Hey Rudyard Lynch Stop Manipulating My Friends
My Friend Dave You probably have a friend like Dave. Happy-go-lucky, funny, kind and generous Dave. One day a couple of years ago I ran into Dave at the grocery store and he seemed agitated. He was concerned about something that he really wanted to get off his chest. I paused to listen. “Did you know Biden is spending billions of dollars on immigrants, on people who aren’t even from here!” he blurted out. I was surprised he was putting any of his usually happy thoughts into t
Nov 1824 min read
RAGBRAI Nights 0-7: The Hubba Hubba
We sleep in a 4-year old, 3-pound, 2-person MSR Hubba Hubba tent. The photo above is from when the tent was new, at the festival where we were married. At RAGBRAI 2025, there are at least four other Hubba Hubbas in the Out of State camp, so one of the last things we do as we set up is place our bins strategically — as much to keep people from tripping on the guy lines as to help us find the right tent again after a midnight trip to the portos. No one else has a slow moving
Jul 272 min read
RAGBRAI Day 3: So Much Stuff
Ironically, going to Iowa to ride in a big mobile bike party takes a truck, a trailer, and eight tanks of gas. Before leaving home, you acknowledge your anxiety and ambition and you cram all the portables you think you’ll need — mostly food, housing and bedding — into a bike panier and a bin. You truck your gear and your big solar electric recumbent tandem bike to the starting line. Before you abandon the truck, you bequeath it the big sleeve of sardine tins, the extra batter
Jul 272 min read
RAGBRAI Day 2: The People and Their Bikes
In the flow. Again: wake up early. Strike the tent. Breakfast is two hard boiled eggs and coffee. Saddle up and ride ride ride. We are 20,000 bicyclists riding together. All along the highway we converse with our neighbors—something you can’t do as you travel the highway by car. As people pass us we are treated to a steady stream of compliments: “Cool bike!” “Nice ride!” “Are those solar panels?” The Honey Cycle is a recumbent tandem trike with a solar array on top. Typically
Jul 276 min read
RAGBRAI Day 1: Food Is Life
Speaks for itself, no caption needed. Our bible. Judy and I are reading “Living the Good Life: How to Live Sanely and Simply in a Troubled World” written in 1953 by Helen and Scott Nearing. Judy describes this book, with some reverence, as the original manifesto of the back-to-the-land hippie movement. Chapter 5 opens by posing the question “What is health?” The authors then launch into an excoriating diatribe blasting the food industry for basically poisoning people. And I a
Jul 222 min read
RAGBRAI Day 0: Making History
Welcome home! I wake to a flash of lightning followed by a thunderclap. “We need to pack up the tent before it starts really raining!” Judy springs into action and I groggily follow. As we put the tent away into our big plastic bins the rain starts in earnest and so we don our rain gear and go to find some coffee. We are at the 52nd RAGBRAI, which is an acronym for the “Register’s Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa.” (Register is the name of a newspaper here.) It’s the large
Jul 193 min read
Historical
Images from the Wayne County Historical Museum in Richmond Indiana.
Jul 151 min read
