down the road, I started
to feel that same squishy feeling of a low tire. I hollered at Paul
but he was too far ahead of me to hear. Oh well, I'd gotten the hang
of things by now - "coming off!"
This time, I had to patch the tire, so I found a nice comfortable
road-side spot, pulled out the kit, popped the tire off, and sadly
discovered that the new tube had a hole right at the base of the
stem. Not suitable for patching - probably just a bad tube. I
pulled out the old tube, located the hole and slapped a patch on it
in no time at all and found myself right back on the road. "Coming
on!" At least for another 10 minutes, when the front tire went
flat. "Coming off, again!" It was a test. It had to be a Divine Test
to see how badly did I really want to make this trip. I hadn't spent
months of training, riding through pouring rainstorms and over
mountain passes to be beaten by a measly little flat tire. I kept
the spirit as the front tire was patched. I must say that with the
little frame pump trying to get each of these tires back to 100
pounds of pressure was certainly building the upper body muscles. I
was beginning to look like Arnold Schwarzen... the Terminator! I
also found humor (believe me, I was looking for everything I could
find!) in the conversations taking place as the cyclists would pass
me on the road. Everything from discussions of last night's hangover
to the gross sales of my company to computer software. This ride had
every type/size/shape/income/age of rider you could imagine.
I remember thinking as I was putting the third tire back on that if
this kept up I was going to hate the heat and humidity more as the
sun beat down. Some scene from Death Valley Days ran through my
mind. Where was Ronald Reagan when you needed him. "Coming on!" as
I was now convinced that no one got 3 flat tires in the first 10
miles of RAGBRAI. I owed my self a reward and stopped at my first
lemonade stand of the week. Couple of conversations and a tall cold
glass of lemonade later, I checked the pressure on both tires and hit
the road. Too much lemonade because 100 feet down the road, the rear
tire was flat again. Okay, let's think this through logically. What
was I doing wrong. Nothing - it was a new hole each time; I was
checking the tire to see if I hadn't left a nail in the tire,
everything just by the book. Some poor soul from Dallas stopped
along the road for a rest as I was patching the fourth tire. He was
on RAGBRAI because his wife had talked him into it but he really
didn't see why it was such a big deal. I really began to wonder
about what kind of luck I was putting out into this ride as the guy
fell off his bike when he tried to get back onto the road! I started
looking around for the hidden cameras! As I pulled out on the road,
the front tire was already flat. It was getting comical.
Finally, another five miles down the road, and my final flat, the
Angel of RAGBRAI drove up - the Sag Wagon. The god of Repairman. I
halfway expected to see someone from Bossellman's Truck Stop get out
of the Van! The guys got out of the car and after I wept non stop
for 10 minutes I told them my morning progress. They pulled both
tires off the bike, which they had placed on their
rear-bumper-mounted bike rack and immediately identified the problem
as the tubes were too small. The tubes were too small! The
innertubes were too small for the tire! The guys who sold me the new
tires, sold me the wrong size tubes and every time I had them
inflated to Arnold's 100 psi, the tire found the first chance to
squeeze them at just the right angle and pop another hole. It made
all the sense in the world to me! That's why they were driving a car
and I was riding a bicycle across the state of Iowa! It took them
all of 3 minutes to swap both tires and sell me another spare. I
gave them my holy tubes and watched them sail out of sight. Was I
dreaming, or were they just another test of the reason I was riding?
Naw - I distinctly heard several people holler at them as they rode
by; obviously, they had saved more than one soul in previous rides.
The rest of the day's ride was good enough to make me forget all
about my troubles. I pulled into Shenandoah about 5:00 that night
and shared with them the legend of the Five Flat Tires. Karen had
just begun to worry but she did call it right - she told others that
I was having problems with the new tires. What a lady! Fortunately,
that night was one of our more pleasant stays. We ate a wonderful
lasagna dinner, had a choice of 3 different desserts and got a
comfortable carpeted basement floor to sleep on. It was really a
time for telling stories of the day, listening to stories from Rich's
folks about previous Shen RAGBRAI's, and all-in-all a very good night
just for "team bonding" for lack of better terms. We wandered
downtown, watched a few bands, checked out other weary-looking people
and went back "home" to bed. Rich's mom, in the meantime, had
finished a load of our laundry and hung it out to dry. Were we
spoiled, or what?! His Dad came in with the new forecast for
tomorrow though - cloudy and rainy the rest of the week. I remember
thinking - this'll probably be the wettest, worst RAGBRAI on record.
Boy, was I having fun!
The next morning, Monday morning, was in fact cloudy but there were
only occasional spits of rain in the air. Everyone hopped on the
bikes and caught up with the rest of the traffic that had spent the
night in their tents on the campgrounds. Monday & Tuesday were
supposed to be the longest days of the week and I was glad we got a
good night's sleep. The fact that Rich's Mom got up to fix us
breakfast didn't hurt either.
The rides over the next several days were filled with hundreds of
conversations. I'd meet someone riding at their speed, chat for a
while, ride on, more conversations, more places. There was
additional fuel as we stopped at the lemonade stands, cinnamon roll
stands, pancake stands, etc., about every 10 miles. I was going to
attempt to keep a diary of each day as we got to the camp site but by
the time we showered, ate, looked around town it was 9:00 and
everyone was beat. The specifics of the days aren't remembered but
the memory of miles of conversations with total strangers, beautiful
rolling hills of green and, of course, great food along the way will
always be there. The hills were a big issue on Monday and Tuesday
coming from Bedford to Osceola but after awhile, they all just ran
together. Oh - another hill. More talking, more eating.
I must mention the Tuesday Century Ride though. When we left Bedford
Tuesday morning, all 9 of us were discussing the day and how we felt.
There was a certain 26 mile loop that riders could take if they
wanted to do the official Century Ride - make it a 100 mile ride for
the day. Unfortunately, the loop was toward the beginning of the day
and the last thing I remember hearing was "yea, let's all do it".
So, silly me, not being one to be a party pooper, decided that I'd
take the Century Loop when it came up about 30 miles into the
standard 74 mile ride. I felt even more challenged when the majority
of the people I was riding with at the time went straight ahead
without taking the loop. Our Team Skidmark was pretty well
distributed with their riding skills and shape so we rarely stayed
together during the ride as a Team. I figured I'd meet up with them
later; no biggee. It was a pretty difficult (hilly) ride, but as
usual, the food seemed to break up the pain. By the time I hit the
main road again, I was wondering if I'd done the right thing but
there was no taking it back now - I had to finish the normal course.
About 5:30 that night, I rolled into camp, with everyone else sitting
around sipping on their beer. "Where have you been" was the
unanimous question, although I knew they all meant "how many flat
tires today?". No one else had felt up to taking the 100 miles!
What wimps! I reminded them of the conversation that morning and
they said they'd changed their minds after I left. Good for a few
laughs as they scraped me off the bike seat! Total miles for the day
101.4 miles.
I'll mention here that this was when Karen became the most popular
person in the Team. Because she had all the extra time on her hands
and she felt like contributing something, she had every one of the 7
tents set up every night, including the big 6-person tent. In
addition, she always had the cooler full of ice, the chairs assembled
in a neat semi-circle and every thing in just perfect shape. I felt
like hollering "June, I'm home" after each day of riding with the way
she had it looking. She was truly a remarkable campsite mama! Her
comment: "I just wanted to make it real hard on whoever follows me
next year!" She did.
Osceola found us with one more addition to the ACI clan and Team
Skidmark. One of the ladies who had commitments earlier in the week,
met up with us halfway and started riding from there. That's the
other memorable part of this vacation that's always going to be with
me. We fit into this group of total strangers like another family
and just had a blast through the entire week. Everyone had a dry
sense of humor, liked riding, varied in ages but not too much, had
about the same career, liked people, and had come along because they
wanted to. It made the trip so much nicer.
Actually, the dry sense of humor was most valuable, especially
outside of Osceola. About 2:00 that morning we got hit with
Hurricane RAGBRAI - rain blowing sideways, tents blowing down,
lightning, thunder. But guess who slept through most of it - that
one person in the whole group who'd ridden 101 miles the day before!
Actually, the wind was so bad it snapped a pole in the big tent and
once that one came down, everything else was in the direct path. It
was a pretty exciting night; so much so that we held a meeting the
next morning to vote on whether or not we sat this day out. I was
not even considering it; what's a little wind - you just ride slower.
And none of us were going to melt in the rain. Let's take these cows
to Missouri. We had a short breakfast and went back outside to find
the rain had stopped and the wind was a gentle breeze. Shows what a
little determination will get you! Only one person ended up sitting
the day out; everyone else rode.
That afternoon (Wednesday) I think everyone was glad they decided to
ride. The welcome we got riding into Des Moines was quite the hero's
welcome. People lining the streets cheering, bands playing, banners
and flags flying. It was yet another one of the incredible feelings
that helped make it a great week. We were staying with a
brother-in-law of Rick that night so it was another sleeping bags on
the carpet night. The 3 kids who lived there thought it was great to
have this giant sleep-over. They even made a banner to hang on the
front of the house with all of our names on it, and it was complete
with the detail right down to the flat tires on one of the bikes.
Word spreads fast in that state... Karen even moved another notch
up on her pedestal when she fixed the broken tent pole with duct tape
and a steel rod. All of the camping stores had exhausted their
supply of tent poles from the previous night's storm, so Karen
improvised - the little Miss MacGuyver!
Thursday night we were in Oskaloosa but what made the trip so
memorable from Des Moines was the conversation at breakfast. I'd
stopped for the Pancake Man with one of my other Team mates I
discovered along the way. We were talking with a lady from New
Jersey about the trip, the weather and the distance of the day's
ride. She had added up the mileage between towns and only come up
with 58 miles instead of the posted "official" 73 miles. We checked
our maps and sure enough, they'd made a typo. The day's trip was
only 58 miles and we were already 30 miles into it! Now, when you're
in a car, that 15 miles can be a matter of minutes but on a bicycle
it's a free hour or more, depending on how many Pancakes you've had.
Speaking of food, let me just spend a minute talking about some of
the food we found during the week. On the road, there was usually
the Pancake man about 20 miles outside of town. He'd serve up all
the cakes and sausage you could eat for $3 along with coffee and/or
OJ. He'd flip the pancakes to you - from about 10 feet away - and
whatever you caught, you ate. The brave folks would get 20, 30, 40
feet and more from the grille - and he'd still make it. The Pork
Chops man was another favorite. This guy would position his stand
about 40 miles out of town - so you had just enough time to work off
that last pancake before lining it with a good layer of pork chops.
You'd smell them from a mile away. Then you'd start to hear the guy
- "P o o o r r r k k k C h h h o o o p p p s s s ! ! !" in this real
deep hog-calling voice. The chops were just your basic 2" thick Iowa
Pork Chops that were slapped on a bbq grill and handed to you with a
napkin. That along with a glass of lemonade and you got pretty near
pure Heaven. Some of the other popular places included the Turkey
stands (turkey legs or marinated turkey breasts), Dove Bar stands,
frozen Snicker Bar stands, or just the old home-cooked, cookie and
cinnamon roll stands. And that was just on the road! In town at
night, they'd always have the stands of bbq ribs and sandwiches,
steaks, baked potatoes, brat's, (mouth watering yet?), and then
dessert stands. And the churches! In Bedford, they had 12 churches
within a 3 block radius, all offering a different meal. The only way
you could justify eating as much as we did was to tell yourself that
you'll have to ride 80 miles the next day to work it off!
The last day, Saturday, we rode from Mt. Pleasant into Keokuk, an
"average" ride at this point of about 75 miles. What made Saturday
different was that everyone was looking forward to the finish and the
sun actually came out. Throughout the week, the temperature didn't
reach the 80 degree mark until Saturday at about 1:00 p.m. By then,
I was 30 miles from the finish line and nothing could've stopped me
(with the obvious exception of more lemonade and homemade pie). They
saved the worst hill for last - I had these great expectations of
screaming when I crossed the finish line. As I reached the top of
the hill, Karen, one other Skidmark team member and some of the
family members of people we rode with were waving, hollering,
cheering and giving quite the welcome home cheer. I had just enough
breath left to give one measly yell but I think the smile on my face
was screaming in volumes. I went straight to the "dipping station"
where the front tire went into the Mississippi (before we left CB, we
stopped at Long's Landing to dip the rear tire in the Missouri).
That night, we stayed with Rick's in-laws in a mansion which
overlooked the Mississippi River. After taking a brief tour of the
town, Team Skidmark returned to the mansion and celebrated in style
with a little champagne, spaghetti dinner and God's own light show.
It was as if the skies had been holding off for us to finish the ride
and couldn't wait any longer. Since Karen and I were the only
official couple, we were given one of the 14 bedrooms and a real live
bed - the first one since we'd left Mom and Dad's. We fell asleep
that night watching the lightning fill the room as my legs felt like
they were still pedaling and my seat didn't feel anything.
The return trip on Sunday was pretty quiet. No one could believe
we'd been that far on bicycles and yet no one really wanted it to be
over. Most of the team, with the exception of Karen and I , work
together and all had to go back to work on Monday. Karen, Tim and I
stayed around CB to rest, celebrate Tim's birthday and visit. As I
write this, and remember the week, it seems that it went so fast. I
told the stories at work today about 40 times to people who had never
seen Iowa or RAGBRAI but it just wasn't the same. I guess that's why
they call it a vacation. It was one of the best and I'm planning on
repeating RAGBRAI again next year with anyone who wants to join me.
It was hard work, but it was fun work. Anytime you can spend a week
eating like that and still lose 10 pounds it's worth it.
That's the story of this year's Ride. Thanks for listening and
letting me "ride" it again from the comfort of my room. See you next
year if you're up to the eating!
|