RAGBRAI Quickies

• RAGBRAI is an annual seven-day bicycle ride across the state of Iowa
• It’s the oldest, largest and longest bicycle touring event in the world
• Always the last full week of July
• Week-long rider fee: $150; week-long non-rider fee: $35; daily wristbands: $25
• The ride begins near the Western boarder of Iowa and ends along the eastern border at the Mississippi River
• Seven day total mileage for RAGBRAI averages 472 miles, daily mileage averages 68 miles
• Entry postmark deadline is April 1, 2011
• This year’s overnight towns are: Glenwood, Atlantic, Carroll, Boone, Altoona, Grinnell, Coralville, and Davenport
• 26 people have died during the ride itself or from injuries suffered on the ride
• My team (Team Skunk) is notable for their black shirts with a white stripe down the back and their greeting call, “Skuuuuuuuuuuuunk!”
• Team Gourmet travels with their own chef and Team Dragbrai rides in drag
• The sag wagon follows riders and picks up the injured, stragglers and sissies.

Info from RAGBRAI.com, Wikipedia and my own knowledge

Second Winter

I’m doing Live Healthy Iowa with a few of my coworkers here at WHO-TV. You write down your activity each day in the “daily journal” and then on Fridays you weigh in and enter your total activity for the week.

Here’s how my weekly activity has gone:

Week 1: 7:10

Week 2: 4:40

Week 3: 5:30

Week 4: 4:40

Week 5: 2:30

This week: 0:00

I’d like you to imagine a bar graph indicating workout time each of these weeks. Notice a trend? With the exception of a valiant effort in week 3 that I think included an hour of housework and 20 minutes of walking up my steps because I forgot something, there has been a steady decline in my activity. This trend is synonymous with, what I like to call, Second Winter.

Each February or early March in Iowa, it gets up to 50 or even 60 degrees, you go out for a walk, you get excited and fold up the long johns and think, for just a moment, about the swimming suit section of Target.

And then… Second Winter. Second Winter hits hard, with 20 degree temperatures that seemed warm a month ago, compared to that -20 windchill… but seem to suck the air out of you now. Second Winter includes a 4 inch snowfall overnight when you’re not expecting it and you don’t leave enough time to scoop the drive and scrape the windows. Second Winter comes and you know, for certain, without a doubt, that winter will never end. Iowa will be white for the rest of your life.

Well, Second Winter came, and I’m mad. I refuse to remove my bike rack from the back of my jeep. I’m not putting away my light jackets… I’m just wearing them under my winter coat. And I bought some $7 blueberries from the grocery store because I’m ready for spring. And Second Winter can buzz off.

The Rule of Raleigh

I’ve been scouring the planet for a new bike… and by “scouring the planet” I mean I looked at two stores and I looked online for 10 minutes. (Hey- I’m a decisive shopper!) But I finally found the beauty. A 2010, copper colored, vintage feeling (but very modern), Raleigh Clubman.

I had been into Skunk River Cycles in Ames a few weeks ago with a friend of mine, and I spotted her in the corner calling my name. Part of the draw may have been the built-in fenders… after a long muddy trail ride out by Waterworks Park and an awkward encounter with a Dahl’s employee near the adult diapers… The fenders definitely caught my eye.

Ron at Skunk River has been a family friend ever since I can remember, and I can still recall visiting him at Michael’s Cyclery, where Old Main Brewery is now, whenever we were on main. He gave me some good Craigslist advice but that little copper cutie was still in the back of my mind.

I looked up bikes online, read some reviews, stopped by Barr Bikes on 86^th in Clive and spun a few wheels, but I just couldn’t shake that feeling that I needed the Clubman.

So with my dad in tow, and birthday just a few days past, I headed to Skunk River once more to test drive that Raleigh.

I don’t know if I got caught up in the moment, or if the Brooks Leather seat formed to my own seat as I rode around the parking lot, but I couldn’t leave without her. A chunk of change later and we were loading her into the truck and heading to The Café to celebrate.

And then it happened… a day after I got the Raleigh home, I got a call from the place I dropped my funky computer off… “It’s a total loss. We can probably get your information off there, but to be up and working again it’ll be $200-300. This is an old Dell, so I’d suggest you just get a new one.”

And that’s what I like to call, The Rule of Raleigh. See, my dad’s name is Rollie… and growing up he always blamed bad luck on The Rule of Rollie. Hit a train when you’re in a hurry? Rule of Rollie. Found your favorite shoes but they’re all out of your size? Rule of Rollie. It’s that moment where you say, “Of COURSE that just happened… I just have that kind of luck”. Drop some major cash on a bike? Of course you need a computer now. It’s the Rule of Raleigh.

So here we sit. ‘Ol copper doesn’t get wifi, but she’s sitting in my dining room with the hybrid, waiting for warm weather. And I’m tweeting/facebooking/blogging/working from my computer at work. At least until I hear a laptop in the corner of Best Buy, calling my name.

The Ride

Let me introduce myself, my name is Alisa, I’m a Multimedia Producer here at WHO-TV. I walked into my boss’s office not too long ago and I said, I want to ride RAGBRAI and tweet/Facebook my progress and this is how the conversation went:

Boss: OK

Me: no, I mean like I’d have the days off to ride it…

Boss: You wouldn’t be “off” you’d be tweeting and Facebooking…

Me: ok, but I want to ride it

Boss: YES! Yes, yes, yes. Whatever you’re pitching, I’m saying yes.

So I ran off and solidified the decision by registering with Team Skunk and paying the registration fees. Once I registered it set in… I’m actually going to have to ride RAGBRAI.

I’m not new to the saddle; I rode RAGBRAI as a child behind my parents in the Burley, and then later on a tandem with my dad. I grew up around cycling with my parents racing in Iowa Games and going on long training rides from Ames to some Casey’s in the middle of the country with the promise of a doughnut at the destination.

I vaguely remember riding RAGBRAI but I’ve heard many stories over the years of losing a tooth and being paid in beer cans by the tooth fairy, calling team Gumby lazy because they were riding past us in a converted school bus as I was playing with my Barbie in the Burley.

Just the other day my mom remembered a story when I rode in the Burley all the way up a mile long hill. The whole way I was saying, “mom, mommy, mama, mom, mommy, mom…” Too winded to turn around, she listened to me all the way up the hill and finally stopped at the peak, thoroughly aggravated, to ask what I wanted... “I just wanted to see your face.”

I plan on making my own RAGBRAI memories as an adult, and I hope you’ll follow my training progress here on my blog, and on twitter @alisa_who.