In Which A Final Warm RAGBRAI Training Week Flies By

Team shirts for RAGBRAI--thank you, Amanda and Eldon!

I’m writing this blog post on a borrowed tiny Paraguayan laptop computer, courtesy of my oldest son. He left the computer here after returning from the Peace Corp, and we haven’t used it, primarily because we didn’t have the password.

Now he is back in Iowa for RAGBRAI, and I should be going to bed soon, but I’m writing this last pre-RAGBRAI post.

I’m pretty excited.

The last week of training has not been perfect, but had its highlights. Last Sunday, we went to Big Creek State Park north of Des Moines and met our youngest son and his girlfriend for kayaking and biking. It was a summer hot afternoon, so the biking was pretty sweaty and short, but that also made it an almost perfect day to be out on a lake in a kayak.

Bikes in rack at park ready to ride.

Getting ready to kayak.

We just rode 3 miles, and have to turn back to ride 3 more. Hot day.

Wife and I on lake at Big Creek State Park.

Monday was again super hot, so I only did limited miles—but rode about 12 in the heat of the afternoon, when the heat index was over 100. I’m not crazy, I don’t think—I just wanted to get some heat practice in. I rode carefully and slowly, and all was well.

Tuesday was the long ride. My aim was 60 miles, but I rode with my sister and she had an afternoon commitment, so I only made 50, but that was not a bad total. Then, I deliberately slacked off. I rode 10 miles on Francis Wednesday, only because my lock was on Argent and I forgot it on the way to the gym, so I rode for exercise. Thursday it rained in the morning, but the grandkids came over in the afternoon and my son was in town, so one of my daughters, my son and I did a couple of bike rides carrying kids on toddler seats.

Herons on Cedar Lake Tuesday.

It is really muggy and hot today, but the weather forecast for the week ahead is not too bad. I’m pretty much all packed and ready to roll. I have avoided reading most of the important RAGBRAI documents, such as the instructions for entering Sioux City. I’m just assuming RAGBRAI will be there when we get there.

I guess I’m ready. We’ll see. I hope to update you several times during the week, if I am lucky, get internet access and also continue to figure out the instructions en español on this Paraguayan computer!

Got my RABRAI haircut on Wednesday, and noticed this milkweed in parking lot near hair place. Saw in the paper that a local group will give out milkweed seed bombs for riders to toss in ditches. Well, good.

Driving schedule. We are so organized.

In Which Flowers Help Ease the Pain of Emptyness

Bike. Anonymous other biker passes by my bike, which has a rare flat tyre.

A flat tyre! On only the third ride!

The unnamed new bike cannot be ridden at the moment. On Father’s Day, my youngest son, wife and I went out at about 10:30 for a bicycle ride. A muggy, but nice and sunny, ride.

I could do whatever I wanted to do that day. What I wanted to do was ride my new bicycle.

We again used the Cedar River Trail, and again went south, because I stubbornly wanted to find the detour. If you read the previous post, you know that I wondered were the trail detour went after it took you east to Council Street, where it appears it wanted you to go back west.

The apparent answer was oddly comical. The detour leads back to Center Point Road. So it goes all the way a half mile east to Council and then doubles back so that it can have you cross 42nd Street at a corner with a “walk” light, which is commendable, I suppose. Except that there is also a walk light at Center Point Road. Why not just cross there—why the pointless ride east to Council Street to get a walk sign that was available way back there? Bikers wonder.

Anyway, I don’t know how far the detour goes along Center Point Road, because when we got to the New Pioneer Coop, we knew we could cross the street and head up a little side street to the trail. So we did. And right as we started to ride on that little side street, that’s when I noticed my back tyre was flat.

And the tyre was not a little flat. Not a “pump it up every few miles and keep going” flat, although we didn't have a frame pump with us anyway. I’m talking an empty void, totally hollow, flabby and useless, like a Donald Trump campaign speech.

So the son and the spouse headed back north to go get our van and rescue me, while I locked the crippled What Are We Going To Call It to a bench.

To pass the time, I photographed flowers. It doesn't seem like a particularly flowery time of year, but in a short stroll near the bench were the crippled bike was locked, I found quite a variety to photograph.

Milkweed in bloom, and vertical, too.
Why Blogger, why?

I was on a mission, of sorts. I wanted to find Milkweed, which is in bloom now, and I also wanted to take a cute photo of a baby Monarch Butterfly.

There is Milkweed along the Cedar River trail, but none near the bench were my bike rested. (MMU bike club, what should be done about that?) However, I spied a patch growing adjacent to a nearby parking lot, so part of my mission was fulfilled. Sadly, there were no caterpillar sightings, nor did I see a chrysalis, although I don’t know for sure if I would recognize one. (Then again, given the size of Monarch Caterpillars, the chrysalis should be pretty big).

Oh well. Better luck next time. And I don’t aspire to collect flat tyres (in case you’re wondering, I just like and use the British spelling on this blog because they invented the bike tyre and ought to be allowed to name it), but I guess practice changing tyres on my RAGBRAI bike may prove of value.

We were planning to go kayaking later anyway, and we did. And here are the other flowers or berries:

What We Talked About At Kent Park

Nicole and Ben, off on a new adventure. Adventure is in the air ...

It was a day of adventure. As my son Ben and his girlfriend paddled around the lake at Kent Park in our first kayaking day of 2012, Audrey and I strolled around the lake on a trail.

I told her I had pretty much resigned myself to just doing 3 days of RAGBRAI this year.

“Why?” she asked.

Well, because I didn’t have anybody to cart my stuff.

“You can put your bags on the baggage truck” she noted.

I got the general idea that she didn’t mind me being gone for seven days rather than three.

“We can spend a day visiting Nina, and then I can drop you off,” she said. We agreed that I could camp the night before the first day’s ride, just as I would camp every other night.

Hmmmm.

Today was a day of firsts. We had taken Nikayla and Tristan to “Pinkalicious” at Mount Mercy the night before, the first time we had taken those two to a play. That went well. Today was the first kayak day of 2012, and Nicole’s first time ever in a kayak. Despite choppy, cold water, it was a pleasant experience.

The first tulips were in bloom today. It was hot, for March. It reminded me of the RAGBRAI days of 2011, except those were much hotter.

Still, something about the day, the walk, the wellness of the first adventures we had been on recently, maybe my heat-addled brain. I felt my mind shifting.

Last year, I did my first RAGBRAI as part of a group.

This year, am I ready to solo for about half a RAGBRAI? To Audrey’s “why,” the only answer that seems adequate is: “Why not?”

There you have it, blog friends. It will depend on luck in the Register’s lottery—I’m not riding that far “alone” without official support—but, in case you’ve awaited the decision from CR Biker, it is:

I’m doing it. Wish this half-Irish guy some luck on this fateful St. Patty's Day!