In Which Chilly Fall is Suddenly Upon Iowa

Sunrise at C Avenue and Collins Road, a frosty Wednesday morning.

It was wet Monday, so I did not ride. Tuesday morning was windy, with damp pavement, but no rain, so I got the mountain bike out and rode to work.

Wind gusts topped 40 mph that morning—a stiff, cool west wind. Luckily, my ride is mostly to the south. I needed my jacket, hood and gloves, but despite the wind, the ride was not terrible.

I arrive Tuesday morning--not all the wind is from Mother Nature. That's my bike in the Warde Hall rack.

In the afternoon, the wind was still blowing, but was definitely not as extreme. It was pushing past 5 p.m. as I left work. On the way home, because the sky had cleared and it was, despite the chill and breeze, so pretty, I rode around the pond at Collins Aerospace, and then headed down the Lindale Trail to take the Boyson Trail back to home.

I rode the short eastern trail—I didn’t want to use the crosswalk to the main trail during the evening rush hour. As I rode north on that short trail, a deer ambled out of the creek bed to the right and paused. A second, younger deer followed, and the two walked over to the line of trees to the west, and began nonchalantly munching grass. I snapped some images, which did not seem to bother the deer at all.

On the way home Tuesday afternoon--many such signs like the one above. It feels a bit weird that a lot of street paving projects seem to have started in October. Fall colors have arrived--maple tree (below) at Collins Aerospace pond on C Avenue.

I haven’t ridden as much lately as I like to, so just for the challenge, I headed over the Bowman Woods hill. It’s also possible that I was just getting hungry and over the hill is the shortest route home.

That was Tuesday’s ride. Today, it was still cool in the morning, and frosty. Chilly fall weather is here. We’ve got a hard freeze on the way Thursday night.

I enjoyed the ride to work, but parked the bike inside. The TV weather forecast said there may be sprinkles in the afternoon. In fact, there was a pretty daunting looking downpour for a while, but luckily by around 4:45 it had simmered down to sprinkles.

It was a damp, chilly ride home—but not really a wet one, although I did change my pants due to the place where the back wheel had kicked up some water.

I enjoyed having the mountain bike, and these days of marginal weather are what I own it for. Cars turning right onto Collins Road as I waited for the light on C Avenue skidded around the corner—the cool, wet pavement could be slippery. Tuesday and Wednesday were better days for wider mountain bike tyres.

Still, I would like to wear the bike shoes and ride the hybrid bike—maybe Thursday. It’s getting chilly, but not too cold for your bike correspondent!

Deer along the trail late Tuesday afternoon.

Dry Creek seen on the bike ride home.

V of geese, heading the wrong way (they are flying north) as sun sets. View from near the top of Bowman Woods hill on Brentwood Drive.

In Which I Contemplate the RAGBRAI Mess

Sunrise during RAGBRAI 2019. The last? Is it sunset now for RAGBRAI?

 No, I’m not jumping on the Iowa Ride bandwagon. I’m not sure why the Carson King story prompted the director of RAGBRAI and his whole staff to quit and start a competing ride—I suspect that there is more to the story than this one controversy.

As you no doubt know, King held up a beer sign at a football game, raised money for a hospital, had old racist tweets revealed by a paper, was courted and rejected by a beer company and had a day in his honor named by the governor of Iowa. The story has had more twists and turns than Dorothy’s house on the way to Oz. Along the way, RAGBRAI somehow got hit by the twister. I wrote about the media mess on one of my other blogs.

RAGBRAI had a long run. Is it over? It would make me sad, especially the way that it ended. The Register told its RAGBRAI director not to be making his own comments on the media storm engulfing The Register—in context, not an unusual move for a media company in the vortex of a storm. But he and his staff quit.

Of course, such “don’t ask, don’t tell” policies usually leak like a spaghetti sieve, and a better response may have been to work with the RAGBRAI staff on what to say. But the King story had little to do with biking in Iowa, and the Iowa Ride leaves me feeling cold.

Another image I made during RAGBRAI 2019. Typical RABRAI scene.

I’m an old newspaper journalist. I don’t worship the Register, but I’m old enough to recall it as the paper that Iowa once could depend upon. That it no longer is what it once was is partly due to unfortunate decisions it made along the way, but honestly, regardless of whether the paper retrenched in the distant past or waited until the current media economic storms forced the decision, I can’t see how The Register in 2020 had any hope of being the Register of the early 1970s when RAGBRAI was born.

Americans and Iowans are getting well over the newspaper reading habit. Based on the ignorance of our current politics, I can’t see that as a good thing, but it’s a thing nonetheless. And maybe a divorce between the summer bicycle ride and the fading media company that started it all has been in the cards for a while.

Still, the suddenness of the Iowa Ride movement leaves me queasy and uneasy. I don’t want to be a part of something that symbolically represents a repudiation of all that the Register was and is, and that rejects the watchdog role that newspaper journalism seeks to fulfill.

I don’t know what my plans for next summer are. I don’t know what RAGBRAI will be like now that all of its experienced hands have abandoned ship so suddenly.

But I am pretty that I won’t have anything to do with the Iowa Ride.

In Which 30 Days End in Badass Ride

Gloves on, Monday morning, ready for my badass mountain bike ride. Heigh -ho Fancy Beast!

It’s hard to know what October will bring. While typically a rather nice month in this part of the globe, odd is the new normal in weather, these days.

I am supposed to be finishing an exam and grading student papers—and, in my defense, I’m writing this during a break in test writing. Blogging can be a nice release. Not as nice as beer, but again, to be honest, I’m applying that remedy to my woes, too. Multi-remedying.

Anyway, my wife and I ate supper in the basement during a tornado warning on October 1. October is not typically a wet month, and it’s raining now, with the possibility we may see our normal monthly rain total tonight.

Today, on the first day of October, the rain in the forecast was one reason that I drove rather than rode. The other reason is that this afternoon I went down to NewBo to pick up my hybrid bike at Goldfinch Cyclery. It was overdue for a tune up, and I had broken a spoke on its beefy back wheel.

Cloudy afternoon between rain showers. I arrive at New Bo bike shop to get my bike.

“You know the deal with spokes, right?” the mechanic asked me Saturday when I dropped off the bike. When you break one, your chances of having another one or two break in the coming weeks is enhanced—the broken spoke puts pressure on other spokes.

Well, here’s hoping that deal doesn’t come true. I got the bike tuned partly because we plan a fall break trip to the land of cheese, and, if the summer thunderstorms have finally passed us by and drying fall air has moved in, maybe get some biking in.

New tyre on the Fancy Beast, parked Sept. 30 in hallway by my office.

Well, it was nice to get the bike back. And I had purchased a new rearview mirror because the previous one was broken—when I got my bicycle home, I put new mirrors both on my hybrid bike, and also on my wife’s bike. I had purchased a mirror for her bike some weeks ago, and it was time to put it on.

Yesterday was the culmination of the a poem. Indeed, September hath 30 days, and yesterday was the final one. It was humid and breezy, but at least the sun was shining.

When I took my hybrid bike to the shop Saturday, I also took in my mountain bike. A tyre was worn and the back wheel had a wobble. In fact, the wobble on the mountain bike was worse than it was on the hybrid bike, but fortunately, the wheel on the mountain bike was just getting old and wonky. No spokes broken, and the bike mechanic was able to true it, even if he complained about it some. The back wheel on the mountain bike is getting due for replacement, but it’s true for now.

So Monday, with the hybrid in the shop, I rode the mountain bike to work, partly to celebrate it being not wobbly. I put on bike gloves, which I don’t normally do for my work commute, but I was feeling a bit badass, an old man tooling around on a teen’s mountain bike.

Well, technically when my son received the mountain bike from Microsoft during a summer internship, he was already a young adult, not a teen. But I still feel like a teen when I ride it, and somehow the gloves added to the faux penumbra of teen angst.

Just to be a badass rebel, when I rode home in the humid early evening, I rode down the Lindale Trail and did a loop on the Boyson Trail because it’s limestone and I have a mountain bike and I’m a badass Monday mountain bike biker. With a bell, that I use, as I slowly and politely approach other trail users.

Being badass is no excuse for being rude.

Pretty creek view on Boyson Trail, late afternoon, Sept. 30.

When I was getting ready for the morning ride, my wife suggested I wear a t-shirt and take a polo shirt to wear at work. I did, and it was a good move—even in the morning, the ride was a bit sweaty.

September, you were summer in Iowa in 2020. Fall frosts, cool rides, dry autumn air—Oct. 1 didn’t feature any of those, but let’s hope. Knock on wood. In a badass way.