Roads Scholar --

Riding RAGBRAI (or What Doesn't

Kill Me Makes Me Stronger)

By Steven Helle

     Pffffft!

     Because I had never had a flat tire on my bicycle, I wasn't even sure immediately what the sound was. But the riders around me groaned and the fellow behind me said, "I hate it when that happens," so I knew it couldn't be good.

     Seven miles into my 530-mile ride across Iowa during the last week in July, and I was suddenly a spectator as thousands of other bikes rolled past me and my disabled bike. It was not a good omen.

     Since 1973, the Des Moines Register has staged the Register's Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa, or RAGBRAI. That first year, it was just a wild idea dreamed up by two Register columnists, "in a drunken moment," as one of them says, and they issued an open invitation to join them. Surprisingly, almost 500 people showed up to accompany them across Iowa.

     This year, 10,000 people rode on any given day, although the record for one day is some 23,000. They came from all fifty states and 17 countries, and ranged in age from three to 83.

    Actually, a two-year-old was probably the youngest, but she was being towed in a trailer by her parents on a tandem bicycle, so I suppose she was technically not a rider.

     I was one of the 10,000 this year, a first-time participant, whose inexperience was highlighted by the fact that I had not bothered to bring a spare inner tube or patch kit. I could only watch the early-morning procession as it passed by.

     It was an awe-inspiring sight. For miles, all I could see were bicycles, including a surprising number of recumbents, which look like chaise lounges on two wheels. There was even one fellow hand-cranking his wheelchair and another rollerblading. They covered both lanes of the country road.

     Many riders formed teams with matching tops touting their team names. Team Tu-Tu sported multi-colored tu-tus. Team Chamois Fanois took its name from the liner in bicycle shorts. A number of teams wore their emblem atop their bike helmets: Team Spam, Team Bone, and Team TP.

     Most impressive were the Killer Bees, all dressed in matching yellow- and black-striped tops, shorts and socks and riding fast in two lines on the far left side of the road. The last Killer Bee pulled a trailer with a massive boombox playing at full volume.

     Team Graffiti consisted of a group of fellows from New York and New Jersey who had wanted a name to indicate their origin. As one them explained to me, Team Graffiti might not be too clever, but it was better than Team Street Crime.

     Some even had mottos. Team Spam: I think, therefore I Spam. Team Cockroach: Start slow, then back off.

     Another rider had a flat just down the road from me after about an hour and a half, so I was able to beg a patch and pump up my tire. It blew again another mile or so down the road, but one of many bicycle repair tents was set up nearby so I replaced tire and tube and rejoined the parade.

     It was a curious feeling, being part of a so massive and unusual social phenomenon. Families would gather on their porches at 6 in the morning to wave and watch. State troopers halted cars at key intersections so we could have the road to ourselves. Every day we covered 70-80 miles en route to a prearranged destination and passed through a half dozen or so small towns along the way, and every small town had obviously spent months planning entertainment, food booths, and beer gardens to accommodate the invaders who outnumbered the locals often 20-to-1.

     I was asked to sign T-shirts and registers. People cheered and clapped as we rode into Bellevue at the end of the route. It was probably the closest I will ever be to a celebrity.

     The tens of thousands of Iowans who lived along the route and whose lives were utterly disrupted for a day were the real heroes, though. Every single person I met welcomed RAGBRAI and their friendliness and generosity has become legendary with the riders.

     I knew it was likely to be hot and I had worried about obtaining water. But farmers set up stands with water and lemonade or pulled hoses to the end of their driveways and let them run all day, so riders could fill their water bottles just about anywhere. Iowans even went to great lengths to cool off riders, directing sprinklers onto the road or stationing kids with spray nozzles on curbsides.

     Food was another concern because bicycle riders can burn 1,000 calories an hour, and I would have no choice but to eat large amounts of food to keep up my strength during the 6-10 hours I would be on the road each day. I had to eat, I was compelled to eat, and Iowans came through with home-baked cinnamon rolls to die for, homemade pies of every variety, fresh fruit smoothies, all-I-could-eat pancakes and sausages, smoked turkey legs, inch-thick grilled Iowa chops, sweetcorn, homemade ice cream, even ostrich and buffalo burgers and much, much more.

     I rose to the challenge and did my best to eat my way across Iowa. RAGBRAI is said to be about biking, but it is really about consuming incredible amounts of calories. It was as if a horde of locusts rolled across the state, devouring everything in its path.

     But if food was the highlight, the weather and the terrain were the drawbacks. It was the hottest RAGBRAI ever, with temperatures in the 90s or 100s six days in a row. On the afternoon of the sixth day, with a heat index of 120, the tar in the seams about every ten feet along one stretch of blacktop turned liquid. The bike tires would squish through the tar pools, picking up tar, which would then attract rocks, grass and dirt. This was while pedaling up a two-mile hill, into a headwind.

     We had already bicycled up a seemingly endless nine percent grade south of Elgin and three steep hills outside Decorah, but the stretch of blacktop south of Wadena was the worst. One road engineer was quoted as saying the road had to be 120-140 degrees for the tar to melt as it did.

     The heat and humidity were oppressive day and night. I would lie in my tent at night, perfectly still, with sweat pouring off my body. One day other riders kept asking if I was okay as they passed me on the road. This happened several times until I realized that the dye from my red bandanna tied around my forehead was streaming down my face in rivulets of perspiration, making it look as if blood was flowing from some gash in my head.

     On the final day, as we headed toward the Mississippi, the heat let up a little and we actually had a bit of a tailwind. But it was the third day in a row of imposing hills. I gather that every year the trip planners make sure that the route includes some hills that are literally breathtaking, just to convince the skeptics that Iowa is not flat.

     My bike coasted to 42 mph down one gorge, but I had to hit the brakes toward the bottom because three bikers had taken a tumble. Two of them were taken to a Dubuque hospital where they were listed in serious condition. Although 42 mph was a new personal record, I broke it as I flew down the last hill before the Mississippi, reaching 46 mph.

     It was glorious, coasting down such hills, but a bit dispiriting as well, because I had earned every inch of that elevation with hard pedaling at 3-5 mph and, except for that last one, another hill generally waited for me to ascend as I reached the bottom of the one I had just descended.

     RAGBRAI was probably the most arduous thing I have ever done. I am a not terribly athletic 44-year-old, and I rode 640 miles to train for RAGBRAI, but I should have done more. The appeal of RAGBRAI, though, is that it is within reach of the average person who is willing to prepare and endure the discomforts.

     I don't imagine I will do it again, although I say that while still suffering from a sore seat, sunburn, and a numb left hand, which was caused by leaning day-after-day on the handlebars. I scheduled my annual health check-up right after the trip and learned that I had almost halved my cholesterol, though. My numbers were so phenomenal that the doctor had double-checked my patient ID to make sure that I hadn't gotten someone else's results by mistake.

     Perhaps when my body is healed, I will think differently. Perhaps if I had one of those recumbent bicycles ...