hey all, so here's the report on how my RAGBRAI went......
Day 1.....our small but determined group met at Grounds for Celebration in Beaverdale at about 10:30a Tuesday morning. we grabbed a cup'o'joe and loosely laid out a plan for joining the tour across the state en route. the ride had started on Saturday in glenwood, Iowa and by that time had come nearly halfway across the state to boone, which for those who you not acquainted with Midwest geography is damn near smack dab in the middle of the state. Our plan was to leave des moines ride up the neal smith trail, sticking close to the cover of the des moines river and then saylorville lake to polk city, west to madrid, then north to boone.....THIS WAS AN AMAZING RIDE!!!!!! the neal smith is a scenic roller coaster ride through some of the lushest terrain central iowa has to offer.....even with a fully loaded (and by that i mean overloaded for my not-so-fitness level) trailer, the miles seemed to just happily tick away. in no time at all we arrived at the saylorville marina and cruised into Polk City just as the heat of the day started to peak.....and i could go on for another thousand words, in witty detail about how each hour of the trip went, but I won't. The reality is that i wasn't in shape enough to finish the planned 3hundred-ish/4 day trip........BUMMER!!
From this catastrophe rose a singular realization....I need to ride more, alot more. Being bike geek, does not, as it turns out make you a better rider. so to that end a new personal mantra was born: ride as much as my body and schedule would allow. Following RAGBRAI, I started riding to work 3 to 4 days a week, running errands on the bike, and trail riding as much as I could....to date I've logged over a 1,000 on and off road miles and lost alittle of my middle aged gut....with this increased level of activity has also come the realization that I'd lost a measure of my personal identity and had apathetically compromised some of my core values both professionally and personally........yet another bummer!!!! so, as I'm writing this post I find myself in the middle of mid-life crisis.....not the i wanna buy a Ferrari and date a 19yr-old super model from the eastern block kind, but rather, the what the f*#k are you doing with your life kind.....at 38yrs I found myself working a corporate job devoid of any creative expression, not traveling at all, not creating any art of my own, and until recently riding the least I've ridden in the past decade.......are these the values i want to demonstrate to my son.....ABSOLUTELY NOT. so....I'm slowly turning the tide, one pedal stroke at a time....keep ya posted
RiDe FrEE!!!!!
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