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.

It’s Beautiful, Despite Wind, Rain and Cold

Looking east at Collins Road and F Avenue NE.  Never has a Fed Ex truck looked so good.  I'm where I am so my bike is resting in just the right spot so the magnetic traffic detector will be triggered and the traffic light will change for me, in case you wonder why I seem dangerously close to Collins Road.

I know it will be a blustery, cool ride home tonight, pumping into the wind with lights on.

But, that’s OK.  It’s that time of year.  We get a few freezes under our belts, it drives a stake through the heart of any remaining mosquitoes, and the brown of the winter commute will start to appear.  I’m ready.

This morning was unbelievably gorgeous.  As I started out on the morning commute a few minutes after 7 a.m., I felt like I was riding in the inside of a conch shell—the pearly white clouds and pink light of the rising sun, combined with the soft baby blue of a newborn day’s sky.  Well, it was a 10 of a morning.  It’s been so dry that clouds are a rare treat, and these were high and thin and broken, which made for a pretty picture.

So even a breezy, damp, cool ride home won’t break the mood.  I parked inside Warde Hall by my office (biker’s privilege, try parking your SUV inside when it rains).  What little rain we had blew through quickly, and frankly I would have been willing for much more.

But what a morning!

A much prettier view of the Iowa sunrise can be seen here, in a blog post from a former newsman in my old town of Muscatine.  That’s the Norbert F. Beckey bridge, that I occasionally crossed in the late 1970s on a 1974 Schwinn Continental to reach a nice park with a lake that was nearby in Illinois.

Nice as the morning sky was in Cedar Rapids, clearly having a Mississippi nearby made it even more beautiful in Muscatine.