Thursday, July 29, 1999 Older Editions

Bicycling across Iowa: 'It's hotter than blazes!'

By Taylor Armerding

Every year since 1992, a group of Andover residents have traveled to Iowa during the last week of July to participate in one of the biggest non-competitive bicycle rides in the country.

The event, now in its 27th year, was started by a couple of columnists from The Des Moines Register, and is still sponsored by that newspaper.

Hence its name RAGBRAI, the Register's Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa.

Bill Pennington has been the only Andover rider to make the trip every year since 1993. He even hosts a pre-RAGBRAI ride in March. Some years as many as a dozen local residents have done the ride. But this year, the group included just Pennington, Ken Shapiro, George Skaliotis and Selectman Lori Becker.

Townsman editor Taylor Armerding went along for part of the ride. His report on just getting out there, and then the first three days of the ride follows.

Getting there

The first indication that something might be wrong came with about 30 minutes to flight time, and almost nobody clustered around American Airlines Gate 19.

"Can you tell me if the flight to Chicago is due to leave on time?" I asked the gate attendant.

She tapped a few keys on her computer.

"Oh, that flight's been canceled," she smiled brightly.

And, as the evening wore on, so was every other flight to Chicago.

Thunderstorms, they said.

"It's like this in Chicago almost every day in the summer," another exasperated agent said, as she tried to re-book an interminable line of travlers.

For the small Andover contingent hoping to reach Des Moines, Iowa on Friday night in time to catch a bus to the start of one of the most famous bicycle rides in the nation - the Register's Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa (RAGBRAI) - it meant hours standing in line, an extra night on the East Coast, and a trip to Sioux Falls, S.D., the next morning, instead of Des Moines.

Sioux Falls is actually much closer to the starting point of the 1999 RAGBRAI, which launched Sunday morning from Rock Rapids, Iowa.

And on the 35-mile shuttle ride from the airport to Rock Rapids, the veterans quickly indoctrinated the "virgins."

"Showers? Oh yeah, they have showers," said Dave from Portsmouth, N.H., back for his sixth year. "Just don't expect hot showers. Try to imagine 10,000 people all redlining the hot water heaters. But don't worry. You won't want hot showers."

John, from Ft. Myers, Fla., wants to talk about food. About the old guy who sits next to the road and bellows "Pooorrrk Chhhooooppps!" at the passing riders.

"You gotta have some of them," he says. "You just can't believe how good they are. How thick they are."

About the pancake makers in the different towns that host the overnight camping for the ride. "They have 100 of those things going at a time," he says. "And then they flip them out at you, sometimes about 30 feet, and you're supposed to catch them on the plate.

John also talks about teams. RAGBRAI teams aren't teams in the traditional sense. They're not raising money. They're not racing with one another.

They're basically just a group of people who have pooled their money so they can hire a truck to take their luggage to the next town.

"But you'll see everything you can imagine," he says. "There's Team Road Kill. Every time they come across anything dead in the road, a bird, a rabbit, an armadillo - whatever - they put a sticker on it. Like 'The Road Kill seal of approval.' "

The Andover crew mostly belongs to Bill Pennington's Team McDucks, named not for the waterfowl necessarily, but more because its members come from states that start with M, C or D.

Pennington is late, however, because his father has been taken ill. So the rest of the team finally straggles in to the Des Moines Cycle Club (DMCC) campground and sets about reassembling bicycles that have been reduced to spare parts, and trying to pitch tents without drowning in sweat.

It is hot. Hot enough for heatstroke. Hot enough to make riding a bike seem like a completely insane idea, not to mention about 70 miles a day.

But here they are - 8,000 official riders and anywhere from 2,000 to 4,000 "bandits."

The dinner lines are immense - about an hour for a substantial plate of lasagna, salad, fruit salad and a drink. Most of the conversation is about RAGBRAI facts.

"Oh, this thing is big," says one man to a dinner companion. "One of the banks from one of the host communities last year said that the night RAGBRAI came through, they had $100,000 taken out of their ATMs."

Day 1: Rock Rapids to Spencer

Some of the veterans are up and on the road by 4:30 a.m. There are good reasons for that. Get out ahead of the massive crush, and you won't wait a half hour or longer for a plate of pancakes at the first stop. There won't be lines at the portable bathrooms (called a ky-bo out here).

There won't be lines at the showers when you finish the ride. And you'll get the heavy work done during the early part of the day, before the heat gets really brutal.

But then, if you leave that early, you'll ride in the dark for about an hour and a half. The ride, which starts at the western border of the state, is also at the western edge of the time zone, so it doesn't really get light until 6. And if you're ahead of everything, you tend to miss much of the RAGBRAI experience.

We have been warned that we will see every kind of bicycle you can imagine, and every kind of outfit you can imagine.

Maybe it's not quite that extreme, but there is indeed a feast for the senses on the road out of Rock Rapids at about 6:45 a.m. There is a river of bicycles as far as one can see in either direction.

There are riders with boom boxes rolling behind them on little mini-trailers, blasting loud enough to be heard for a quarter mile in either direction. There are dogs and small children being towed in other mini-trailers.

There are costumes and slogans. There is a team of riders who wear rolls of toilet paper on top of their helmets. There is another group with sharks on top. There is a team of cross-dressers, who call themselves DRAGBRAI. There is a T-shirt that spells out IOWA as follows: Idiots Out Widing Awound. There are the T.R.O.L.L.s: Temperamental Riders On Lifeless Legs.

And there are plenty that are not quite fit for a family newspaper.

Then there is the reception thrown by the towns along the route - most of them with 1,000 or fewer residents - as the riders come into town.

Today, since it's Sunday, the town of George not only has multiple breakfast opportunities, it has also been transformed into something of an outdoor church. There is a gospel quartet at the side of the road, singing to a sound track. They're very good, too.

The deals are great - all the pancakes and sausage you can eat for five bucks - but the numbers are so huge that for the towns, it is one of the biggest revenue producers of the year.

Just outside of George is a small Presbyterian church, with a service for riders every 15 minutes. We sing a couple of praise songs, there is a passage from the Bible, a solo from a teen-ager, and then the minister presents a brief sermon.

Life is like a bike ride, he says. In other words, it has its ups and downs. And the best way to get through it is with the Lord by your side. Some of us remark that we just wish the Lord would turn down the heat.

Later in the day, with temperatures hovering around 100 degrees, the music in the towns switches to rock and roll, the beverage of necessity is Gatorade, and one of the most pleasant activities is getting in the way of the hose, run by the local fire department in one of the other towns on the route.

The first day's ride is with Selectman Lori Becker, also a first-time RAGBRAI rider, who says one of the reasons she decided to do it was for the challenge. But another is that she sometimes tires of being in the public eye, and this was a way to get away from it.

"For a week, I just want to be a girl on a bike," she says.

And that's not too difficult to do here, in a rolling sea of humanity, all wearing helmets, tank-tops and spandex.

At the end of the day, we arrive at Spencer, where the entire RAGBRAI contingent of somewhere between 8,000 and 10,000 people is hosted on the county fairgrounds.

Tonight, the main supper place features our first taste of Iowa corn. It is so sweet, most of us can eat a half-dozen ears without feeling full.

But then, maybe it has something to do with what we've been doing all day as well.

There is more rock and roll and a spectacular fireworks show as well.

But most of those over 30 are in their tents before 11. There is a brief thundershower around midnight, but it doesn't break the heat.

Day 2:Spencer to Algona

Today's ride is with George Skaliotis, who likes to get up and on the road by 6, since "I get most of my productive riding done before 10."

And it is a somewhat different experience to be a bit closer to the leading edge of the ride. The people here are much more competitive, and almost military in their use of commands.

All day long we hear "On your left!" (I'm passing you on your left); "Car up!" (There is a car coming from ahead - a rare event, and one that is passed on down the line with great precision); "Rider up!" (a rider, for some unknown reason, is riding against the flow of our traffic; and "Slowing!" (A large group of wimps ahead is taking up the whole road, and we can't pass them as soon as we want.).

And there are fewer of the exhibitionists out early. It probably takes them more time to get ready to go.

But in the cool of the morning, there is time to talk. Skaliotis works for the federal Department of Transportation in Kendall Square, Cambridge. And one of the ways he's gotten ready for the ride is to commute to work on his bicycle - about 23 miles each way. He has "empirically figured out" that he can ride in temperatures as low as 38 degrees, but no lower.

That usually means he rides from sometime in March until sometime in November. That temperature limit is clearly not an issue here.

Does he have an upper limit? He shrugs and smiles.

By the second day, the routine is starting to settle in a bit as well. We know how often to get Gatorade, how often to eat bananas, and how hard we can push without straining knees or other joints.

There is also something about the Iowa countryside that is starting to become familiar to both of us. Coming into Algona, our stop for the second night, we are struck by the fact that the the crops on either side are corn or soybeans. And those were the crops in the fields leading out of Spencer. In fact those are the crops between every town on the trip. Sometimes it's hard to tell, at the end of the day, if you've gone anywhere.

Then there is the way you can tell you're coming into a town. Off in the distance, there is a water tower and a grain elevator.

It is also becoming clear that while there are plenty of young people on sleek bikes with bodies like greyhounds, and quite a few sixtysomethings and beyond, that the vast majority of RAGBRAI participants are 'boomers'.

That's the music coming from most of the boom boxes - Jackson Browne singing "now the seats are all empty, let the roadies take the stage."

The Beatles singing, "I don't know why you say goodbye, I say hello..."

Out here, you can be in any decade you want.

Algona is primed for the riders, but at this point in the ride, most people are primed for little else but dinner and their sleeping bags.

Day 3: Algona to Clear Lake

Today's ride, from Algona to Clear Lake, is the shortest of the week, at 68 miles. It is also, by far, the most pleasant weather. Sunday it was in the 80s at 6 a.m., and topped 100 degrees. Monday it started in the mid-70s and topped out in the mid-90s. Today, it is 67 degrees at the start, and doesn't even top 80 until late morning.

But this is also the day of the headwind. And it is also the day to ride with Andover's RAGBRAI guru, Bill Pennington.

Pennington is filled with seven years of RAGBRAI stories. He is also a repository of ride information. He has seen most of the teams. He is forever calling out the names of riders he knows. And he knows what to look for. "Watch for the old guy on the old Schwinn," he says. "He does it every year." Sure enough, we eventually pass an old guy on a Schwinn.

He is also easily the strongest rider of the group. With a stiff headwind for the last half of the ride, he teaches the joys of drafting.

By yourself, maybe you can do 17 or 18 miles per hour on a flat stretch.

But get behind a line of riders, and you can kick that up to 19 or 20.

Of course, most of the time, Pennington is in the lead, so he has nobody to draft for him.

But during a 10-mile stretch between towns, both of us are startled as a tiny young woman from Team Air Force scoots by us and asks Pennington, in a young girl's voice, "Want to take a break for a couple of miles?"

"Sure," he says.

And she pushes the speed to about 22 mph. Your correspondent is seriously sucking wind by the time the next little town shows up, about 5 miles later. But those miles do pass remarkably quickly. And a food stand is a wonderful excuse to stop. Our leader, and her husband, are not about to stop. And we have a feeling they were taking it easy on us.

"That's not even all that fast," Pennington says. "These teams from France, with really competitve riders, do about 30, and they're chatting with one another the whole time."

Pennington isn't bad at chatting either. He hooks up for a few minutes with a woman from Louisiana, wearing multiple strings of beads. By the time we stop for breakfast, he's convinced her to give him several of them for Team McDuck members.

In every town, he makes it a point to "talk to the locals."

At one stop, for Gatorade, we meet a nice young couple with their three young children. They used to raise hogs, but now they both work at a local Kraft food plant - four days on and four off. They alternate shifts so one of them is home with the kids all the time, "and then we have four days to spend together," he says.

While the young husband says it's no longer worth it to raise hogs, there are apparently plenty who still do. The odor of a hog farm hits riders about a half mile ahead of time. In fact, we're developing a slogan: "I love the smell of manure in the morning. Smells like ...Iowa."

There are other things about the third day of the ride. The worst of the soreness is over, and the bodies are starting to adjust to the daily miles. The landscape is vastly different from New England, but has a beauty all its own. Iowa has no mountains, but it is not flat. The land comes at you in waves, almost like the ocean, except much further apart.

And one of the most breathtaking scenes is coming to a corner where the ride turns, and seeing bikes stretched, as far as the eye can see, to the horizon.

Riders are adjusting to camping as well. Life gets down to the basics.

Where are the bathrooms? Where are the showers? And where is the food?

Such simplicity, combined with a cool night and a full moon, leads to a very sound sleep.

Continued next week...