Opinion: What it's like to ride RAGBRAI, from Freddy Krueger to hours of exhilaration

RAGBRAI is the equivalent of running across alligator backs to cross a swamp. It's exhilarating, demanding, provocative and inspiring. Twenty thousand loose cannons, lone wolves, hard cases and cold cases gather at the Missouri River. Then it's a contest within — we all push on one-seater, two-seater, three- and four-seat bikes and some inventions that have wheels, chains and pain. It's a wheel, chain and pain pump across Iowa. The Munsters and Elvis have done the tour.

Bike Iowa. None greater, none older, none as true to childhood's dream.

On a Saturday morning in 2010 my brother and I drove to the Dubuque bowling alley to meet our bus.

In Sioux City, I walked from our tent to the Missouri River and I stood awestruck, feeling the weight of a full moon on the muddy river, falling into the west. The future lay 442 miles across Iowa.

The hills out of Sioux City were rolling conduits of air. We entered Storm Lake as close to dead last as imaginable. It was beginning to seem a lot like hell.

"Well, hey, Tim! Good ride!"

Why was this more like a Freddy Krueger night scene than the wonder of western Iowa hills and sweet breezes across the miracles of golden, tasseled corn?

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On Monday we rode to Algona. Early morning silence, birds' song, bikers zipping tent flaps, coughs and quiet laughter, the struggle of joy. Then 59 miles to Clear Lake. The holy font now, Buddy Holly's last song.

Sometime in the early summer morning as the lightning-jagged sky opened into a clearing, my brother kicked his soaked feet under the sleeping bag in Clear Lake.

"I quit!"

After the long ride, temperatures similar to Venusian surface temps, relief had come.

"Yeah, you didn't exercise."

Everything improved now. There were hours of exhilaration.

It was that being alive that Joseph Campbell suggested, the thing that mattered, something in this distance becoming sacred.

Mine was one of a few mountain bikes, not like the sleek, needle-thin, moon-alloyed bikes bought for thousands of dollars. But life blood flowed vigorously, nirvana sang its hearty hymns to me. I lost track of time, tragedy, society.

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Wednesday was a great one. I left the tent behind, free water accompanied the road, the FFA offered bananas, there was a shower at the high school, food and rest; a friend lent an inch-thick foam sheet, and a tree overhead gave me shade. The 100-degree temps receded into conversation.

Maybe this was heaven. I was first to the truck at Charles City that morning.

I lost the rear brake in Rockford. I didn't care. One brake, two good legs.

I heard the rock song by Canned Heat — goin' up the country, baby don't you want to go? … I'm gonna leave the city, got to get away.

Vendors, smells of pancakes, coffee, earth, culvert water, sweat and pine trees. And the water brought thoughts back into the brains of dehydrated bikers.

In Parkersburg I lost the front brake. The repairman lifted my Rocinante to his stand, turned a screw, slipped a line and spun the tires then dropped the bike.

"No charge."

Free Gatorade after Hudson.

My hands were hurting, light headed, no tent, no sleeping bag. Talk grew about a coming storm. I walked to the truck that carried my duffel.

An elder pointed to a space of crumbling asphalt under his semi.

"Sleep under the truck."

There I slept for three, four hours, then was second in line that cool morning, then I broke into the two-lane, headed home.

Smells of cotton candy and gyros drifted.

I meandered till I hit the road but found an early coffee and a roll. The finish line seemed clearer.

The morning sky brought rain in hard slashing turns. Stones kicked up from the roadside.

Finally, fists against the rain, then Manchester in the sunshine.

In the end, I crawled up Potter Hill. Of a hundred riders, I was one of 10 who climbed on their bikes.

I saw the fields, listened to crows and crossed into the land of spirits and dreams. Born for glory. The Mississippi River obliged, the morning's last gleaming brought a twinkle to my eye and a tear. I did it.

Tim Trenkle is a northeast Iowa writer.

This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Opinion: What it's like to ride RAGBRAI, from hell to heaven