In Which I Smell The Scent of RAGBRAI

My sister and I and our bikes, ready to head out to RAGBRAI.

RAGBRAI is an event which is mostly outdoors, and today was a good demonstration of why that is a good idea.

On the 5-hour drive over from Cedar, we watched the thermometer hover in the upper 80s. We may have thought that wasn’t so bad—but wait. When we got to Glenwood, about 2 p.m., the sun was shining. It was brutal. The temperature soared into the 90s, and the humidity made it feel well over 100.

We practically melted. Luckily, the campground is near Glenwood High School, and air conditioned building.

Cate just said it is 77 in Cedar Rapids. Sigh.

Well, the smell in the long line for the spaghetti dinner was a bit on the ripe side, but the dinner was nice. We ate early, long before they ran out of food.

Street painted in downtown Glendwood.

And now I am typing a blog post, mostly to waste time inside the high school. Fortunately, it is not supposed to be so hot tomorrow. I only bike a half day Sunday, and hope to

We shall see!

If you ride RAGBRAI this year, hope you are staying cool tonight. I am hoping for an early start to the adventure tomorrow. I will let you know how it goes.

Here is my Facebook photo gallery.

In Which We Face RAGBRAI

Boyson Road, Cedar Rapids. Morning skies have been a bit dramatic this week, what with overnight thunderstorms.

How do I feel going into RAGBRAI 2016?

A little tired—I woke up at 5 a.m. for no particular reason, on this, the day before the biking starts. I looked at my pile of luggage and realized the goal of “packing light” was a bit elusive (a twin-sized air mattress and pump take a lot of space).

Excited—I woke up at 5 a.m. for no particular reason, on the morning of a car ride across Iowa. It’s a state that is pretty exciting to bicycle across in a week, but not so fun to ride across in a day. Still, I woke up early today, as I think I do every Christmas. I could use a stocking full of candy right about now …

Ready—I think. My weight this morning was 252.3 pounds—my goal was to be in the 240s by RAGBRAI, but since I have in the past flirted with the 260s, I guess I’ll say 252 is OK. We’ll see what a week of pie does. I’ve not put in as many training miles as I wanted—no training century ride, for example—but I have trained. We’ll see if it was enough. But I’m physically feeling fairly ready.

This ride starts in Glenwood, where my first RAGBRAI began, and ends in Muscatine, where 40 years ago I graduated from high school. I didn’t make it to the reunion—honestly, I didn’t really try. High school was not a highlight of my life. Still, it will feel a little like coming home when I cycle into Muscatine.

The images are from Wednesday morning, my final practice rides up the Brentwood Hill. It took a bike bag exchange for me to get the “stuff” for the ride—and I found spare bike gloves just the day before RAGBRAI. So it feels as if my final prep was a bit haphazard, but I guess “a bit haphazard” is a description of my life’s journey so far.

We’ll see how RAGBRAI goes. I am taking a computer (packing light-ha!) so I will try to blog during the ride, although WIFI access isn’t always the best in tiny towns swelled to 10 times normal size by an invading horde of cell-phone toting party animals. Still, stay tuned, America! Or at least the handful of you that are readers of CR biker …

Two more sky views on my next circuit over the Brentwood Drive hill. On Brentwood near Boyson, looking to the east.