That afternoon, in camp on a Rugby field under the charter service tarp, they got their first hard news about the two accidents two days earlier at the crack in the center of the road at the bottom of the big hill. Paper carriers were passing out that morning’s edition of The Des Moines Register. Like everyone else, Josh pulled out the RAGBRAI section and threw the rest away.
Two bicyclists on Sunday had been flown by helicopter to a hospital in Sioux City, one at 9:47 a.m., the other at 11:15 a.m. The families of both injured bicyclists requested that details of the injuries not be reported. An adjacent article was headlined “Accidents Underscore Necessity of Helmets.”
The next day, after the first 12 miles, the route turned south, right into a 20 mph head wind. Just as they started ascending the first big hill of a day that the official RAGBRAI guide promised contained over 1,500 feet of climbing. Iowa was flat, unless you were sitting on a bicycle saddle.
Josh stopped at every pass-through town. Ackley. Cleves. Steamboat Rock. Eldora. Gifford. Union. Before he left Union he heard that a bridge near Bangor, the last pass-through town, was out, and that Bangor would be bypassed. So they had twenty-four deserted miles, mostly into the 20 mph wind, before reaching Marshalltown, the day’s destination.
Shortly after he got up that morning, he discovered his legs hadn’t recovered like they had after the first and second days. Escaping from the masses the day before had cost him. Yes, he always was stiff while walking in the morning, heading for his dawn whiz in a K.Y.B.O., taking down his tent, throwing his gear in the charter service truck. But in the prior three mornings his legs loosened up once he got on his bike. This morning they didn’t. And as the day wore on, heading into the wind and climbing the hills, the distinction between his walking legs and biking legs began breaking down. His biking legs started to become unreliable, too.
He pulled into the Iowa Department of Natural Resources rest stop, at the top of a treeless hill in front of a rotting chicken coop in the middle of nowhere. Ostensibly to mail the proffered free Visit Iowa! postcard. The wind blew him off his bike the first time he tried to remount.
Even without the assistance of the wind he fell off his bike when, five miles later after smelling corn cob coals and grilling chops, he pulled into a sheltering copse of trees next to the pink Mr. Pork Chop trailer, also in the middle of nowhere. After listening to forty-five minutes of stories about the worst wind day ever in the history of the RAGBRAI, Josh got back in his saddle for a short two mile ride into the wind before the route turned to the east. As he approached the intersection where the route took its last jog to the south, Josh heard the sputtering backfire of the 1914 churning engine of Beckman’s Homemade Ice Cream’s, looked up, saw their trailer, and turned in.
He fell off his bike again. Someone asked if he was okay, and Josh said “Sure.” A minute later he stood up, walked up to the trailer, and ordered a double scoop vanilla ice cream cone.
He sat on a plastic lawn chair next to a local farmer talking about the coyotes who recently invaded central Iowa. He heard little. Instead he heard Alicia’s phone call two weeks earlier.
“Josh, you can’t do this by yourself! Are you out of your mind? Sean says you can’t even walk three city blocks before you start tripping.”
“Four city blocks.”
“Three city blocks, four city blocks. What’s the difference? You can’t do this!”
Josh was going to prove her wrong. He finished his cone and got back on his bike.
After erecting his tent on the broad grounds of the Veteran’s home in Marshalltown, Josh walked to the bus stop for the shuttle that went to the showers at the Junior High School. Where his legs failed and he collapsed. Ten minutes later the bus arrived. Josh stood up and tripped on all the steps as he entered.
“Tough day?” a pretty, slightly obese Marshalltown greeter sitting behind the bus driver asked.
“We biked into the wind all day.”
“So there’s others who also can no longer walk?”
“I would think so,” he said with a weary smile.
When he returned to camp from his shower, the Des Moines Register provided Josh with more details of the accidents in the crack at the bottom of the big hill.
The rider medevaced to Sioux City at 9:47 a.m. belonged to a bike club out of Virginia. They were drafting, five bikes in a row, each within inches of each other, with the soon to be heliported rider in the lead, when his front tire went into the crack and they all went down, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. A physician who was a member of the club, though he broke his hip, had the presence to look at the other club members to see if they were okay. Their lead rider wasn’t. His pupils were as big as quarters, one looking up, the other looking down. The physician dragged himself to his friend, and prevented him from choking on his vomit, until the medical response team arrived.
The second biker, medevaced to Sioux City at 11:15 a.m., was riding all by himself. When he hit the crack, there was no one beside him who recognized the incipient signs of brain damage, and he asphyxiated on his regurgitated breakfast. RAGBRAI officials identified him by the number on his rider wrist band, and called the person he listed as his emergency contact on his RAGBRAI registration form. His emergency contact - his former girlfriend - arrived in Sioux City at six on Tuesday morning - two hours after he died.
Josh went to bed early, making no attempt to even check out downtown Marshalltown. He was too tired. The extra rest only marginally helped. In the morning his legs were still wobbly and weak when he got on his bike.
One hour into the ride the steady rain began. Not a downpour but a persistent dribble that soaked his jersey and penetrated the chamois of his bicycling shorts. His progress turned into a tedious slog. The minutes and hours expanded, giving him plenty of time to think about his uncertain legs and whether they’d be able to propel him to the end of the day.
The route finally turned into a cluster of buildings along a railroad track, consisting of an old general store with a corrugated aluminum awning pinging in the rain, a dark red brick feed mill, two steel grain bins, a small restaurant, and a couple of Victorian houses. Josh got in the line for the restaurant, and twenty minutes later was able to sit down at a table with a bunch of strangers and drink hot coffee.
The rain was only a drizzle by the time he got out, and a mist after he waited in the K.Y.B.O. line and expelled his first cup of coffee. When he got back on his bike his rear tire still threw a grimy stripe up against his back, but the rest of his jersey started drying out. The clouds started to thin, and the seventy-five minute layover seemed to have revitalized his legs. Josh biked with increasing confidence. Two hours later, as he entered Newhall at a nice clip, Josh extended his right arm and slapped the hand of one of the high school cheerleaders on the side of the road welcoming the riders into town. He was over the hump.
At 9:30 a.m. the next day, Friday, in Olin, a meeting town, Josh caught up with Ted, the man who invited Josh to dinner the first day and who Josh had joined for dinner every day since. Meeting towns were towns midway through a day’s ride where the routes of the support vehicles and riders intersected. A thin drizzle had returned, and they stood under a tarp in the small square where Olin’s food venders had erected their stands. Parked across the street was the purple converted school bus of Team Booze Hounds. They watched hung-over team members retrieve their bikes from the rack installed on the top of the bus.
“It’s easy to party at night,” Josh said, “when you know if you party too hard you can skip the first half of the next day’s ride.”
“You’re gonna try to stay up tonight yourself, right?” Ted said.
“Maybe.”
“I think probably. I see how you look at the pretty girls. It’s your last chance to meet one. I bet you’re nursing a heartbreak. You just don’t want to admit it.”
Josh smiled and didn’t answer.
Ted slapped Josh on the back. “I hope I see you for dinner in Maquoketa anyway. It’ll be my last chance to talk to you. I’ve got to get back to Chicago by noon tomorrow. So I can’t bike the final day.”
“I’ll wait for you in camp,” Josh said.
Ted shook his head. “I start out at 5, you get on your bike at 6, and still you catch up with me at the halfway mark. I’d like to know why you push yourself so hard that you stumble around in camp.”
Josh just smiled.
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