In Which I Meet a Mystery Snake and See a Fall

Gate in Lafayette made of bike wheels.

The plan: Rise and shine, get an early start, do a long RAGBRAI training ride, perhaps over 50 miles.

The reality: Awaken at 5 a.m., decide (correctly) that that is ridiculously early, read a Donald Westlake novel for an hour or so, fall back asleep. Arise around 9 a.m. Eat breakfast, get dressed—these days, I take close to two hours to get going. End up conversing via WhatsAp with a remote daughter, and by then it’s pushing lunch time. Eat lunch.

And hit the road about 1 p.m. Not exactly an early start, and not likely as a candidate for a 50-mile day. Still, I did about 37 miles and was home by 5, and close to 40 miles in four hours is a pretty good pace for a slow, old biker.

Wheel gate

I started out by doing the Brentwood Hill, and then headed over to the Cedar River Trail. I was trying a new bike tracking ap, which either didn’t work all that well or that I have not figured out yet. Luckily, my touchy, unreliable computer on my road bike decided to record the whole ride, which is how I know the mileage total. I rode, fairly quickly for me, north to Center Point and then to the edge of town where pavement ends. I thought of continuing to inspect the new bridge, but I didn’t really want to ride on limestone with the road bike, so I turned around.

Shortly after leaving Center Point, I encountered a rather large snake on the trial. I stopped to shoot its image, and it coiled up and reared at me. I kept more than a body’s length distance between me and it, so as long as it could not leap into the air, I was OK. In fact, I probably was OK anyway, most snakes in Iowa are harmless. I think, based on looking at google, that it’s a Western Fox Snake.

Snake and my bike, above. Other view of snake, below.

Well, I thought that was pretty cool. I like seeing snakes, and think I got some good images of this one.

However, when I got close to Robins, I was moving pretty fast, maybe 17 mph, when I was passed by a couple, and a man and woman. We were close to the main street that goes through that town, and they were stopped in front of me by traffic, so I almost caught up by the time we go to the corner. They crossed the street, and the woman wobbled and then turned sharply left—I’m not sure if she meant to, but the man ran into her and they both tumbled to the ground.

Cars (and I) stopped, and asked if they were OK. I was a bit worried by the way the woman was holding her arm, and I hope she didn’t break anything—but they insisted they were OK, so I pedaled on.

It was a decent RAGBRAI training ride, even if not as far as planned. But I fell last week in San Francisco, and now this couple fell in Robins. Rule of threes? Can we be done for the summer please? Although I would not mind another snake sighting.