In Which RAGBRAI Sets Its 2015 Logo

It has been an eventful week, on the bicycle and off, which is one reason your biking correspondent has disappeared briefly off the face of the blogosphere. But, I am back.

Screen shot of RAGBRAI.com logo video.

RAGBRAI made me come back. I saw on Facebook their post about the logo for the 2015 ride, and of course I had to check it out and kibitz. Here is their announcement.

Meh. I give the logo a 7—it’s pleasant enough but not inspired. Tractors are OK, although it seems one of their more complicated logos. Not sure how it will fit on a water bottle.

Still, not only am I seeing Facebook posts about next year’s RAGBRAI, but my commemorative DVD of this year’s ride arrived this week in the mail. I haven’t had time to watch it all, and frankly, parts of it are a bit unwatchable—the accolades for RAGBRAI in the “history” chapter grow quickly wearying—but whatever. The DVD reminds me of the RAGBRAI that was, while the logo makes me look forward to RAGBRAIs yet to be.

Another screen shot. Tractor morphs into a bike.

Next year, my biggest goal is to train with a few more days that have consecutive long rides. My medical checkup following the chest pain scares on RAGBRAI 2014 indicated a healthy heart, although the cardiologist who did my heart test had to point out, needlessly, I think, that: “You may be having some skeletal-muscle issues. You’re not 25 years old anymore, you know.”

Clearly, I am not. I need more long rides to get into shape. Then again, I’m also not too old for RAGBRAI.

More on that in a minute. But first, a diversion into my biking week. Last week was fall break, and I enjoyed a very pleasant hour-long bike ride in Ames along a trail that parallels Squaw Creek. Steve H, I saw Ames High School for the first time—it’s at the north end of the trail we were on.

Oct. 16 afternoon bike ride in Ames.

And although I drove today due to morning rain, this week again has been a mostly good one for a bike commuter. Wednesday night, I took the trail route home just because I could, and my computer, which has been mostly comatose lately, woke up for a mile or so to let me know I was trucking along the trail at about 15 mph. I was feeling pretty good, like a pretty fast biker.

I exited the trail, feeling powerful with my RAGBRAI-trained legs, and was ruminating about the pleasant, leafy smell of fall air. Then, as I was riding on some quiet street near Noeldridge Park, I heard it: a “click-click-click” sound, like someone riding a bike not quite in gear.

It wasn’t me. The sound gained on me. And a gentlemen on what looked like an ancient yellow ten speed shouted a cheery greeting as he click-click-clicked on by.

So much for powerful RAGBRAI legs. Then again, even an ancient ten speed is more built for swiftness than Francis—a sturdy but slow commuting bike—is. Then again, this man, who looked old to me (at a guess I would say he was probably around 80) was zooming by me with his chain not quite hitting the gears correctly.

He reminded me of a World War II veteran who rode by me on his first RAGBRAI just a couple of years ago. Then again, this guy honestly looked like he could have been the same WWII veteran. How many 80-year-old bikers are out late enough in Cedar Rapids on fall evenings to have to run with lights on so they can click-click-click past startled, late-middle-aged professors?

Well, I can’t be too old to ride. Clearly, Mr. ten speed wasn’t. That old man gave me some hope, like the new RAGBRAI logo, a reason to look ahead. Maybe someday, I’ll be on some fast yellow bike, and I can zoom by some young whippersnapper in his 50s.

All in all, it has been a good biking week.

OK, we took a walk at ISU after the bike ride, so this isn't a biking picture. Still, last Thursday was this kind of day. Lake Laverne at Iowa State University.