I hopped on a bike the other day and rode 25 miles almost nonstop—the longest distance I’ve cycled in many years. (My family celebrated Independence Day on Washington Island, Wisconsin, where shady, blacktopped roads, views of Lake Michigan, and minimal inclines make cycling extra fun.) I was with my adult children, and at times zoomed out ahead of them.
I zoomed ahead because I was on an e-bike. In Turbo mode, I could do 20 mph without breaking a sweat.
In the 1990s, when I was in my 40s, RAGBRAI overnighted in Winterset. Avid cycling friends from Fairfield, Iowa, in whose home I had stayed when I taught quilting for the Fairfield Quilt Guild, were looking for a place to park their RV. Team Moby’s vintage, off-white Airstream spent a late July night in my yard, and I caught the biking bug.
I rode parts of RAGBRAI with Team Moby three consecutive years. My Winterset friend Jan caught the biking bug too, and the two of us cycled from Venice to Florence, Italy, to celebrate my fiftieth birthday. Later on, after I remarried, my husband and I biked the Bay of Galway in Ireland, biked across England (the narrowest part), and toured Provence, France, twice, on bikes.
I tried an e-bike a couple of years ago when I was in Europe. The river boat tour I was on offered an excursion that would take the cycling party along the banks of the Danube, across the river into Austria to enjoy an Austrian beer, and back over to the German side. I was nervous because hadn’t been on a bike in such a long time, but—yippee!—my dormant cycling skills woke right up.
This past week, as I biked across Washington Island with my kids, I changed gears fluidly, maintained a nice, smooth cadence, and called “car up,” just like I did on RAGBRAI in years past. It’s no wonder, really, considering the hundreds of miles I’ve biked over the years. When I hop on, my arms and legs know what to do.
Considering the hundreds of yards of thread I’ve run through a needle during my career as a quilter, it’s also no wonder that when I sit down at my sewing machine, my hands and foot-pedal foot also know what to do, even if I haven’t sewn for a while.
I’m pretty good at the type of arithmetic it takes to draft quilt blocks and estimate yardage, but figuring out which is greater, my biking miles or my thread miles, is beyond me.
RAGBRAI overnights again this year in Winterset. I have my own TREK e-bike, my RAGBRAI day-pass, and a new helmet. Two of my Chicago kids are driving over, and we aim to ride the Winterset-Knoxville leg (75 miles, 3041 feet of elevation).
*RAGBRAI, for my non-Iowa readers, is short for the Register’s Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa. “Register” refers to the Des Moines Register newspaper, instigator of the first ride back in 1973. The event takes place every July and travels a different west-east route each year. It’s is the largest non-competitive bike-touring event in the world.
I’m a proud member of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative, a group of journalists and authors writing from and about the great state of Iowa. Access all of us here.
Ride on!