RASH Ride and Stiff Ride Are My Favorite Rides!

Captions: 1. On left, Jim Conzemius; on right, Maria Conzemius on High Trestle Trail near Madrid, IA. 2. Elderly gentleman, a regular at Mudder's Bar in Minburn, IA. 3. Dave Wedemeyer, a.k.a. Hacky the Jedi, of Team Stiff. He sells patches by wearing them on the ride and selling them for $5 apiece. Great guy and strong rider. 4. Jim and Shirley Rosendaal in Independence, IA. Jim said Rosendaal means "Rose in the Valley" in Dutch.

After bicycling around eastern Iowa and training for RAGBRAI, the RASH Ride out of Independence and the Stiff Ride in the hilly Sutliff area are definitely my favorites. Mind you, my body struggled with the heat, humidity, and the hills, but I wasn’t jockeying with 2,700 aggressive, often rude riders on a narrow, problematic patch of Raccoon River Trail like I was on the Baccoon Ride. (Jim, my husband, who had two close calls with Baccoon riders who wouldn’t yield, eventually he crashed. He said, "We're not going on this ride again." I agreed.)

Riding on open roads, even up steep hills in the heat on the Stiff Ride, felt like freedom.

I have to admit though, by the time I reached Baxa’s Bar and Grill in Sutliff, I was so hot and tired I was unable to find the words “gin and tonic.” All I could do was give the ingredients: “gin, tonic, and lime.”

“We don’t have that,” the young waitress said kindly. “How about a lime-flavored margarita?”

I accepted her offer, and she brought me a margarita in a small bottle with a plastic cup with ice. It was okay, but for the life of me I can’t understand why Baxa’s doesn’t have a fully stocked bar. If Odie’s in Ely and little hole-in-the-wall bars like Mudder's can serve gin-and-tonics, why the hell can’t Baxa’s?

What makes the RASH and the Stiff Rides a lot of fun is that you’re traveling with riders who seem to want to have fun and mingle with their fellow riders. The tallest and the fastest rider of the Lizard Kings came up beside me with music blaring near Sutliff. He smiled, nodded, and the rest of the Lizard Kings followed, turned right at the paved road leading to the restored bridge over the Cedar River, and I made his acquaintance at Baxa's. His name is Derek Altenberg ("German," he explained.) I told him I'm part German too.

When my husband and I showed up for the breakfast before the RASH Ride in Independence, Iowa, I got my breakfast and walked over to eat with the Rosendaals. Jim Rosendaal said he was waiting for me and had my card in his pocket. I was stunned. He and his wife were lovely and interesting companions. Jim said that he quit being a Republican after Reagan. That, of course, was music to my ears.

At Mudder’s bar on the Baccoon Ride, I talked to a few people at the bar about how rude some of the Baccoon riders were, and a biking couple sitting near us vigorously joined in with a tale of how an adult male rider threw trash at a young boy monitoring the intersections.

According to the couple, the rider said, “Here, throw my trash away for me.”

No “please” or “thank you.” Not too many Baccoon riders said, "on your left" when passing, either. Some did. I was grateful for those who were courteous and avoided potential accidents, but too many didn't.

Jim went to work the Monday after crashing on the Baccoon Ride with a big, bruised swelling on his left cheek and a black eye. His coworkers joked that I must have hit him with a right cross. So did the MelonHeads over a week later. Jim really got banged up. He twisted his arm, hurt his wrist, bloodied his thumb, and got a huge bruise on his thigh.

“But your bike’s okay, right?” Gordy Goldsmith joked with Jim later when he saw his face.

Jim and Gordy have known each other for 40 years since Jim was an orderly in Urology at University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics on 5 SE and Gordy was one of the urologists, now retired. They're both bicyclists.

Jim, by some logic I don’t understand, but Gordy did, sacrificed his body to protect his bike as soon as he realized he was going down. Sure, Jim's bike is a LaPierre, but a bike can be fixed and repainted. Brain surgery is a little tougher. Fortunately, Jim was wearing his helmet. He's still got a big lump on his cheek though.

The accident bent his brake lever sideways, but Geoff’s Bike Shop fixed that.

Jim, my personal trainer for RAGBRAI, has yielded nothing to his injuries in the way of his personal training. He still does his push-ups every morning, rides his bike to work every day unless it’s pouring down rain when he’s about to leave, which is rare. He won’t let me let up much on my training either, even though I pulled a big left shoulder muscle on the Stiff Ride and reinflamed my tennis elbow climbing all those big hills between Sutliff and Ely. He gave me Sunday off after we rode Friday and Saturday, but that’s about it.

I’m glad the temperatures have moderated, however briefly. It’s nice to turn the air conditioning off and enjoy a cool breeze while I’m writing – not bicycling, but writing and taking my ease. And I just finished a gin-and-tonic. If I pace myself, I might just have another later. Wouldn't it be nice if the temperatures were this moderate on RAGBRAI? It could happen. We've been on cold, rainy RAGBRAIs. On the other hand, the road could melt in real temperatures of 104 degrees, like it did one year some time ago.

I thought people were kidding about the road melting until I saw tar all over someone's bike and then saw a strong young 20-year-old at a first-aid tent with wet towels on his shoulders and his hand in a bucket of ice water. He didn't have anything to say for about half an hour. He had heat prostration.