Cycling 2008

I'm really getting excited about some bike rides I'm doing this year. Last year I did a few days of BRAN and some charity rides and fun rides. This year I'm taking more of a social approach to cycling. I'm a pretty quiet guy so socializing is not one of my strong suits. When I have something in common with people I usually am pretty talkative. So as potential social cyclist I aim to create some new friendships and expand current ones. Nebraska is not known for its cycling. If you look online for bike rides you won't find more than a dozen rides. So this year I am crossing the river into Iowa. With the popularity of RAGBRAI, Iowa has become a very cycling friendly state. Iowa has a lot of paved rural roads with minimal traffic. It's the perfect setting for a Saturday training ride or a for an organized ride.
I am planning on doing the first few days of RAGBRAI, as well as some party rides, and charity rides. I will always do the charity rides because they are for good causes. The party rides are going to be a new thing for me. I have to admit, for someone that likes beer, I never liked the thought of mixing cycling and beer. I look at cycling as a way to loose weight. So to think about drinking and eating before, during, and or after is not something I can easily get through my head. It's like going to the gym to lift weights and bringing a cooler of beers or a bottle of tequila. It's just not the norm. This of course is coming from someone that has not experienced RAGBRAI and all it's drunken splendor. I had a chance to go with a team last year and turned it down because I didn't see the point. As I've aged I don't like to party like I used to and mixing it with any exercise usually doesn't turn out well. I did a fun ride last year (42 miles with hills) hung over with about 5 hours sleep. It was not pretty. About 3 miles into it I had to find a porta pot to drop a deuce. Then the hangover hung over me like a ton of bricks. So that was probably the worst ride I've ever done. So to think about drinking and biking for a week does not appeal to me. So I'm going to start slow and ease my way into it. There a ride in Iowa about a month before RAGBRAI that is a bar hopping party ride, except that the bars are all in different towns. It sounds like fun....right? I'm still not sold on the idea but I'm willing to try it.
Aside from the party rides and multi-day rides I'm focusing heavily on the fun rides. Most of these will be unorganized fun rides. I'm going to to put word out to our group of cycling friends that my wife and I are going to have a standing Saturday ride From April until October. We'll be there at 8am and if you want to join us feel free to meet us and come along. We'll go 22 miles to a small town to have breakfast and then bike back. As the summer goes on we may extend the mileage or maybe not. We figured this is a good way to get the weekend started. We may not always be able to make it but we plan to try to make it as much as possible.
I'm also looking at mixing it up a little and doing a few other Saturday rides. There is a ride I've been wanting to do on the Loess Hills Scenic Byway. I'll start in Belleve, NE and cut over to Iowa and then ride down to Hamburg, IA and cross the state line into Missouri. 3 states in one day is not bad. It's 50 miles one way, so I it could be a century ride if I get real ambitious. One of the other rides is on the MoPac Trail east out of Lincoln, NE. It's a rail trail that goes 22 miles east of Lincoln and ends in a little town called Wabash. So I plan to start about 9 miles north and take gravel roads to Wabash and then on into Lincoln for lunch and then head back. I'll get my money's worth out of my cyclocross bike this year. The last ride that I'd like to do is on the Cowboy Trail, the nations longest rail trail. Currently it spans 143 miles from Norfolk, NE to Ainsworth, NE. In time it will go over 320 miles across the north edge of Nebraska. So my plan would be to go about 70 miles to O'Neill, NE and spend the night and go back to Norfolk. If I had some vacation to spare I could take two days to go the 143 miles and then another 2 days to come back. That might be for another year though.
So with all these cycling plans I can't wait to start riding outside again. I have to get through my half marathon training first. I can't wait for it to be over.

The Dude