Big Rick Stuart from Napa Valley To The World: Land Shark! Our Team Name, and "Hey Your Voice Sounds Familiar..." My First RAGBRAI A Bicycle Ride Across Iowa

Sunday, August 6, 2017

Land Shark! Our Team Name, and "Hey Your Voice Sounds Familiar..." My First RAGBRAI A Bicycle Ride Across Iowa

With my bike assembled and me as ready as I'd be I found myself at Landsmeer golf club in Orange City, Iowa (population 6,004) ready to spend the night with about 1,500 campers that were using Pork Belly Ventures as our guide service for RAGBRAI 2017.

About 10,000 people officially sign up but estimates are add another unofficial 5,000 or more to the number of participants in the Register's Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa. The ride goes west to east and most people I met had done this many times. I had not. Everything was new to me. The ride, the towns, the cornfields, Iowa, the midwest, yep everything.

read my 1st post about the prep and arrival A Nightmare and Windmills here

Why do it? Well it was a personal challenge to see if I could do it. 5 or more years ago I probably couldn't have come close. More than that everything I read about RAGBRAI sounded great. People loved it and came back year after year to do it. There was a famous Elvis Presley hits collection from his early days called "50,000 Elvis Fans Can't Be Wrong." I applied this mass appeal theory and thought 15,000 RAGBRAI fans can't be wrong. And also "what the heck?!" That's kind of how I decide to do things :)

My longtime friend and riding buddy Pete decided to do his first RABGRAI as well. We weren't an official team but he came up with a good name for us. "Team Couldn't Have Done This 6 Months Ago."

While Peter finished getting his bike together I was sitting around in the shade relaxing. A woman walked by with her bike, a very unique Land Shark hand built bicycle from Oregon builder John Slawta who also paints them to be very distinctive. They really are a work of art.

from LandSharkBicycles.com

I chatted with her a little and said my friend John has one. Just like John she loved her bike. We asked where each other was from (a common question on RAGBRAI) and she was from Sonoma. I mentioned I lived in the Bay Area for a long time and now live in the Napa Valley. We wished each other well on the ride.

Then a few minutes later a couple came up and said "hey your voice sounds familiar"

What? No way a Big Rick listener way out here in Iowa? Well it turned out that Steve and Clare had listened to me for a long time. In fact we had met before at boating events in Alameda at the Encinal Yacht Club for the Wheelchair Regatta (a day trip for Veterans where boaters take them out on the bay) and more. So we talked some boating, fishing, and bicycles for bit. They still live in Alameda and were looking forward to the ride. It was great to meet them and it definitely helped me feel welcomed to this crazy week.

Steve, Clare, and Big Rick in Orange City, Iowa

Pete got his bike together and we found our tents. So we decided to go to downtown Orange City and check out the opening day Bike Expo. Wow.

Orange City, Iowa is named for the Dutch that settled there. They are famous for the annual Tulip Festival in May. It is a really pretty town and the park at the center of it all is filled with flowers and windmills.

For the Saturday Bike Expo to celebrate the kick off of RAGBRAI it was also packed with people, music, food trucks, popups selling all kinds of bicycle related goodies from jerseys to socks and if you forgot something no worry the many bike shops probably had what you would need as well as mechanics to lend a hand. Bases all covered.

"A group of rowdy ladies who like to RIDE and have FUN!"

In bicycle speak to ride a big gear means you are fast. The Big Gear Girls team were about 1/2 my size and 2x as fast. They had some cool clothes.

I bought a few things in town, had a big smoothie for dinner, and scored some great items from Woudstra’s Meat Market. Mmm great jerky and beef sticks!