R. Bruhn's Best and Worst of RAGBRAI ® XXIV, 1996

"Motto? We don't need no stinking motto." --Team Skunk motto

This lovely document comes to us again this year from R. Bruhn, who welcomes your comments.

See R. Bruhn's RAGBRAI Page for additional reports on the ride.

Best Team

Readers of past editions of this piece will know that my perennial favorite for the Best Team Award is Team Bad Boy. So let's just get this out of the way-- Best Team: Team Bad Boy, for the usual reasons. If you don't know the usual reasons you either haven't seen the Bad Boys in action (or inaction), or you have more moral squeamishness than is really good for you, or you haven't seen last year's Best and Worst.

Pickled Photo: R.Bruhn

Other Best Team

Last year I gave the Pickles, a.k.a. The Limp Pickles, a.k.a. Team Cucumber, my most uncoveted Worst Team Award, primarily because they fiddled and philandered so long in the penultimate passthrough towns they didn't have enough daylight (not to mention equilibrium) left to ride the rest of the day's route and were always sagging in. Well, they still did that, but, in true RAGBRAI ® fashion, I've decided I'm not having enough fun, so I'll lower my standards and give the Pickles this new award for Other Best Team. Hey, they do have their own professional masseuse, a comely young woman who brings along her own massage table; they do have the obligatory team stickers which they apply liberally to the tushes of any and all who are able to endure the searing application process known as "Heat Sealing" (more on that later); they do have an absolutely funky puke-green team bus, which was broken down more often that it was running, and on most mornings looked like a patient in cardiac arrest, with tubes and wires and cables running into it and out of it and frantic emergency care Pickle Doctors running around trying to revive it; they do have team t-shirts and green 'do rags and chrome tape and an on-board shower and the always-popular (except with the cops) Upside-Down Margarita. Not a bad act, all things considered. Plus, they let us camp with them when we couldn't find a spot.

Worst Motto for the Best Team

The Pickles, "Spending Time on the Top." Any Olympic judge worth his salt would give you three-tenths of a point deduction for that one. Surely you guys can do better.

Top Ten Comments Overheard While Camping with the Pickles

10.	"Whaddaya mean, you're not riding with me today?"
9.	"If you're not going to finish that case of beer, can I drink it?"
8.	"It's ten o'clock-- do you know where your shorts are?"
7.	"Hey, baby, they don't call me a Cucumber for nothing!"
6.	"I love you, man."
5.	"Call the garage, it's time to start the bus."
4.	"Surely you don't expect me to ride that damn bike again today?"
3.	"Rub here. Yeah, that's it! Oops!"
2.	"I've fallen and I can't get up-- somebody hand me a beer!"
1.	"Hey, I'm tired! You spend some time on the top!"

Harem Girls Photo: R.Bruhn

Worst Team

Oh, god, I don't know. There are so many possibilities. In the Worst Team, Tasteless Name Category there's Team Buttcrack; in the Dirty-Cheese-on-Your-Head Category there's always the Cheddarheads; in the Absolute Bad Hat Category you have those people with the feathers sticking out of their helmets; and I'm never too amused by those Armed Forces teams. This year, in addition to Them Smokin' Marines (no reference to their riding ability) we had Team Aim High Air Force (which surprisingly included some pretty good riders). But why are we, the great American taxpaying public, getting soaked to send these guys off on a lark across Iowa? I suppose my own team, Team Harem, is in the running, too. We have no special jerseys or costumes or mottos or hats or signs or stickers or gimmicks or purpose or anything, and what's worse, we keep saying we are going to get all those things, but never do. We do still have Emmet, our now 21-year-old motorhome with its barely functional sewer system and gas-guzzling engine and a new $600 air conditioner compressor which was never turned on thanks to RAGBRAI's always unpredictable weather.

Best New Team

Team Disgruntled Postal Workers. They dressed in USPO-type jerseys and shorts and hats and, of course, carried guns (squirt variety). In the beer garden in Randalia the DJ played "I Shot the Sheriff" in their honor.

Best Returning Team

Team Spawn, from Seattle. I like these folks. They have a sense of humor, don't take themselves (or anything else) too seriously (well, most of them don't, anyway), have fish (salmon, I guess) sticking out of their helmets and hanging on fishing lines from the backs of their bikes, and will "spawn" you at a moment's notice if you're up for it. Exactly what "spawning" consists of is best left to your imagination-- just let me say that it doesn't taste very good.

Other Welcome Returns

I've always liked team Dairy-Aire, probably for their motto, "Smell our Dairy-Aire." I was glad to see Team Farm Naked flying their flag in camp, and good old Team Kwitschersnivelin was back. Teams Cockroach and Graffiti were busy plastering stickers on anything that moved and Team Roadkill stickered anything that didn't. The Big "F" Team was back-- they claim the "F" stands for "Fun," but I'm not convinced.

Most Irritating Team

The aptly yclept Team Irritation. Their schtick was riding up and surrounding some innocent slowpoke and blowing horns and whistles until the victim was miffed enough to say something to them, at which time they would do a little endzone chant and then move on to piss off someone else. Ordinarily I would admire this kind of invention, but I got tired of hearing their endless honking.

Team Bikini: How do they do it? Photo: Dave Plummer

Best Team With The Least On

The fetching ladies of Team Bikini. They weren't wearing the itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny postage stamp-size string bikinis that I've seen in other years, but I wear biking shorts with a big fat chamois in them and my butt still gets sore. How do they do it? Tell us, please. Enquiring minds want to know.

Worst Shorts, Chamois or No

Team Killer Bees. Look folks, I know those black and yellow striped jobs fit the theme, but gawd, they're ugly! Remember: horizontal stripes make you look, well, horizontal in places where you might want to look more, well, vertical, if you know what I mean....

Best Vulcanization

Team Cucumber, for their patented "Heat Seal" Process. In case you weren't subjected to this painful procedure, it works like this: a member of the Pickle tribe applies a Team Cucumber sticker to your butt, using ("Look, ma, no hands!") only his or her tongue. It helps if the recipient is the opposite sex of the Pickle, but it's not a requirement. In Alton, they Heat Sealed a priest.

Best Food

The Village Wok, a little family-run Chinese eatery in Estherville. Had a wonderful sesame chicken dish and an excellent beef and broccoli number on their well-stocked buffet.

Worst Food

At the Prime and Dine Restaurant in Cresco. Look, I know RAGBRAI ® strains the capacity of everything from restaurants to restaurooms. But here are a couple of suggestions for all of you food vendors that perhaps the RAGBRAI ® organizers forgot to mention: 1) There are going to be 15,000 extra people in town; half of them will be in your establishment-- wouldn't it be a good idea to add a little extra help? 2) Buy some extra food while you're at it. 3) Don't, in any case, serve overcooked, canned green beans, gooey instant mashed potatoes, or chicken deep-fried in the same depleted grease you used last week to fry fish. 4) Only in certain Middle Eastern countries do they eat food without some type of silverware, so it might be nice to provide some, especially if asked repeatedly. 5) Don't give the bartender the night off.

The "Duh" Award

To the cheerful but braindead substitute bartender at the Prime and Dine, who-- after proving herself totally incapable of making a margarita, even with the well-meaning advice of a Spanish-speaking gentleman at the bar-- said, when I finally gave up on the margarita and asked instead for a simple gin and tonic, "Uh, O.K., what's in that?" Moral: just say, "I love you, man. Gimme a Bud Light."

Best Pork Chop

From the Pork Chop Man, at various locations throughout the ride. I'd love to sit down to a nice dinner with a decent bottle of wine and enjoy a couple of those babies. Alas, I'd forgotten to fill my water bottle with decent wine that day, so I stood in the middle of Main Street in Bancroft and ate one without benefit of that fine oenological complement. Gatorade, you know, just isn't the same.

Worst Price for the Best Pork Chop

Five bucks a chop! Holy sow! "What's he doing with all that money," I asked the lady at the counter, "buying a Beemer?" "No," she answered, "I don't think he aims that high."

Best Food On The Road

Tender Toms. For me, Tender Toms is a daily ritual, my Mecca in the east. I like the excellent grilled turkey sandwich, which carries (for RAGBRAI ®) a reasonable price tag; I like the beautiful, shady farmstead locations they almost always find; I like the lovely and personable young ladies who serve up the goodies (the food, I mean). I like the fresh, cold, strange-tasting well water, the cornfield kybos, the sheets and blankets they always have for riders to sit on, and the fact that I invariably meet interesting people there. They must make a ton of money. I hope they're buying a Beemer with it.

Best Use for a Ratite Bird

The Emu Fajita.

The "Help, They're Drowning the Pig" Award

To the Pig Roast tent in Lake Mills. Take a pig. Roast it in a pit until it's so tender it's falling apart. Carve it: succulent, tender, juicy. A treat beyond words for us carnivorous end-of-the-food-chain-gang types. But wait! This is Iowa. Land of Drowned Pasta. (Remember Pucci's?) Nothing is so good that it can't be made better by dumping a gallon or two of water on it. And, so help me god, that's what they did. Carved the pork, shredded it, then tossed it in a roaster full of water. Serve it up now, dripping with water, onto a hamburger bun which immediately dissolves into a disgusting mess. Somebody talk to these people. Please.

Best Drink and a Nice Gesture to Boot

The original Smoothie, sold only at the stand with the pink tie-dyed banner. Beware of imitations. Imposters are out there blending those top secret ingredients (pineapple juice, frozen strawberries, bananas and ice). But it just isn't the same. The original Smoothie guy told me that on the last day he puts a bottle of rum out on the table, too. It would, of course, be illegal to dispense booze like that out on the highway, but if some unconscionable rider were to steal a little of it when no one was looking....well, what's a poor original Smoothie guy to do?

Bluesman, no dancing Photo: R.Bruhn

Best Music

Another of my perennial favorites, Patrick Hazell, appearing this year in two towns. Had a few backup players with him, too. I still think he's scheduled too early in the day, because in the late afternoon, when he plays, most of the get-down-and-boogie crowd is still whooping it up in the passthrough towns and the crowd that is there just sits politely, like they were listening to opera or attending a funeral. This is music that begs to be danced to, that calls out like a Siren to horny sailors, that has a beat that should entice even Republicans to get up and attempt to dance. I asked the lady who was selling his tapes if he was going to play later in a bar and she said no, that when he played in bars on RAGBRAI ® people got too wild and he didn't like that. Maybe Patrick is slowing down a bit as the years go by. I don't know the guy personally, but I would think that anyone who makes his living playing music that is designed to blow your socks off would be delighted if it blew off a few brassieres and an occasional pair of shorts into the bargain.

Worst Music

I've railed about karaoke before and readers of earlier Best and Worsts will know that I think it is the sappiest form of self-abasing pseudo-music on the planet and that it's an embarrassment to anyone sober enough to walk. So I'm trying hard this year to think of something I dislike even more, but it's not easy. There were some perfectly god-awful gospel singers in a couple of places, but I never stuck around long enough to get their names. Some of the geezer bands were pretty terrible, too, but they usually redeem themselves by being so bad they're charming. So I guess I'll give the award to Tom Arnold, who, as The Dean of RAGBRAI ® Sleazebags, deserves all the obloquy I can heap on him.

Geezerette band Photo: R.Bruhn

Best Geezer(ette) Band

About 8 old ladies on kazoos with accordion accompaniment, on the stage in Bancroft. For reasons known only to themselves, each had her kazoo attached to some form of small kitchen appliance, like a cheese grater or a potato masher or a fruit strainer.

The "We Are Not Amused" Award, with Apologies

To the nice young woman whose naked butt I featured in last year's Best and Worst. Hey, I was mooned, I had a camera in my hand, and, being the cool professional journalist that I am, I took the shot and published it. I thought you'd like it. Really. I figured if you get off on showing your ass to one person you ought to be absolutely delirious at having it displayed to the whole planet on the World Wide Web. But not so. I'm sorry. I apologize. I won't do it again-- unless, of course, you moon me again.

Best Tush on RAGBRAI ®, or The "If You've Got It, Flaunt It, And Preferably Cover It With Glitter So Even The Legally Blind Can't Miss It" Award

To the amazingly constructed young woman on the back of the Team Vomit triple tandem, who, along with her equally glamorous and well-endowed companion, would show up in the beer gardens in the evening dressed in spiked heels, skimpy sequined outfits and covered with glitter. They were also travelling in the single largest mobile home/coach, I have ever seen. God, I love this country.

Close Encounters of the Tom Arnold Kind

In one of the overnight towns-- I think it was Chucktown-- my daughter and I walked through a semi trailer which had a big, colorful display about Iowa history. Included were a few photographs of famous people who hailed from Iowa, and I was struck by what a pathetic lot they were. (They didn't even mention Grant Wood.) In my home state, Nebraska, we're desperate for things to be proud of (that's why we have the Cornhuskers), so we're forever bragging about our native sons and daughters who have achieved success in the wider world. You know, we have writers like Willa Cather and Mari Sandoz and Wright Morris. In Iowa they have that guy who wrote The Bridges of Madison County. Nebraska was home to big-time Hollywood stars like Henry Fonda and Robert Taylor and Johnny Carson. Iowa has...Tom Arnold. And here's the scary part: they seem to be proud of it. Didn't I just see ol' Tom on the David Letterman show, gleefully salivating over his marriage to some witless teenager? So why are he and his buddies inviting dumb teenage blondes over to his rented houses in the overnight towns? (Yes, yes, I know that's a stupid question. He's inviting dumb teenage blondes over to his house for the same reason you or I would invite dumb teenage blonds over to our house, if only we had a house, and if we had the morals of a snake.) I withhold the name of the dumb teenage blond in question in order to protect-- well, not her innocence, because that's already been seriously compromised-- to protect myself, I guess. Anyway, she was blithely bragging about the whole affair in camp the next day.

Jailbait? Photo: Dave Plummer

The Rue Paul Drag Racer Award

To the Iowa bike racers who dressed in women's clothes again this year and presented their version of a beauty pageant on the stage in Milford. The winner (by unanimous approval of the crowd) wore a powder blue bathing suit, panty hose and a straw hat and treated his admirers to a tasteful but provocative striptease.

The Two Best Reasons to Dress in Drag

According to the DRAGBRAI boys: To make money and to meet chicks. Wish I had thought of that in high school. God knows, I tried everything else.

The "Bareass in the Park" Award

To the three DRAGBRAI boys who were arrested for riding their bikes naked in Dickinson County. Apparently, the only clothes they had with them when the county cops hauled them in were their dresses (including the French maid's outfit, seen above). I doubt that this eased their transition into the mainstream county jail population. But I heard they were freed on a little technicality-- it seems that the county has no ordinance banning public nudity. Oh, yeah? Well, what about impersonating a French maid?

The Handlebar Geegaw Award

To a guy from St. Louis (and about a hundred others) who have attached to their handlebars every conceivable aerodynamic, ergonomic, egomaniacal gizmo known to man. You got your aero bars, your bar end extensions (both up- and down-pointing), your arm rests, your mini drops, your maxi drops, your foldable fast-flying flip-flops, etc., etc. Mostly this stuff is weighing down the front ends of mountain bikes. My question to you folks is this: If you want an aerodynamic advantage and more speed for less work, wouldn't it make more sense (and save money, too) just to buy a road bike in the first place? RAGBRAI ® is run on paved roads, after all-- past cornfields, not in them.

The Big Ring-a-Ding-a-Ling Award

To the countless number of riders out there who ride constantly in their biggest gear, even on steep hills. In the biking world this is called "mashing big gears." It seems to be a specialty of triathletes and several other species of clueless recreational riders, usually, but not always, male. This kind of riding, which features a pedal cadence of about 12 rpm, is a pretty direct path to knee problems ("Yeah, Bubba, thet there bikin' ruined ma knees!"), promotes a stiff and wobbly riding style, and makes you want to ask, "If you climb hills in your 53/13, what do you use your small gears for? Sprinting?" Hint: for casual riding a cadence of about 80-85 is pretty good; for more intense efforts, try 90-100 or faster. (This information brought to you courtesy of my old team, Team GUBADOR-- Gratuitous, Unsolicited Bike Advice, Delivered On-Road.)

Vlad the Impaler or The Unsafe Sex Award

To the guy who had his aero bars mounted perpendicular to his handlebars (i.e., sticking straight up). He rode along (in his biggest gear) sitting bolt upright, hanging on to the tip of them, so that his hands were about an inch apart and directly over the bike's steering tube. I watched him from a discreet distance for several minutes, wondering how long it would be before he hit a small rock or something which would deflect his front wheel and send him face-first onto the pavement and drive the bar through his chest. If you're wondering why I called this the Unsafe Sex Award, just think about it: would you trust this guy to father your children?

Best Church, With Organ to Match

St. Wenceslaus Church, Spillville. Anton Dvorak, Czeck composer of such masterpieces as "The New World Symphony," spent the summer of 1893 in Spillville and played the organ there with some frequency (for starters, about 440 hertz, I'm told). The organ is now being restored and it is, as they say in the musical instrument business, a dilly. In the graveyard to the east of the church are more iron crosses (a Czech speciality) than I have ever seen in one place before. Very impressive.

No-brainer Photo: R. Bruhn

The Annual Remuddling Award

Also to St. Wenceslaus Church for the totally inappropriate Greek Revival "Lourdes Shrine" addition stuck into an exterior recess. Whatever were they thinking?

Worst Architecture

The phoney-baloney "Dutch" buildings in Orange City. Who do you guys think you're fooling with that cutesy crap?

Best Courthouse

Wasn't a particularly good year for courthouses, but I liked the Floyd County Courthouse in Charles City.

Worst Courthouse

Without a doubt, the Emmet County Courthouse in Estherville. If courthouses are supposed to promote a certain swelling of the patriotic glands, this one was sort of like an attack of appendicitis.

Best Gazebo

In the town square, in Spillville. It was also the only gazebo I saw, but never mind-- it was pretty cool, anyway. It was bulging with inebriated cyclists when I rode by.

Hosed Photo: R. Bruhn

Best Beer Tent, with Nude Dancing

Well, that would have to be the one on the first night, in Sioux Center. Your usual RAGBRAI ® beer garden features a security check that would make an Atlanta Olympian proud (haven't heard of any bombs going off in RAGBRAI ® beer gardens, have you?) and enough blue-nosed bouncers and other official spoilsports to keep a pretty tight rein on things. Not so in Sioux Center-- and the troops were taking full advantage. My personal favorite was the young woman who did a half-naked gyrating sex dance with a long hose of nested beer cups. Then, for the ladies, there was the handsome, muscular young man with cute buns, climbing the tent pole in the nude (ouch!); and for those with a more clinical eye, who don't amuse so easily, there was as proud a display of huge, perfectly round silicon boobs as you'd ever hope to see outside a plastic surgeon's office. At some point in the festivities the lights-- whether by accident or design I don't know-- went out, but it was soon discovered that flashlights provided a wonderfully theatrical effect on naked bodies, and before long someone was auctioning off discarded brassieres to the assembled multitudes. All in all, a fine show.

Cheap date Photo: R. Bruhn

The Datable Inflatable Award

To the guys on the tandem who were pulling a Burley with a rubber sex doll in it. There's at least one of these every year, yet somehow I manage to remain amused.

Best Overnight Town

I'd have to go with Chucktown. Not only were they handing out free pie to every rider (on RAGBRAI ® getting anything for free is just about unheard of), they had Patrick Hazell playing on the courthouse lawn, had a lovely, funky old suspension foot bridge across the river (WPA project?), and were generally gracious and accepting hosts. I believe it was in Charles City that I even found a restaurant that had red wine that wasn't refrigerated.

Best Overnight Town with an Unpronounceable Name

Ocheyedan. O.K., so you didn't stay in Ocheyedan-- we did. We didn't have a place in Sibley, so we stayed on Blaine and Jean Johnson's lovely little acreage on the edge of Ocheyedan. Because we'd parked too close to the barn, we spent the night trying to get about 100,000 horse flies out of the motorhome. Hey, we're city slickers, what do we know about the farm?

The Ken and Barbie Award

To the guy in the Speedo talking to one of the Team Bikini girls in Randalia. Not a quarter of a square yard of fabric between them.

RAGBRAI ® Wisdom According to Merta, Resident Philosopher of Team Harem

1) All men are boys. 2) Having sex is not necessarily classified as dating. As usual, she applied the number one rule of RAGBRAI ®: "Just because I slept with you last night doesn't mean I have to ride with you today." Too bad, boys.

The "Go Fly a Kite" Award

He was back again-- this time on a recumbent-- the humorless, taciturn guy with the sail attached to his bike. He hadn't unfurled it yet the day I attempted conversation with him. I wonder if they've tried this in the Tour de France?

The Serial Killer Award

Some time ago I noticed that recumbent riders tend to share the personality profiles of serial killers. You know, loners with stone-cold stares, quiet, reclusive, idiosyncratic, always standing apart from others, the kind of person about whom people would say, "He seemed like an O.K. guy, but he sort of kept to himself, never said much." But since then I have met a number of otherwise pretty normal-seeming folks who, for whatever misguided reasons, have chosen to own recumbents, and this has caused me to rethink the situation. I now believe that probably not more than 25% of recumbent riders are actually serial killers. Another 25% or so may be terrorists, but I'm still working on that. I'll keep you informed.

The Cereal Killer Award

To my two daughters, who can polish off a $5 box of Toasted Oat Squares in less than a day.

Connie Lingus Photo: Connie Tometich

The Connie Lingus Award

To the Lickety-Splits, a chain of Iowa convenience stores. Grocery store chains, for some reason, have always had more than their fair share of kooky names: Piggly Wiggly , for example, or Nebraska's local chain, Hinky Dinky. But in Iowa it's convenience stores that get the whacked-out, sexually suggestive monikers. In central Iowa they have the Kum & Go chain, which garnered last year's "Wham-Bam-Thank-You-Ma'am Award." It's nice to see that northern Iowans aren't about to be outdone.

The Slime Water Report

Slime water, also known as "soft water," has always been one of my pet peeves in visiting Iowa. Bathing in this stuff leaves a slimy soap film on your body which can't be washed off. In Nebraska, almost no one has slime water in their home because we already have plenty of chemicals-- pesticides, herbicides, nitrates-- in our water and don't feel obliged to add any more. This year's tally: 5 out of the 6 homes in which we stayed this year had slime water. I didn't get a sample in Fayette, because we had to shower at the school and my stringent scientific method won't allow data taken from nonresidential venues. If anybody has in information on this phenomenon, let me know.

The Wet Blanket Award

Well, the blankets that the band in the Fayette beer garden were throwing out to the crowd weren't actually wet; in fact they were brand new and nicely packaged. Why they were throwing blankets into the crowd is anybody's guess, but this award isn't for the band, anyway-- whatever their motives were. The Wet Blanket Award goes instead to the security people in the beer garden who were throwing people out right and left. Hell, they wouldn't even let my 14-year-old daughter in. Not that it mattered: there was easily as much beer outside the beer garden as there was in, and my daughter doesn't drink anyway.

The Pork Chop Humanitarian Award

To Mr. Pork Chop, who, seeing a woman picking leftover pork chops out of the garbage and gnawing on them, directed her to another garbage can where he thought the offerings would be better. It's this kind of spirit-- people helping people-- that makes this ride so special.

Sappiest Coverage of RAGBRAI ® by a Major Metropolitan Newspaper

The Des Moines Register, Messrs. Karras and Offenburger at the keyboard, trying valiantly to keep a lid on things.

Mollie and John Howard Photo: R. Bruhn

The "I May be 48 Years Old, But I Can Kick Your Butt" Award

To Bicycle Hall-of-Famer John Howard, who was on the ride for a couple of days. I read in one of the newspapers the overnight towns put out that he was going to be organizing a group ride from camp one morning. I found him in the vendor area that evening and arranged for my daughter and me to meet him the following morning. I naturally assumed that dozens, if not hundreds, of people would jump at the chance to ride with this guy, who is a bona fide legend in the bicycling world. (For those of you who don't know, John Howard is in the Bicycling Hall of Fame and held, until recently, the ultimate bicycle speed record of 152 mph (no, that's not a typo); still holds the 24-hour distance record of 512 miles; represented the United States at the Olympics on more than one occasion; and in the early 70s rode successfully in Europe as a pro, at a time when the sport of cycling was virtually unknown in this country.) Imagine my surprise, then, when Mollie and I showed up at 7 o'clock a.m. only to find that we were the only ones who had signed on to ride with him. We rode at an easy warm-up pace for a few miles, then gradually began to pick up the pace. At one point, maybe 20 miles into the ride, John looked back at me (I was never on the front) and said, "Let's pick it up a little more and get a workout." Yeah, right. Like 28 mph on the flats isn't already a workout-- for me, anyway. Well, pick it up we did, to 33-34 mph, slowing to maybe 30 over the rollers, then considerably faster on the downhill side. We passed fast pacelines like they were going the other way. I'm dying. I'm past anaerobic, into uncharted territory. John is riding along smoothly, dropping me on the slight rollers, then slowing a little to let me catch back on, and then, click!, up another cog and away we go again. A few of the stronger riders from one of the lines we've passed get on my wheel; in a mile or so there is only one left. I'm fried. I motion to the guy behind me, a strong young Iowa racer wearing a team jersey, to come up and take John's wheel-- I'm outta here. The two of them disappear up the road.

"If I've got to get dropped," I'm thinking to myself, "let it be by John Howard." No shame in that. I'm happy, ecstatic, in fact. I've stayed with one of the greats of bicycling history for 25 miles, what more could I want? I ran into John in camp again that evening, told him that I had fallen off just before the young guy in the Iowa race jersey had got on his wheel. He said, "Yeah, I don't remember how long that guy held on." In 86 miles, nobody passed John Howard. He completed the 86-mile day from Estherville to Lake Mills in 4 hours, campground to campground, with 3 stops for water and one for-- what else?-- Mr. Pork Chop.

An interesting footnote: John was riding a Bike Friday, one of those foldable bikes which have about 20-inch wheels and collapse to fit in a suitcase. I assume that he brought that bike for convenience while flying out here from California. The Bike Friday is a good bike, but it does look a little, well, nerdy, with its tiny tires and mile-long seatpost and stem. But this had the added advantage of making him look a little like a fred, which must have increased tremendously the amazement other riders felt when he went blowing by them and humbled them even more when they found they couldn't begin to stay with him.

Maybe I just amuse too easily (a distinct possibility), but I found meeting John Howard and riding with him to be the highlight of the trip. To her credit, my daughter did, too. Off the bike, he's one of the nicest fellows you could ever hope to meet; on the bike-- he's an animal. I hope he comes back next year.

Aging hippie liberal Photo: L. Ireland

Author's Disclaimer

I talk the talk, but don't walk the walk. I'm not a drunken party hound, but, being a visual artist (photography) and professional voyeur, I do like to watch. The worst things I have ever done on RAGBRAI ® (besides compiling this list) are riding in the left lane in fast pacelines with the shaved-leg crowd and squirting the local kids with my water bottle. I'm still trying to work up the guts to squirt a state cop. This year, I mostly rode and hung out with my 14-year-old daughter, Mollie, so I got a lot of this stuff secondhand. If I have made mistakes in my reporting, blame the people who told me about it-- this ain't the New York Times, you know. I am an aging, liberal, hippie dipshit, which may help explain my anarchic, antiestablishment attitude. Everybody's gotta have a hobby.

Questions, comments, corrections, subpoenas, hate mail, blackmail, email, chainmail, etc. may be sent to:

R. Bruhn
1344 C Street
Lincoln, NE 68502
rbruhn@alltel.net

© 1996 R. Bruhn

See R. Bruhn's RAGBRAI Page for additional reports on the ride.

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