In Which I Have Registered Our Team

Grandson rides bike. He's testing it, wearing new slippers, which he is pretty proud of. After we determined his bike was ready to ride, he put on shoes and we went around the block. He's not quite ready for RAGBRAI, but I hope he and I may ride that together in the future.

RAGBRAI, here we come.

After a spring break trip to the East Coast, which you can read about here and here, I’m back in Iowa. I missed a week of biking, and partly made up for it by walking more than five miles a day, but when you normally bike about nine miles a day, that doesn’t seem like much.

Anyway, I got in at 1:30 a.m. Saturday, and Saturday afternoon picked up The Beast on campus to ride to my daughter’s house. There, I did a little maintenance on my grandson’s little bike—the crank shaft had come loose, for some reason, and I don’t know if I did a permanent fix, but I did enough that he could ride, and we did go around the block together.

Later, the bigger biking event of the day—I signed up for RAGBRAI. Team Joe is down to four, but the original core is ready to ride.

I hope to see some extra friends late in the week, as we ride into and out of Hiawatha. And the ride goes through Storm Lake this year, which will be nice. Davenport was a good stopping place the first year I did RAGRAI, and we’re ending there again.

Plus, I probably will get to see Jon again. He will be with his own group—they prefer later partying and more camping than Team Joe—but it will still be nice to share some biking time with him.

I’m really looking forward to the ride this year!