In Which Mammals Get Bigger

A pretty day to ride the Cedar Valley Nature Trail to Lafayette.

Looking west across farm field near Hiawatha as I ride south on the Cedar Valley Nature Trail.

I’m not happy that storms are battering the East Coast, but when hurricanes and tropical storms rage, Iowa gets gorgeous.

We are cut off from the heat and humidity of the Gulf of Mexico, and our August has begun with the kind of foretaste of fall that you think karma may make us pay for later. It’s cool at night, sunny during the day.

What with one thing and another, I haven’t been on the bike much since not-RAGBRAI. For one thing, the miles I rode that week caused serious deterioration to the tyres of my road bike—the rubber on the rear one is flaking away and the chord under-structure is visible in spots, which means the bike is parked until I get at least one new tyre.

So today, when one of my daughters invited me to got along on an afternoon bike ride, I got the hybrid bike out of the garage. I lubed it’s chain and aired my tyres, and also lubed and aired hers.

And we were off.

We headed over to the Cedar Valley Nature Trail and did the quick ride out to Lafayette. I’m sure it wasn’t my fastest ride there—there was a bit of a wind from the north (no air from the hot, humid south, right?) and I’m just slower on the hybrid bike—which is saying something since I’m in general a pretty darn slow bicycle rider.

But the day was fabulous. We recalled training for the Bix run in 2008, running on the first few miles of this trail (my aging hips and knees won’t put up with running anymore, so biking is a good thing to be able to do on this route). Back then, pavement on the trail ended about 4 miles north of Hiawatha, so that was as far as we jogged during our Bix prep.

Today, we circled the park in Robins and continued north. A few clouds in a stunningly beautiful sky, a slight headwind on a cool summer afternoon, it was a quite a pretty ride.

My hybrid bike Clarence parked as I rest briefly in Lafayette.

After our rest in Lafayette, we were startled by a mouse that darted across the trail in front of us during our return ride south. Then, as we neared Hiawatha, a somnolent woodchuck dully stared at us from right beside the trail.

I had told my daughter the funny story from the century ride during not-RAGBRAI, of how my sister and I had seen two deer near the Hiawatha trailhead early in the ride and my sister exclaimed, “Hey! I know that buck!”

Anyway, first the mouse, then the woodchuck, and as we continued south from the Hiawatha trailhead towards our turnoff to head east to Cedar Rapids, a deer (not a buck this time, a doe) was right by the trail. She just stood there until I pointed a camera at her, at which point she ran off.

Deer flees from paparazzi.

Well, the mammals were growing bigger. I half expected to encounter a stray buffalo on the way home. I did see another deer dart between two cars about a quarter mile in front of us, but the trend of mammals getting larger fortunately never got to the bear or moose or blue whale stage.

Thanks, daughter, for the invite to this quick ride to Lafayette. We’re both teachers, and we were able to beef a bit about the insecurity of the coming, crazy school term. But we were also able to be out in the prettiest of pretty Iowa afternoons. Sorry about that, East Coast.