3 or 17 Days To Go - You Decide

July is here. That means two things, the Tour de France and RAGBRAI. Two of my most favorite cycling events. I'm not sure which is the most important. I'm leaning toward RAGBY. The odds on favorite to win Le Tour is Cadel Evans. I'm pulling for Carlos Sastre of CSC. We'll see how things turn out in Paris on the 27th.

This is yet another "Health Tour". It seems about every ten years there is some sort of doping scandal and the following year is a "Health Tour". With the ASO giving Astana (including the defending champion) the boot, no prologue, no team time trial, and shorter stages, Le Tour is going to be very, very different. I'm hoping for the better. I'm not sure that it will ever be clean, but at least Pro Cycling is really testing. With the specter of gene doping now in the laboratory, I think that it may need to adopt more of a car racing format, Stock or Super Modified.

RAGBRAI also has a possible challenge to get over this year too. Given all of the rain that we've been having here in Eastern Iowa and the attendant flooding, the ground is completely saturated. July is the third most rainy month (June, August, July), there is some real potential for problems. Hopefully, it won't happen. Although... we'll need at least one rainy day to add a little suffering.

DBax has just finished up Jack And The Magic Bean Bus. It's been filling that empty time from August to June. It's a lovely tale set in and about the RAGBY. It's required reading on The ShortBus.

GITAP 2008

Well... my now annual RAGBRAI tune-up ride, GITAP, is in the can. It was a pretty good one. The weather was as close to perfect as you could ask for. No flats. Didn't fall over. Got a bunch of miles in. Not as many as I was planning on, but a 400 mile week is always good. I was also planning on taking a few more pictures than I did, but that's ok.

Monday's ride was a bit disappointing for me. I'd planned on taking in the Lincoln Highway Headquarters when I rolled through Franklin Grove, but I didn't really feel like waiting two hours for it to open. Ah well... should have seriously slept in.

Tuesday we rolled by one of my all time favorite road side memorials. Here's a picture of it.





Damned insurgents!











And now the requisite picture of the bridge between Sabula, Iowa and Savannah Illinois. I think that I caught the light pretty close to right to get the reflection in the river. We were camped at the Mississippi Palisades State Park for two nights. Then it was down the Mississippi River path to the Quad Cities. That was pretty interesting given the flooding that we've had in the QC's. At dinner on Wednesday, I volunteered to lead a ride from Augustana College to the Duck Creek Bike Path. That day's riding was supposed to be the river front paths, but the flood still had them underwater. I was shocked when I showed up Thursday morning and had a group of something close to thirty-five people. I don't think that I lost anyone, so I guess it turned out ok.

Friday's ride was the high point of the week for me. I took all of the mileage options, had a couple of wrong turns, and wound up in Rockwood State Park in Morrison 108 miles later with an average speed of 18mph. That was all by myself. I was pretty toasted, but a shower and a couple of beers later (this is one of the few state parks that allows alcohol), I was reasonably recovered. Then it was a short thirty-four miles on Saturday back to Sauk Valley Community College to catch my ride back home. Then it was unpack and start cleaning my camping stuff for RAGBRAI.

Long Time - No Type

Wow... Time flies when you're having fun. It's hard to believe that it's been a month since I last posted. Lots of things have been going on. In no particular order...

• The Flood is back and is it pissed... Lots and lots of rain up north have driven the Mississippi River levels up to near historic levels at Lock & Dam 15. They started talking about a crest at 17' and kept bumping up the forecasts. It peaked last Monday at 21.4'. Lots of local flooding by the river. The flood walls are now starting to come down again and I'm hoping that my commute route gets back to normal in a week or so. That is a trivial concern when compared to the absolute suffering that the folks in Cedar Rapids, the second largest city in Iowa, have going on. I have friends that live there and while they were spared the rest of their town was not. It's basically a mini Katrina.


• The weather here has been seriously odd. A week a ago Thursday, we had 3" of rain in a bit under 6 hours. That caused a huge amount of local flash flooding. There were roads washed out, some bike path ripped out, lots of flooded basements (not here), etc. My ride into and out of work on the next day was very interesting. The parking lot in Lindsey Park was completely under and I had to ride back off of the bike path and into the East Village. There was about a foot of water geysering out of a blown off manhole and making a nice little stream to ride through to get to dry ground. The high point of the ride was when I rode past a TV Talking Head doing a remote shot in parking lot across the street from there. I'm sure it was an "OMG... This is really bad here" piece. Nothing like a guy riding a bike through the background of the shot to make it seem not so bad.
  
  Then on Sunday morning, while I was waiting for my ride to The Ride (see below), we had an inch of hail between pea and dime sized. Eek!

• The 2008 edition of GITAP. I'll post more about the ride with a few images later.

Now... It's time to clean up the camping stuff, clean the espresso machine, and hope I survive this afternoon's Ashtanga yoga class.

The Snake

Well folks, it is once again Memorial Day in Eastern Iowa and that means that it's bike racing time. The best event of the weekend is the Snake Alley Criterium. This race makes a number of folks top ten races in the country. Snake Alley is a one block long climb on a historic brick street, dubbed "the crookedest street in the world." The 276 foot long Snake Alley has 5 switchbacks in a sixty foot climb. The average grade is 12.5 percent in that one block. I'll be hanging out with "The Devil" on the Snake. Wander on by and enjoy the show.

The Late Night Blues Brothers

I went to the Redstone Room last night to listen to The Late Night Blues Brothers Band (MySpace Page). This is a tribute band and they do a righteous job. This genre is the stuff that I grew up listening to. I have a real soft spot in my heart for it. I'd met the bass play on a bike ride that I've been doing for a number of years now. Now... If they could only work up Electric Flag w/Mike Bloomfield's cover of Howlin' Wolf's Killing Floor.

My daughter went with me to the show. We saw them last year at Taste Of The Quad Cities. It was nice to get to do this with her. The only odd thing was when I asked if she wanted something to drink and I got to fetch her a Captain and Coke. I was feeling a bit old.

But What Happens If....

I'd like to welcome a special guest to my B2WW Blog. Please give a special B2WW Blog welcome to Obviousman. Obviousman, I was hoping that you can answer this vital question, "What happens if it rains?"

Obviousman - "You get wet".

Thank you, Obviousman


Seriously... The little bit of rain that that occurred during my ride home today was no big deal. It wasn't even worth pulling out the rain jacket. Now I will admit that I do have fenders on my commuter bike and I was wearing clothing that will keep me warm if it gets wet. The only real consideration was to be careful turning onto the Viaduct Bridge and the Government Bridge. Wet metal is very slick and you do have to be careful. The same goes for painted lines and cross walks on the road.

I did have my first Gold Finch sighting of the year today.

Bike To Work Week

Well... We had the first event of Bike To Work Week this morning. This was put on by the QCTag group. They are an advocacy group that it trying to get folks out of cars and onto their feet, their bikes, or the city buses as an alternative to driving a car everywhere. This was a familiarization ride for folks in Davenport and Rock Island to show how easy it is to get around. They had a city bus there so folks to get a chance to see how to use the bike rack that is on the front of all of the city buses.

The next event that I'm planning on attending is the Commuter Breakfast on Monday morning. It is starting at 0630, so I'm taking some time off of work in the morning. I'm normally in the office at 0600. I am also going to be doing some blogging about B2WW on the QC Times web site. I think that I might find that a bit challenging since riding the bike to work is pretty much an everyday thing. I think that I'm going to write more about the things that I see. It looks like I might be able to include pictures. So here is going to be my first offering as to why I ride to work.


This was the view I had riding into work the other morning