R. Bruhn’s Best and Worst of
RAGBRAI® XXXV, 2007
“I’m not a gynecologist, but I’ll take a look.”
—T-shirt inscription
I rode
RAGBRAI again this year after a hiatus of five years, during which time I was
incarcerated for two years in a Turkish prison for a crime I did not commit (I
did NOT inhale!), then confined at Abu Ghraib for almost 18 months, until
finally being transferred to Guantanamo, where I was given excellent healthcare
benefits despite having to live in a wire cage. On the whole, my treatment at Abu Ghraib was much better than at Gitmo,
largely because I was fortunate enough to have been guarded by a kind and
generous young woman named Lynndie, with whom I fell, as prisoners sometimes do, hopelessly in love. For security reasons, Lynndie wouldn’t tell me her last
name, except to say that it was the same as some European country. Lynndie
France? Lynndie Spain? I have tried without success to contact her now that I am
free, but quite unaccountably the Army says they have never heard of her.
[For more on Lynndie, click
here.] At Gitmo I was once visited by
Dick Cheney, but when I tried to engage him in a
conversation about my internment, he said “Go fuck yourself,” which wasn’t very
helpful because at Gitmo that’s about the only sex option you have in any case.
At least he didn’t shoot me in the face. I was finally released when Michael
Moore pointed out to camp officials that I would suffer more at the hands of the
American healthcare system than by anything I could be subjected to at Gitmo. If
you’ve seen Moore’s new movie Sicko, that’s me just behind Michael in a
couple of shots on the boat, wearing a jaunty little captain’s hat.
So it’s been a long journey. And sitting in prison isn’t
the best way to get in shape to ride 500 miles across Iowa, which may explain
why my butt hurt so bad that I had to sag a couple of days. I know that most
people think that spending time in prison hardens a person, but I found that all
those long, lonely days of solitude and occas
ional torture provided me with the
opportunity for a lot of introspection and self-reevaluation, and I believe that
the experience has changed me from a cynical, wise-cracking antiestablishment
type into a more mature and thoughtful person, one more capable of seeing the
bright side of life, and, more to the present point, the bright side of RAGBRAI.
Whereas in the past I have operated on the insight-through-drugs-and-alcohol
model of reportage, as exemplified by Timothy Leary and Hunter S. Thompson, I
now find myself inspired by the venerable redemption-through-suffering model
most recently popularized by Paris Hilton. So, I hope I will not disappoint my
faithful readers by failing to chronicle, as I have in the past, the drunken
underbelly of RAGBRAI and all of the colorful miscreant behavior that goes along
with it. But I feel that I must follow my new muse and celebrate in these pages
the positive, wholesome and morally redeeming aspects of the ride, just as the
Des Moines Register does, and has always wished I would.
So, let’s get right to it with the award for:
BEST TEAM
I have always given this award to Team Bad Boy, but they
appear not to have been in attendance this year and I probably couldn’t give
them the award anyway unless they became Team Good Boy, which is highly
unlikely. And although Modesty, which is one of my new dictates, would require
me to name some team other than my own for this prestigious award, Honesty (also
one of my new guideposts) simply requires me to face up to the fact that my own
team, Team Swipe, was the best on this year’s ride.
We did have a pretty impressive team name, motto, jersey,
team maneuver, honorary member procedure, and annoying on-road sound bite system
worked out. We devised all of this piecemeal as we went along. It all started
because my daughter, who lives in New York City, had a woman she knows make each
of us a skirt (kilt) made entirely of Metrocards, which we wore around camp and
in town in the evenings. Then we decided to attach Metrocards to the underseat
bags on our bikes. That sort of suggested that we had a “team” thing going, so
we decided to call ourselves Team Swipe (as in swiping your Metrocard at the
turnstiles of the subway), and so we bought some white t-shirts and I designed a
logo and put it on the t-shirts with a Magic Marker, and we came up with a
motto, (which is a phrase you see in the subway which refers to notifying
authorities if you see something suspicious), “If you see something, say
something.” (It’s also a little double-entendre on the kilt thing—nudge, nudge,
know what I mean?). Then on the back of our shirts we put the letters A, C, and
E in blue circles, which stands for the 8th Avenue subway line, and below that
the word SWIPE and an arrow pointing down at our
butts.
Only a New Yorker would be able to make any sense of any of
this, of course, but that’s part of the fun because it trades on New Yorkers’
(deserved) reputation for provincialism and obliviousness to the rest of the
world. Then we thought we should have a team maneuver, and that became the
motion one uses to swipe the card through the turnstile slot, and it was only a
short mental hop from that idea to the Honorary Member Initiation Procedure,
which consists of having the inductee bend over while a Team Swipe member swipes
an oversize metro card through their butt crack. (Please excuse any non-PC
language which may occur in the course of this writing. Old habits are hard to
break.) And not wanting to stop there, we decided that next year we will have
some kind of boombox on one of our bikes which will play actual sounds from the
NY subway, like the ding-dong sound when the doors close and all the various
announcements they make on the trains, like, “You are on the Brooklyn-bound L
train, the next stop is 1st Avenue” and “Holding the doors delays the train and
all the trains behind it” and “Remember, ladies and gentleman, oral sex is
allowed only on weekends after ten p.m.”
CORRECTION
Ordinarily, I wouldn't get too exercised over a minor (or
even major) misstatement of fact in these pages. After all, this ain't a
doctoral dissertation and, as velo philosopher Bruce Boyd says, "In cycling,
truth is the first casualty." But, no sooner did I put this report up on the web
than I began getting emails assuring me that Team Bad Boy was, in fact, on the
ride. Or on some ride, one which, if it wasn't exactly RAGBRAI, then went
more or less in the same general direction. One source tells me that the Bad
Boys hosted an off-route party in Reinbeck, just outside of Cedar Falls and that
other off-route party towns like Littleton and Jesup were where the real action
was. All this seems to collaborate what I've thought for some time, that as the
Official Anheuser-Busch Corporate RAGBRAI gets tamer and blander and older,
another unofficial, parallel ride is taking place off-route. More about this
later.
THE WILD MUSTARD AWARD
Some people like to help. Some like to help too much. The
older gentleman on a recumbent whom we encountered one day as my daughter was
making her way through the weeds to the cornfield kybo ,* falls into this latter
category. Seems there were these wild mustard plants (Brassica kaber,
var. pinnatifida for those of you keeping score at home) that she was
walking near, which the older gentleman was convinced were more noxious than
poison ivy or even Hillary Clinton. And so he commenced screaming at her at the
top of his lungs, “Look out! On your left! No, the other left! Look out! Wild
mustard! That stuff’ll raise worse welts on you than being flogged by pirates!
Look out! Wild mustard!” An extensive Google search of wild mustard after I
returned home from the ride revealed no mention of any poisonous
characteristics; on the contrary I learned that, “In Europe, wild mustard is
used as a leafy vegetable, and oil from seeds is used for making soap, cooking
and as a lubricant.” This suggests the plausible explanation that the older
gentleman was simply full of shit, which older gentlemen, especially those
riding recumbents, often are.
*Do you know what I’m
talking about here? Do you know what a kybo is? If you’ve never ridden RAGBRAI
you may not know what any of this is all about. Find out by reading my
2002 Best & Worst of RAGBRAI where I explain, in excruciating detail, the whole
deal. Extra credit is available. See
http://www.rbruhn.net
APOLOGY
Oops. It seems that I have already strayed slightly from my
professed goal of sticking only to the most uplifting aspects of the ride. I
will redouble my efforts to do better.
BEST PASSTHROUGH TOWN
I didn’t ride on the third day from Humboldt to Hampton
because I was arrested by the Humboldt County sheriff on suspicion of drug
smuggling and spent the entire day incarcerated in a small, hot, windowless cell
in the Humboldt County Jail, so I missed riding through Eagle Grove, which, my
daughter and her boyfriend assure me, was the best passthrough town of the
entire ride. Something about a display of custom hotrods as you came into town.
I wouldn’t know.
BEST COUNTY JAIL
When I said I was held in a small, hot, windowless cell in
the Humboldt County Jail, I did not mean any disrespect to the fine jailers at
that exemplary facility. Indeed they offered me a comfortable, air-conditioned
cell of commodious proportions, but I refused their generous offer in favor of a
level of confinement that I felt was more in keeping with the RAGBRAI
experience, which is to say, more like my tent. And in any case, I was released
after just 24 hours when it was determined that Butt Butter was not a controlled
substance. Lucky thing, too, because I had once again begun to fall in love with
my gaolers, Diane, Joan Jennifer, and Jessica.
BEST MARGARITA MACHINE
This is pretty much a no-brainer because probably no one
else on the ride had a margarita machine, and even if they had one it would be
so outclassed by this one that any comparisons would be rendered totally
pointless. I’m speaking, of course, of the mighty gasoline-powered, twin
fishtail-exhaust, motorcycle-outlaw-inspired, purple people-eating, high-revving
margarita-maker-cum-chopped-Harley found only in the campsite of Pork Belly
Ventures. Riders traveling with other charter outfits, eat your heart out.
BEST REARVIEW MIRROR ON A BLENDER, WITH A SHORT,
OFF-TOPIC DISSERTATION ON IRON CROSSES
If you look closely, the rearview mirror can be seen in the
accompanying photo of my daughter piloting the Pork Belly margarita machine.
Again, I suppose that this award is somewhat unnecessary, in that not that many
blenders actually have rearview mirrors. A lot of Harley-Davidson motorcycles
have rearview mirrors, however, and a fair proportion of those have mirrors or
other it
ems—taillights, for example—in the shape of a squarish cross. This type
of cross seems to be all the fashion rage with kids who fancy themselves goths
and with a certain class of quasi-outlaw motorcyclists who are actually lawyers
and architects on a holiday. You sometimes hear this cross referred to as a
Maltese cross, but that’s not what it is; it’s actually a variation of the
cross pattée, sometimes called the iron cross. You can ask a goth or a
motorcyclist why they adorn themselves with iron crosses, but it seems that no
one actually knows, least of all the adornees. I don’t know either. But I do
know that the iron cross was associated with the Crusades of the Teutonic
Knights and that it is presently a symbol used by the Bundeswehr, the
German armed forces. I suppose it isn’t too much of a stretch, then, to imagine
that the appeal of the iron cross for the above-mentioned groups has something
to do with reinforcing their general badass pretensions.
APOLOGY #2
In the case of groups whose badass attitude is not a mere
pretension but a real potential for violence, I apologize for any unintentional
offense my remarks may have caused.
GOOD OVERNIGHT TOWN
I really am trying to make nice here, but just to keep
things in a little perspective I need to remind you of what has become known as
“The Olive-Size Inflation Phenonenon.” You know, that’s what happens when
Starbucks or somebody concludes that “Large” really doesn’t sound large enough
and “Small” sounds too miserly and “Medium” sounds, well, too medium. With
olives it has meant that the smallest olive you can buy is called Enormous.
After that you have Gigantic, Humongous, and The-Old-Elvis-Size. So, in keeping
with this trend, and because I’ve promised to be a kinder and gentler writer,
what I used to call “Worst” has been bumped up to “Good.” I just thought you
should know.
Anyway, the Good Overnight Town award goes to Humboldt, not
because of my unintended stay in their fine penal complex or because there was
anything about the town which would otherwise have kept it from receiving the
Best Overnight Town award, but because of their dubious distinction of being
the first town that I know of that has actually opted for Christmas in July. Now
I know that it was one of the late Republican Congress’s last acts to pass the
Three Seasons Bill, which decreed, among other things, that Christmas officially
begins on July 5th, right after the last house fire caused by an
errant Roman candle is extinguished. (The other two seasons are Spring and Road
Construction.)
And I know that most of you are probably good Christians
and good Americans and that as such, the only thing you love more than George
Bush is shopping. Dubya even told you that the way to support the US economy so
we can go on emptying the Treasury into his little adventure in Iraq is to keep
on shopping. And you responded like the g
ood patriotic citizens you are. Bought
more SUVs. Used more gas. “Live it up, we’ve got a war to fight,” became your
motto. So Christmas for you is the best of both worlds. You can think about God
and Jesus and all your blessings for all of about, oh, three seconds, then
conveniently forget about the war and go to the mall and shop until your credit
card melts.
I regret to say that I’m not with you on this one. I’m not
a Christian and I actually hate shopping. I would rather be almost anyplace (OK,
not in prison) than at one of those Mega Malls of American Monoculture. (How
many different Ann Taylor or Victoria’s Secret stores do you have to rush into
at various malls all across the country before you realize that
they’re all the same?) For me, Christmas is a nightmare, and the idea of a
town actually putting up Christmas decorations in July just plunges me into
despair.
Other than that, Humboldt seemed like a pretty nice town.
BEST CHURCH
Reverend Billy’s Church of Stop Shopping. Never heard of
it? Look it up.
http://www.revbilly.com/
OTHER BEST CHURCH
For someone who’s not a Christian and is more than a little
mystified why anyone at the beginning of the 21st century would still
believe in Fairies in the sky, I do like ecclesiastical architecture. The
Basilica of St. Francis Xavier in Dyersville was
quite the fine neo-gothic pile and I would have gone inside and looked for
relics had it not been for the hordes of sign-carrying parishioners handing out
free water with a little message on each bottle about the Five Big Truths. I
didn’t want to spoil their day by pointing out that if the Five Big Truths were
something they had learned in church then they were almost certainly Five Big
Lies.
BEST RESTAURANT
Alas, I come to my perennial lament, “It wasn’t a very
good year for food on RAGBRAI.” And it wasn’t, but I’ll spare you the
details, in part because I’m trying my damnedest to be a cheerful little camper
and in part because in all likelihood you, as a typical American, don’t give a
fiddler’s fart about food anyway and wouldn’t know it if it jumped up and bit
you in the ass. That happy observation notwithstanding, there were a couple of
bright spots, but I’m really not in the mood for any bright spots just now so
I’m going to move quickly on. Sorry.
GREATEST CULINARY LOSS
Rumor has it that Mr. Porkchop, that premier purveyor of
porcine plentitude is going to hang up the hatchet after this year’s ride. So no
more corncob-smoked pork chops for you. No more the refitted pink school bus
full of corncobs, no more smoldering corncob fires, no more corncob smoke
wafting across the road like the fetching perfume of an ancient Homerian siren,
calling out to riders that plaintive porkchop plainsong,
“Porkchoooooooooooooooooooooooooop!”
Ah, Mr. Porkchop, you will be missed!
[Click
here
to see what the virgins said!]
GOOD RESTAURANT
Sometimes it’s quite amusing, if not downright satisfying,
to watch otherwise normal people go insane. It’s happened more than once over
the years that a clueless small-town restaurant, which might serve, oh, 25
people max on a good night, suddenly finds itself in the middle of RAGBRAI with
out-of-control hordes of ravenous customers jammed in up to the rafters and a
line three deep and two blocks long out the door. Of course, they had been
warned that RAGBRAI was coming. They had been told that they should prepare
themselves for the onslaught. They had been given the numbers. But, you know,
you sit in your little restaurant in your little town day after day, month after
month, and see a few customers dribble in and out and you sort of get it in your
mind that that’s just the way it is and that’s the way it always will be. Sure,
there’ll be a few extra people in town and some of them will probably drop in,
but how bad can it be? Give Hector, the line chef, the night off, he’s
overworked as it is. The busboy calls in sick, so what? Who’s going to bartend?
Let Maria do it, she’s only 18 but she’s a good worker, she can open a few
beers.
And then it happens. One moment there is an small
assortment of sweaty bikers sitting around quietly quaffing a few beers and the
next moment all hell breaks loose and the dining room is packed like sardines
stuffed into a pressure cooker, the air conditioner can’t begin to keep up and
the temperature and humidity are soaring, people are sweating,
pushing, screaming and hollering, the whole place is
gridlocked, the waiters can’t move, the toilet is backed up, the buffet line
looks like was attacked by wild dogs, there’s food on the floor, beer in your
hair, nobody has any idea who has ordered what, much less how much they owe for
it, the telephone is ringing off the hook, the kitchen staff looks
shell-shocked, like they just stepped off Omaha beach, you’re running out of
cold beer, the kitchen door fell off its hinges, poor little Maria looks like
she was hit by a tsunami, and who was the fucking idiot that gave Hector the
night off?
This, more or less, was the scene at Lomita’s Mexican
Restaurant in Humboldt on Monday night. Food wasn’t really all that bad, though,
once we managed to get some of it.
THE BOWDLERIZED RIDE AWARD
Every year it seems like the ride gets tamer and less
interesting. Maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’m tamer and less interesting. Probably
so. Five years of staring at blank prison walls with only occasional breaks for
being threatened with snarling pit bulls will do that to you. But it does seem
that, for RAGBRAI as a whole, the fun factor is being leached out faster than
air from a skinny tire with a pinch flat. Some of the great party animal teams
of the past, like Team Bad Boy, don’t even bother coming anymore. The passels of
gorgeous young nubiles which used to inhabit the roads like schools of spawning
salmon are seen no more. And the ride is graying faster than a double paceline
in a tailwind. The average age of the riders now must be, what, seventy-nine?
The bikes have gotten more expensive and the riders more expansive, as the
waistline of the average rider has shot upward like a 25% grade. Even more
depressing is the fact that some of these people can climb hills faster than I
can. I’m told that in the penultimate town, where the real partying used to
occur, the cops are now shutting down the bars at 9:00 p.m. This, of course, has
just caused the pipes to burst at some other point and now Team Brewhaha issues
a list with off-route places to party down before finally drifting drunkenly
into the overnight town at 2:00 a.m. and sleeping on the sidewalk.
BEST DECORATED KYBOS
In Hartley they decorated the kybos in the city park with
all manner of fooferah. I have no idea what this was all about, but it was a
nice gesture, I guess.
THE KUM & GO* “THERE MUST BE SOME
EROTIC SYMBOLISM HERE SOMEWHERE” A
WARD
I was told that in some passthrough town the favored drink
of the day was a margarita injected directly into your mouth with a
veterinarian’s artificial insemination syringe. Now that’s the spirit that’s
made RAGBRAI great!
*For those of you not familiar with Iowa, Kum & Go is a
chain of convenience stores, not a porn film of the wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am
variety. Pay attention: this may be on the test.
APOLOGY #3
Is it my imagination, or have I strayed once again from the
path of righteousness? Oh, what the hell. I hear Paris Hilton isn’t having such
an easy time keeping her vows either.
BEST CHARTER OUTFIT WITH FIRST CLASS ACCOMODATIONS
The last few times I’ve ridden RAGBRAI I’ve gone with Pork
Belly Ventures, a charter outfit out of Council Bluffs. Even if I hadn’t had my
spiritual re-awakening in prison and become a kinder and gentler person, I could
say without reservation that this is the finest charter outfit on the planet.
Maybe on any planet. Pork Belly now has the biggest charter service on
RAGBRAI, bigger even than the entire ride in some states, about 600 riders. This
means that it has lost a bit of the homespun charm that it used to have when it
was smaller, but this is offset by certain economies and efficiencies of scale
such as Mr. Porkchop’s willingness to come to our camp and cook up some of his
smoky chops just for us, a great Irish band playing only in our campsite, shower
outfits that will set up just for us, our own semi-private lines of kybos, etc.,
etc. Two nights during the week Pork Belly makes free margaritas for everybody
in camp, one night they feed everybody a great free pork rib dinner, one night
you can bring your own meat and they will grill it for you and then furnish free
salads and deserts. They have a free Shower Thingy in camp every night which
consists of a little table with a mirror and 4 faucets and 2 shower wands where
you can shower in ice cold water in plain sight of the whole camp. (Never saw
anybody actually naked using the Shower Thingy, but women will often show up in
bikinis or bikini underwear—it’s hard to tell which.) They have huge fans that
blow cool misted air into the big shady canopies they set up for the riders and
they have a little tower set up which has scores of 120VAC outlets for charging
your various electronic devices, like cell phones, cameras, iPods, Blackberrys,
iPhones, computers, GPS devices, rechargeable dildos and god knows what else.
Pork Belly’s latest twist is Camping First Class, which is a lot like going
first class on the airlines, except that with Pork Belly things run on time and
your luggage doesn’t get lost.
It works like this: they rent you a tent, set it up for you
each night, put your bags inside, and then in the morning you just repack your
bags, leave them in the tent and ride away. Pork Belly takes care of the rest;
they take the tents down, haul them to the next town and set them up again with
your bags inside. The first class section is set up in a strict grid pattern,
always separated from the rest of the campground. That way the people in first
class don’t have to mingle with the hoi polloi, who pitch their tents around the
perimeter of first class like so many peasant hovels around a medieval castle.
A moat full of alligators around First Class would be a nice addition, too, but
apparently no one really thought this thing through to its logical conclusion.
Next year I think they should add to the first class service by having someone
ride your bike for you, too, while you just follow along in an air-conditioned
tour bus. A rider would have your name on his or her jersey so you could see how
you were doing and if you were having any fun. At the end of the ride the bus
would just drop you off at the airp
ort and you could go back home with stories
of all your drunken exploits to tell your friends.
APOLOGY #4
Oops. Sorry. Got a little sarcastic there towards the end
with that moat full of alligators thing. Actually, I should point out what a
great deal First Class is for people who are coming in from distant cities
because it simplifies the whole process so much, saves money on extra baggage
fares on the airlines, not to mention the cost of buying camping equipment in
the first place. Nor are the people in First Class the least bit snooty or
standoffish. Quite the contrary. And Pork Belly doesn’t serve free cocktails in
First Class in the evening, either, rumors to the contrary
notwithstanding—although that wouldn’t be a bad idea. Maybe next year I’ll go
First Class. Make that a Stoli martini, very dry, with three olives.
THE RED LIGHT SPECIAL AWARD
In Rock Rapids the townsfolk work up quite a head of steam
over their self-proclaimed fame as the “City of Murals.” We saw several murals
the evening we were there, and the town’s website shows a total of sixteen
scattered around town. There was one of a horse-drawn wagon and one about a
country vet and one about September 11th. Yet the one that caught my
eye, and most other eyes as well I should imagine, was the one above the liquor
store depicting four “western saloon style” ladies of the night. Again,
according to the city’s website, it has become something of a fashion am
ong the
city’s muralists to depict some of the professions that had been practiced in
the city’s past. And since in the late 1800s Rock Rapids had apparently had a
fine and well-established little whorehouse, one of the muralists, Curt Nelson,
decided to honor its memory. Of course, it’s highly unlikely that the Rock
Rapids hos would have been anywhere near as attractive as those in Curt’s
fevered imagination, or that they would have dressed as if they were making
guest appearances on “Gunsmoke,” or that they would have had expensive silicon
boob jobs. But never mind. History is whatever we imagine it to be. But as the
Bible-thumpers are always asking, What do we say to the children?
THE DEMON RUM AWARD
In this country, our adolescent attitude towards alcohol
(among other things) is simply astounding. When I go to a restaurant that has an
outdoor dining area there are often large signs warning, “NO ALCOHOL BEYOND THIS
POINT!”, as if a half-empty bottle of wine were as dangerous as an envelope full
of anthrax. During RAGBRAI most towns try to contain this menacing threat to the
public weal by fencing off certain areas of the downtown into beer gardens. God
forbid that any alcoholic beverage, even those ubiquitous near-beers Bud and Bud
Light, should escape the confines of the beer garden and spread their deadly
contamination on the streets! The problem is compounded, of course, by the fact
that bars and other establishments are selling alcohol, too, and there’s always
the chance that some of that will find its way into the village at large and
wreak its inevitable ha
voc. In Rock Rapids there was a beer garden, but there
were probably 5,000 people on the streets outside the beer garden with drinks in
their hands. I was one of them. At first, I thought, “How enlightened; here we
are in the ride’s first town and already the city fathers have figured out that
trying to police 25,000 more or less harmless cyclists who just want to wander
around your fair little burg while sucking on a cold one just isn’t a battle
worth fighting.”
And then I saw the cops. Moving through the crowd in pairs,
politely (yes, politely) asking (not telling) people that they had to go into
the beer garden or a bar with their drinks. Riders would greet these requests
with a blank stare, move a couple of inches towards the door of the nearest bar,
and as soon as the cops looked away, return to business as usual. Some people,
who were seated on the curb, just looked at the cops completely
non-comprehendingly and never even moved. The only person I saw actually go into
a bar when told was my daughter, and she was back out on the street almost
immediately because some creepy guys in the bar were hitting on her.
So I have a suggestion for all towns on the RAGBARI route.
Make things easy on yourself. Use your police force wisely. Triage a little.
Lighten up. And do this: just declare the whole town a beer garden. You
can do this; it’s your town. You’ll save yourself a whole lot of trouble, the
riders will be happier and spend even more money on Bud and Bud Light, and
you’ll light a little candle in the darkness of America’s adolescent attitude
towards alcohol.
APOLOGY #5
Well, I just re-read the last two entries and I’m afraid I
sounded a little preachy. Sorry. Didn’t mean to do that. Just got a little
carried away. Every year I do this report it seems that at some point I get into
a big rant about something. Guess that was it. Really, if you like Bud and Bud
Light, who am I to tell you that shouldn’t drink it? It’s not my place to
educate your palate, is it? Maybe you don’t want to be educated. That should be
your right, shouldn’t it? If education’s not your thing, wallow in ignorance.
What business is it of mine? Not everybody has to be a gourmet. If you want to
let some co
rporation with a 500 million dollar advertising budget convince you
that the flavored water that they sell is actually good beer, who am I to point
out that you’re an idiot? I read in the paper today that kids will eat even the
yuckiest vegetables, like broccoli or spinach, if it’s presented to them in a
container with the McDonald’s golden arches on it. That’s the power of
advertising. I’ll bet that if I had a half-billion dollars a year to spend on
advertising a beer that tasted like dishwater, you’d drink that, too, and think
it was the greatest thing since index shifting. And where do I get off telling
you that you’re a fool for being taken in like that and being unable to think
for yourself? It’s none of my beeswax that you’re being brainwashed and loving
every minute of it. Is it? Well, on second thought, maybe it is. That’s the same
brain you used to vote for George W. Bush, wasn’t it?
APOLOGY #6
Uh-oh. I think I need to apologize for that apology. Don’t
know what came over me. Maybe all that waterboarding and those electric shocks
to my genitals while I was in prison really did have an adverse effect on my
attitude. I think I’ll call Paris and see if she’s having similar problems.
A DESPERATE CRY FOR HELP
I called. She is.
But we’ve made a pact with each other. We’re forming a
mutual support group. We’ll help each other overcome our previous destructive
tendencies. She’ll take up her charity work again, I’ll try to accentuate the
positive. She’ll try to keep her panties on, I’ll try not to mention it if she
fails.
Here goes:
A SINCERE ATTEMPT BY THE AUTHOR TO WALK THE FINE LINE
BETWEEN PHILOSOPHICAL AND SAPPY AND BE UPBEAT INTO THE BARGAIN
The more times I ride RAGBRAI (this year was my 11th)
the more I ask myself why normally sane (and mostly overweight) people would
subject themselves to the rigors and uncertainty of riding bicycles across Iowa
in July. Mostly, I wonder why I keep doing it. The short answer, for this
year at least, is that I wanted to share some quality time with my New York
daughter and her boyfriend, and I certainly accomplished that. I can’t thank
them enough for being such great companions. Beyond that, however, the ride was
an awful lot of work. It was pretty hot, though not nearly as hot as some years.
Tent camping can be thought of as fun, I suppose, if your idea of fun is
sleeping on the ground in a few flimsy flaps of nylon in soggy bedding. And then
there’s the pain. Sore butts, aching muscles, sunburn, stiff necks and the
ever-present danger of accidents involving road rash, broken bones or worse. You
meet a lot of great people, of course, but I know a lot of great people at home
and I don’t have to risk melanoma and heat stroke to hang out with them. If
you’ve ever tried explaining RAGBRAI to a non-cyclist and gotten that look of
completely dumbfounded amazement, you have some idea of how the rest of the
civilized, rational world views this activity.
So what is it? Why would 25,000 people, who ordinarily
wouldn’t stray more than a few inches from their air-conditioners and SUVs and
overstuffed chairs and cable TVs and flush toilets, suddenly grab bicycles and
ride 500 miles across the middle of the country in a heat wave? Why would they
give up their cushy middle-class lives to live outdoors for a week and smell
like cavemen?
Well, I’m no sociologist, but my guess is that it has
something to do with the importance of ritual in our lives. Something to do with
the satisfaction one gets from sharing and overcoming hardship, with bonding
experiences. In short, it’s tribal, primeval, genetic. That’s the philosophical
part. On a more down-to-earth level, it’s a party, it’s friendship, it’s
community. It’s all those wonderful, welcoming Iowa towns, the carnival
atmosphere, the suspend-all-the-rules RAGBRAI environment, the freedom from all
of the constraints of ordinary life. It’s a leveling experience, an
attitude-free zone where everybody’s equal and nobody’s more important than
anyone else, where everyone’s facing the same obstacles and overcoming the same
difficulties. And it’s the one time in a cyclist’s life when for an entire week
he/she can be king of the road, when cars are relegated to the status of
second-class transportation and bicycles reign supreme, a time when the bike
rider gets a little unaccustomed respect.
And this makes it all worthwhile.
TOP TEN REASONS LANCE LEFT RAGBRAI EARLY
10. Disheartened after fat guy beat him over hill near
Dyersville.
9. Partied down too hard in off-route bar with Team
Brewhaha.
8. Got lost on century loop, ended up in Kansas.
7. Too much pie.
6. Can’t pee while riding bike, like in Tour de France.
5. Tired of being mistaken for Greg LeMond
4. Chubby Iowa Pork Queens not as pretty as svelte French
girls.
3. Angry because Mr. Porkchop thought he was Posh Spice.
2. Thought John Edwards was trying to steal his thunder.
1. Had to deliver dope to his teammates on the Tour.
APOLOGY #7
DAMN! Just when I thought I was doing better, I go and
insult a national hero. I was just kidding. Really. So, so sorry. Bad joke.
Didn’t mean it. I think I need to go into treatment for Post Traumatic Stress
Disorder. Yeah, that must be it. If only Donald Rumsfeld and Alberto Gonzales
hadn’t lifted those “quaint” restrictions on torture, I’d never have said those
things. I mean, you’ll say anything when somebody is jamming an ice pick under
your toenails, right?
R. Bruhn’s
“Best and Worst of RAGBRAI®
XXXV, 2007”
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Disclaimer
Everything I have written in this report is a lie, including this.
I love the Des Moines Register and read it religiously every day.
I am a closet
conservative and wear argyle socks and women’s underwear.
I am not, and never
was, an aging liberal hippy dipshit with
an attitude problem, so if you’re looking
for the source of my antidisestablishmentarian bias you’ll
have to look somewhere else.
A NOTE ON THE PHOTOGRAPHS
All photographs are used without permission. Sorry. If I made any money off
this deal, you could sue me for copyright infringement,
but I don’t make a dime, so you’re SOL.
I gave credit where I knew it.
If you find a photo of yours on this site
and are seriously offended, let me know and I’ll remove it.
Otherwise, thanks.
This thing is a lot of work to write.
You may quote short passages for purposes of praiseworthy and
fawning reviews, and you may read it quietly in the bathroom to yourself
or aloud to someone you’re trying to seduce,
and you may feel free
to create a link to it on your website.
But if you repeat so much as a word of it without giving me credit,
I’ll sue your ass from here to
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©2007 R.Bruhn
