Participate in RAGBRAI

I’m registered for the last 2 days – woo hoo!

we met with a client who will not only be participating in RAGBRAI, but riding her bicycle from Washington State to the far reaches of Maine!!! She is newly retired, and makes me feel like the biggest slug on the planet. We’ll call her cell on our pathetic couple of days on the road and try to meet up with her.

This will probably be the year! At last night’s belated Mardi Gras party my hilariously drunk friend Terri spent half the night recruiting and making arrangements for a bunch of us to ride the last 2 days of RAGBRAI together. This is a fun group, and I can’t wait!

to start upping the mileage on the stationary cycle – I found out last night that a friend who moved away several years ago will be doing RAGBRAI with his son, and it would be ever-so-cool to catch them for at least part of that week. He is SO much fun to be around!

RAGBRAI is ending up very nearby; all I need to do is find a group who wants to do a couple of days at the end. My boss said he is, but he always says that, then reneges.

yesterday was a story about how there is a lobby afoot to have next year’s event end in nearby LeClaire. That would be SO awesome! If this happens, I will need to find a way to participate for at least some of the week. The route will be finalized and announced in January.

I just finished a good novel about a guy who rode his bike from Rhode Island to L.A. It kind of gave me a yen, once again, to do this.

Last Saturday Hubby & I went on a 50-mile bike ride. Now that the legs have uncramped, I’m really glad we did it! It was a fundraiser for a hospital in Rock Falls, IL and one of our rest stops was in Tampico, the birthplace of Ronald Regan. Just down the street from that site is Dutch’s Diner, which served each of us a piece of homemade pie (your choice of flavor) that was TO DIE FOR! Great schwag in the packet, too – a Nike bike cap, 2 bags of Jelly Belly Sport Beans, a gel pack, etc.

that’s not happening this year; not even a partial week. :( The week of this event we have an enormous federal estate tax return deadline and appellate brief deadline to deal with in addition to the already onerous workload. The following week I’m taking a little time off, though.

I’ve asked off for the final day, but may even end up doing 3. My boss actually has a posse going, and has arrangements with a financial advisor we work with all the time to stay in her home Wednesday night, since the route passes through Waterloo/Cedar Falls that night. I clearly need to start training on a stationary cycle …

A friend in the local bicycle club said the route will be released this week, and she wants us to join her for at least a day. I am SO there!

The only hitch could be work. I’m an estate planning/administration paralegal and I have several big, nasty estate & inheritance tax returns due the middle/end of July. So my goal is to get those done well in advance so I can be free to do at least a bit of RAGBRAI finally. Lance Armstrong is supposed to be there the entire week this year. And though I hear his voice on my Nike + i-Pod all the time, that’s just not the same as actually meeting him! :)