Sitting in an Airport after RAGRAI

I’m in the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport, just having had a pretty good omelette. It’s about 9:15 AM on the Sunday after RAGBRAI. I’m beat. But wow, what a good time. This year the ride was planned for about 425 miles, not long for a RAGBRAI. Further, the elevation gain was fairly low too, which is not to say there were no hills. There were, one after another.
This RAGBRAI, my fourth (2011, 2013, 2016, 2019), had a bit of everything except heat. Okay, it did get warm, but never up into the high 90’s as it did in 2011. Whew. We had rain on the first day, and one of the nights as well. We had the aforementioned hills. We had sun. And we had mile after mile of the lovely Iowa countryside. It’s not Hawaii, but it is charming.
I have a number of friends I’ve collected over the years, Stan, Nate, Jason, Sarah, and Sarah, Travis, Jim, Nils, Chuck, and Sam. I’ve probably left a few off that list, but I don’t get here all that often. Wow, I have a lot of friends in Iowa.
And it seems I may actually get back next year. I’ll be in Detroit at the beginning of July for a convention, then a bike ride to Milwaukee. If I’m already that far into the mid-West, it seems only sensible to do another RAGBRAI. We’ll see. I’m just off the bike, not even 24 hours and here I go planning another.
The only thing I didn’t do was make a lot of photographic images. I had great plans to do film photography on this trip and here’s the thing; it’s just too damn hard to bike all day and make great images – at least if you are me.
So, I’ll have memories, but no art. That’s okay, this was really about spending a couple of weeks with my buddy Erich in Colorado, South Dakota, and Iowa, of course. Seeing Rusty from Pittsburgh again. And, hanging with that long list of folks I know and love from Iowa.

Thanks guys, especially Erich for building that super bike and putting up with my moods, and Rusty for being so darn happy to be on RAGBRAI one more time. Until next time!