RAGBRAI started as a search for stories. Now, a founder’s daughter returns to find her own.

Rachel Kaul isn’t sure exactly what drew her father to cycling.

Sometimes the most obvious reality can be the hardest to see in all its detail, and Don Kaul and biking were like fish and water — one almost couldn’t function without the other.

He loved the physical aspect of riding; the air filling his lungs and his heart pumping. Biking made him feel more alive, he wrote. He enjoyed getting away by bicycle, too, bonding with his closest friends atop two wheels.

And, Rachel thinks, he was attracted to the focus that biking required, especially biking through Washington, D.C. Kaul, the Register's star columnist, wrote five or six pieces a week. He was cerebral, often lost in thought. But keeping your balance on two wheels — and avoiding cabs, people and other literal and metaphorical potholes — required a specific kind of concentration that got him out of his head and into his body. Present. Here. Now.

“What Salvation has done for Billy Graham, what Positive Thinking has done for Norman Vincent Peale, what George McGovern did for Richard Nixon — biking has done for me,” Don once wrote.

But Rachel has no doubts as to why her father cherished RAGBRAI, the now 50-year strong, cross-Iowa bike ride and extravaganza that grew from a friendly challenge with his colleague, John Karras, to ride across the state.

On RAGBRAI, Kaul loved the stories. Hearing them. Telling them. Writing them.

A 30-year columnist, Don’s entire adult life was dedicated to the pursuit of story. He chased fires as a young breaking news reporter and set his fair share of linguistic ones with his “Over the Coffee” column.

He loved talking to people, plain and simple, says Rachel. In photos she’s seen of him working, he’s literally leaning in a lot of times. Almost like he’s physically drawn to the tale, making sure to not miss a word.

That image of her dad, truly enrapt by a well-told story, was in Rachel’s mind when — against her better judgment, she jokes — she brought up riding RAGBRAI this summer to a few friends.

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She hadn’t ridden a bike seriously in 20 years, and she completed her last RAGBRAI 40 years ago. But when her dad died of cancer in 2018, so many of the memories, so much of her dad’s legacy, was wrapped up in this ride.

So she decided to ride one last time, as a way to honor her dad — but also to hear stories about him while there’s still an understanding of who he and Karras were.

“I am very aware of the fact that with dad and John now both having passed, that the relevance of them will just naturally fade,” she says. People know John and Don now, especially with this year’s history focus, but in 5 years, 10 years, the stories about them won’t be as visceral. They won’t come as quickly.

Not that she’s upset or offended. It’s time’s nature to march forward, bumping the past further from the spotlight of today.

But even as specifics are pushed to memory's edges, there’s a heart to the ride that she hopes stays core: That RAGBRAI, no matter how big it gets, has always been about friendships — whether just made or long held — and about space. The space to share, to appreciate, to mourn and to be present. Here. Now.

“You read the forums and there's a lot of comments on how it should be done and how it shouldn't be done,” she says. “And it's like, stop. The whole point is to get on your bike and go.”

Just ride, her father would have said, maybe with a bit more colorful language. Because RAGBRAI's true joy is often in all the moments between what’s planned.

RAGBRAI: A rite of passage and a collective history

With her dad writing nearly a column a day, the Kaul children didn’t grow up like lots of other families, Rachel says.

Dad couldn’t make it to a lot of soccer games. They didn’t go on many family vacations, certainly not like how people do nowadays. The newspaper was a beast that was always hungry.

Instead, they were a household of small-scale experiences: A day trip to the Eastern Shore for biking. An afternoon spent listening to music of all kinds: The Rolling Stones and opera and blues and jazz.

“And he let me put on a Donna Summer album every now and then,” Rachel says.

There were beloved family dinners where the lively conversation was as important as the food. Conversations, Rachel adds, where your status as “kid” had no bearing; Kaul adored hearing about his children’s interests, relished their budding personalities.

“We loved movies. We got to go to the theater. We listened to all kinds of music,” Rachel says. “There wasn’t one way to be, which was nice for us.”

And, of course, there was RAGBRAI. Going on RAGBRAI with Dad was a rite of passage in the Kaul family, and Rachel got her chance when her older brother, Chris, couldn’t go in 1979.

Rachel was an active kid. She rode her bike everywhere — she was, after all, Don Kaul’s kid.

But in the confines of RAGBRAI — where everybody knew her dad — “it was the first time as a little kid I was sort of just unleashed.”

“There's no cellphones, but my dad's Don Kaul. So I can take off and ride all day, and all I have to do is roll into town and ask, ‘Has anybody seen Don Kaul?’” she says. “And I’d find him.”

“He knew that, too. So if there's anything going wrong, or if I needed something, it wouldn’t take long for him to connect with me.”

As the baby of the family — she had an older sister, Leslie, in addition to Chris — RAGBRAI was a time for just her and her dad to be together. Even if she was sharing him with thousands of fans and if they weren’t literally next to each other all day, just riding the ride — which she did with him four times total — gave them a collective history.

And the stories gained on those trips were ones they brought up over and over again: Remember that time it rained? That night it was so hot? That pie that blew our minds? That story? Or that one? Or how about this one?

Or even the quieter moments, the small-scale ones, like when there was a beastly headwind on her first RAGBRAI. Rachel, then 13, was by herself, silently sobbing under her big Bell helmet because the afternoon sun was beating down on her like a cudgel and she still had 20 miles to the overnight town.

Her dad had already made it to town, no doubt under deadline to file his column. But someone found him and let him know Rachel was still out on the route: I think I rode past your kid, and I don't think she's doing OK.

“I'm looking up the road and way, way up ahead I see a cyclist coming in my direction,” she says. “I realized it was my dad. He came back, got in front of me and let me draft.

“And, together, we just rode in.”

Finding space for the joy of adventure

Rachel Kaul hadn’t been on a bike in 20 years when she started training for RAGBRAI.

After her first outing a year and a half ago to test-ride a few frames, she turned to her partner and said: When did I forget that bike riding is supposed to be fun?

“When you let it be fun, biking is so much fun” she says. “And that's the spirit I want to bring to this: It's supposed to be fun.”

Whimsy has always been a key component behind RAGBRAI, says Harry Smith, a former Iowan and longtime NBC News journalist. At its inception, the whole endeavor seemed like the best kind of Kaul column, just “ridiculous and brilliant.”

“I think at the end of the day, the notion of riding a bike from one river to another river, it’s insanity, but it’s also beautiful,” he says. “In its own way, it’s about whimsy, for which so few of us have time anymore.”

Even though Rachel is bringing 20 of her closest friends, she’s a little apprehensive about returning to the route without her dad.

The process of remembrance makes grief and celebration strange bedfellows, she knows. So she’s giving herself permission to “feel all the feelings.”

And she’s trying to keep the heart of the ride close as she prepares. Her Team Legacy jersey is emblazoned with a reminder of the two-wheeled bonding her dad loved: “Kaul & Karras: The friendship that founded the phenomenon.”

“For me, it's been important to let go of all the things that prevent you from just experiencing the joy of what you're trying to do, the joy of the adventure itself,” she says.

“Let go of all the unknowns and all the what ifs. That’s when the adventure starts.”

Just ride, she keeps telling herself.

And never, ever miss a chance for a story. Funny ones. Exciting ones. Hard ones. Ridiculous and beautiful ones.

Stories her father would have leaned in to hear, not wanting to miss a word.

Register reporter Philip Joens contributed to this article.

COURTNEY CROWDER, the Register's Iowa Columnist, traverses the state's 99 counties telling Iowans' stories. She co-directed, "Shift: The RAGBRAI Documentary," which will air on July 25 on Iowa PBS. You can reach her at (515) 284-8360 or ccrowder@dmreg.com. Follow her on Twitter @courtneycare.

This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Honoring RAGBRAI founder: Don Kaul's daughter returns, seeking stories