In Which My Wife Has an Interesting Idea

Lindale Trail early in the late afternoon ride.

Made this image on evening on bike ride, dandelion fluff--aren't you supposed to get your dreams if you blow all of these off? I wish for us to get ahead of the COVID-19 and be able to ride together again as soon as possible.

It can’t be called RAGBRAI, because that was postponed until 2021. But in 2020, RAGBRAI was to be just over 420 miles and 12,000 feet of climb. I’ll miss the long ride this summer.

Or, will I ….

We were out with a grandson today, heading to the Cedar River Trail in Hiawatha for a walk. We parked at the trailhead and walked south, past a wooded area and crossed the railroad tracks. There was a grassy field there, filled with dandelion puffs. The young grandson had been fading, but when he saw the white fluffs, he ran with joy into the field, taking his grandmother with him. We collected the puffballs (and later released some in the backyard, because grass doesn’t grow all that well there anyway, so dandelions might as well).

Anyway, on the drive, during that odd mixed conversation when adults are speaking with each other and with a 4-year-old boy, my wife had what I think is a pretty good idea.

“I think this summer, you should spend one week doing long bike rides every day,” she said. A sort of stay-at-home RAGBRAI, a staycation on a bicycle. I could aim to get as close to 420 miles as possible, which would mean averaging 60 miles a day for 7 days.

She also thought I should sleep out in a tent in the backyard. I think that may be stretching the RAGBRAI analogy a bit too far—but I like her basic plan. It gives me a reason to train, and a goal. I can attempt it the final week of July, RAGBRAI week, or, depending on the weather or personal schedule, some week in that approximate time frame. During that week, I’d get up early, ride until mid afternoon and see how close to the goal I can come.

It would be riding streets and trails in and near Cedar Rapids, and I’m not going out of may for 12,000 feet of climb. RAGBRAI has more climbing than those who are not from Iowa might expect—paved county roads tend to roll up and down hills in a way that bicycle trails don’t.

Got masks? Mine arrived in the mail today. Still wore the bandana today--these have to be washed before use, but I think they will be much nicer than the bandana.

It would not be a complete RAGBRAI. There would be no crowds nor nightly concerts nor new small towns to explore—but the wife included pie and beer in the plan, so the three key elements of RAGBRAI (biking, beer and pie) could be had.

A pandemic RAGBRAI. Social Distance Bike Club, what do you think? Can it be a national and international movement? Club members can ride RAGBRAI for real if they wish or can in 2021, but we can still do the miles and share about their experiences.

I’m not camping out in the backyard, however. It’s possible to take the analogy too far.

Deer on Krumholtz Trail in Marion. Ran off right after posing for portrait.

Bike rides today added up to less than 15 miles. Not much RAGBRAI training, but that’s going to the norm this week—despite a gorgeous day, I did not have much time for biking. During our daycare duties, my wife and I did take the grandson on one ride, and I did take an hour for a quick ride just before sunset.

Pause before heading home. On Grande Avenue in Marion, about to head to Boyson Trail. Turning on lights.

After the semester, I may be able to squeeze in some longer rides. And maybe I will have a reason to now, too. Virtual RAGBRAI! I like it. Not actual RAGBRAI—so what do I call it? It has nothing to do with the newspaper Iowa used to depend upon, so the R or Register is out. It’s a one-time project, so A for annual is out. Great Bike Ride In The Time of Corona. Welcome to GBRITTOC.

Today's rides. Fat cat (left) and preying mantis about to attack a murder hornet (right).

In Which I Pass the 60-Mile Barrier

I investigated this side trail in Robins on the second ride. It turned out to be less than I expected--it leads to a sidewalk on a rather nondescript suburban street, and the large building that looks like it could be an elementary school or small hospital turned out to be a rather dull suburban office building. Dunder-Mifflin could have been there.

There was a fair amount of bike traffic on the trails today.

I took three rides today, with the goal of reaching the 60-mile mark in one day. In the morning, I rode to the gym, going up the Brentwood Drive Hill several times and riding on the Boyson Trail on the way home. The 2-mile ride to the gym thus accounted for about 9 miles.

In the late morning and early afternoon, I rode north to the end of pavement on the Cedar Valley Nature Trail, 10 miles north of Hiawatha. With the ride to and from the trail start, that added 31 miles, bringing my day total to 40.

After a leisurely lunch break, and a root beer float party that happened after my wife and daughter came home from a long walk, by about 4 I was ready to go on ride 3. I set out going south on the Cedar River Trail. I went to a bench near Tait Cummins Park, and knew from my computer that I had topped 50 miles and was more than 10 miles from home.

Trail south of Cedar River near my turn-around point. It had been somewhat cloudy earlier--I even got sprinkled on during the day's first ride, but it's pleasant and sunny, if a bit breezy, in the afternoon.

I paused to enjoy a bag of nuts and rest a bit off the bike, when two bikers passed by, one wearing an MMU Mustangs jersey. “Hi, Joe,” said the second biker. It was Dennis Dew, the psychology professor who has the office next to mine. He was riding with Don Damsteegt, a retired psychology professor who still teaches some classes.

Temp on Gazette sign. Nice day.

They went by just as I was getting on my bike, and since they were headed north, I was able to catch up with them and had a pleasant chat. They stopped at Sokol Park to meet friends, and I rode on.

As I was nearing home, on 42nd Street, where I had left the trail, my odometer hit the 60-mile mark. I paused for a little photo session.

42nd Street near Council--I just hit 60 miles. Turning the camera the other way, below.

All in all, the 60 miles were, except for the morning hill climbs, very flat trail miles. So it’s not the perfect RAGBRAI analogy. And the part that sits down, where the biker meets the bike, is indeed quite sore. Still, it’s good to ride a RAGBRAI-like distance. I hope to increase that—my next goal is to reach a 75-mile day, and I would like to do at least one century before RAGBRAI.

Final computer reading. Almost 63 miles.

In Which We Ride Our Bikes in the Sky

Group selfie on the High Trestle Trail bridge. Ben and Audrey squint into the sun. I grin like a madman because that's what the combination of pleasure, beauty and great fear will do to your face.

If there is a better bike trail in Iowa, I have not found it yet. Then again, I would like to ride many more bike trails—maybe a long one along the Mississippi could rival it, I don’t know.

But the ultimate trail, to me right now, is the High Trestle Trail. Honestly, it does have a few rivals. The trail around Grey’s Lake in Des Moines is also extremely nice. The Cedar River Trail in Cedar Rapids is interesting too, mostly due to its quick contrasts of urban and rural in just a few yards.

Last Friday, I was in Ankney for the annual summer meeting of the Iowa College Media Association at the DMACC campus there.

I told my wife the meeting would be over by 1. She said I would be lucky if it ended by 2. It ended about 1:35, and she informs me that’s a “win” for her.

Anyway, while I met and talked about media matters with other Iowa media teachers, my wife went shopping in Ames and then picked up our son, a PhD math student at ISU.

She picked him up around 1, and they decided to head back down to Ankney before eating lunch. It was raining off and on during the day, and cloudy and wet when we first met around 2. We drove around for a while looking for a likely lunch spot in Ankney, and finally, out of desperation and starvation, settled on a Subway by the interstate.

I had coffee (lunch had been courtesy of ICMA) and they ate their subs. The day was still cloudy, but it was getting less wet and the sky was slowly morphing from dark grey to lighter shades with small patches of blue here and there.

So it was mid-afternoon by the time we sought the High Trestle Trail. I know, we could have stayed in Ankney, but the trial is more than 25 miles long and the bridge itself way the heck over at the other end, and we were going to do an easy ride and see the cool bridge, not a 50-mile ride, so we were seeking the northwest end of the trail.

We didn’t quite get there. I couldn’t tell from my map exactly where the trail ended, but knew Slater and Madrid were near the end that we wanted. So we took the interstate north to State Highway 17 and headed west. Going through Slater, we didn’t see a sign for the trail. In Madrid, we encountered the trail several times by accident, and drove past a trailhead at the west end of town.

We turned around and parked, and then rode. It was just a few miles—less than three, I think—to get to the bridge.

If you’ve never ridden the trail, you should. I loved the approve from the east, headed from Madrid towards the bridge. It’s clearly an old rail line you are following—in Iowa, rail lines run on ridges and in deep little vales—cutting through our rolling landscape on as straight a path as possible.

So the woods grow close and your vision grows limited, but you start to realize that you’re close to something dramatic. Rather than going through clefts in the land, the land started to fall away in steep, wooded hillsides. The signs that reported the approaching bridge started to have impossibly small distances. And yet, because the old rail line goes around a slight curve so the bridge could be aligned with its route from one river bluff to the other, you don’t see the bridge until suddenly the entrance pillars are right there and you pass them and then you’re not on a hill or in the woods—you’re riding on a slim ribbon of pavement in the sky, surrounded only by birds with a pretty river valley far below.

Turkey vulture hawks circle overhead. They don’t exactly add comfort to the experience.

To be clear, I’m afraid of heights. I don’t like leaning out over the 8-foot hallway in my house to turn on or off the light on the ceiling fan. Changing a lightbulb that requires the use of a chair takes a moment of screwing my courage to the sticking point before I’ll do it—I will do it, because I’m that heroic, but it takes a moment.

And here I was, riding on my new bike Argent, zooming along on in the sky. Jesus. No disrespect or blasphemy intended, it’s just about the only thought in my mind. Jesus.

You have to slow down on the bridge, as the foot traffic does not allow fast biking. Frankly, that’s OK with me. We stopped to admire the view and take a selfie.  The grey skies had cleared into a pretty, partly cloudy blue, and the afternoon was turning super nice.

I rode my bicycle across that, and lived to tell about it. My heart must be OK.

That’s the way it has been this summer. It’s either raining or almost unbearably pretty, and you forget what an Iowa summer is usually like, the 90 degree heat and the 90 percent humidity, and you almost wonder why half the world’s population doesn’t live in this gentle Shire of a place. We don’t have mountains or ocean or anything dramatic, but what we have that is pretty is so plainly, honestly pretty that you quickly fall in love this summer.

Not every summer, I’ll admit. And not usually in February, which is when the other ICMA meeting is.

But here we were in late afternoon in the most dramatic and prettiest place in a not beautiful, but pretty state.

On the way back, looking over new bridge from remains of the old one. Son and wife.

My son and wife had not been here before. It was my second trip. We’ll be back, I’m sure. Ben speculates he can probably get there from Ames via bike trail, because he thinks that there is a trail from Ames to Slater.

We rode on from the bridge to the west end of the trail and then turned around, and lingered for a while at the lookout that is the stub of the old bridge and then we crossed the bridge again.

I put camera lens up to the binoculars on trail overlook.

So I rode the sky twice in one day and survived both times and that’s a miracle enough. But wait, there’s more.

We rode back to our van, but it was a bit past 5, too early for supper and we had only ridden our bikes about 10 miles. We didn’t want a 50-mile fide, but 10 felt inadequate. So we headed east.

Ben goes all monkey at Slater park.

It was 7.5 miles until the next town, Slater. By then, the coffee and water had caused rather urgent needs, but we found a city park adjacent to the trail with decent restrooms. And by then we decided that the journey was long enough—by the time we got back to the van, it would be a 25-mile ride.

And we were off. It had taken 40 minutes or so to ride into a headwind and reach Slater. Without consulting me, my wife decided she wanted to make the return journey in 20 minutes or so.

Sometimes, I think we should buy a better bike for my wife. She’s starting to ride more. Other times, I sometimes think her bike is too good for her—that old Target-purchased Schwinn mountain bike seems to fly along, powered by will and leg muscles of a very strong human.

I was on Argent, a decent road bike. And I had to pump it pretty hard and work to keep up with that zooming lady on the mountain bike. We didn’t make it in 20 minutes, but we were back at the van in 25 minutes.

I thought surviving the bridge ride was something. Little did I anticipate the tour de Iowa race from Slater to Madrid.

For supper, my wife offered us two options: Des Moines or Ames. The kicker was that my son and I could have beer if we chose Ames (my wife was unwilling to drive the interstates near Des Moines).

So we closed the day with a nice dinner at a Mexican restaurant in Ames. We’ve been there several times, and the waiter knows my son well enough to chat with him in Spanish, and to try to persuade him to pay the bill, which has not worked yet.

Anyway, that Corona and that spicy food somehow were the perfect capstone to the nearly perfect bike ride.

The next day I cycled maybe 15 miles total, going to and from the Freedom Festival Parade in Cedar Rapids. It was a nice day, warm and sunny, and I enjoyed getting there by bike.

In the afternoon, I rode the old bike to give a grandchildren a ride, too. And so the summer of biking continues.

RAGBRAI? May it be full of the perfect days and not the rainy ones!

Bike at west end of trail. Bikers, proceed no father.

In Which I'm Starting Some RAGBRAI training rides

Top: Re-painted wall at Cedar Rapids Art Museum, which I rode by twice this week. Bottom: newly renovated TV newsroom at Kirkwood Community College.

I won’t have a lot of time until the semester ends, but with an overseas trip planned this summer, I won’t have a lot of time then, either. So, I started this week to carve out a few longer-than-usual afternoon rides.

Wednesday, I simply went south for about 5 miles before turning back north and going home. I went along the Cedar River Trail, through downtown Cedar Rapids and to the Mount Trashmore area. I turned around as I didn’t have time to go further, but at least I’m sure I topped 15 miles that day.

Friday, Kirkwood Community College had an open house for its renovated media rooms. I think I topped 20 that day, since I made the trip to KCC via the Cedar River Trail. My sister has made some references to the “Bowling Street Trail” as a route to Kirkwood, but I don’t know where that is, so I used my old route to the east entrance on C Street.

Anyway, my legs were pretty sore both days, but especially Friday. However, when I woke up Saturday, I was mostly good again. I didn’t do much riding Saturday, but will take a longer ride Sunday to continue to pile on the miles.

Happy RAGBRAI training to all of you! And it’s almost May 1—time to start packing on the miles. Trust me, when RAGBRAI comes, you won’t regret any miles you ride now.