RAGBRAI in Homestead (An Amana Village)

If Billy could ride a bike.....he would do RAGBRAI.....so when RAGBRAI stopped in the Amana Colonies for its second visit, Billy requested that he be front and center.

I store the Hummer in a secret place in the town of Homestead, so early this morning I proceed to the storage garage and it fires to life even though it has not been driven for awhile. You see the Hummer is thirsty and unless Billy needs to go somewhere or there is a lot of snow cover, it just hibernates most of the time. (I actually have been thinking of pawning my blackberry for gas money) I'm off to Middle Amana and the second story walk-up to gather Billy the lung and the backup power supply and before we know it we are back in Homestead to see a good number of this years RAGBRAI participants stream into town.

For the blogies from outside of Iowa who are not familiar with RAGBRAI , please point your browser to here.

There used to be a lot of party people on RAGBRAI ....but nowadays it seems like a bike ride
to the church picnic. Gone are the naked beer slides and people riding au natural....at least thats what I heard. Naked Gun still rides RAGBRAI, having done so for 33 times. Some of those times he was wearing his signature slingshot.


A phone call to him today confirmed what I thought...no more slingshot. Just like everything else, things are never the same as the old days.

However, the beer drinking continues and I shot a few pics to evidence that.

It appears that virgins are a rare commodity as I only spotted one in the whole group.


This whole party for the RAGBRAI people was chaired by Tony of AJ's Copper Garden. He's the one in the muscle shirt.

Anyway, today, Billy lived vicariously through the whole event naked in his iron lung and no one was the wiser.

LA Times

Billy likes the LA Times and will often spend hours perusing same. Click on this link and see what he is reading.

Class Act

The smokeout at Daniel Arthurs got my mug shot on the front page of the Gazette. Todd Sabin saw my picture and that jogged his memory about something he had found a few years back.


It all sort of went down something like this:

The day after the picture appeared, my phone rang and a gentleman identified himself as Todd Sabin. He said I may or may not know him, but that we had mutual friends and he had something of mine that he thought I would want back. My curiosity was peaked but he would not give me any hints. Instead he suggested that the next time I was to venture to CR (thats what the locals call Cedar Rapids) that we should meet and he would have a 5 minute story to tell me and then cough up the goods.

A few days later a meeting was arranged and he proceeds to tell me that he had worked for Richard Pinney, the now deceased Cedar Rapids artist and he thought that I had commissioned him to do a personal sculpture. I acknowledged that was in fact correct and almost immediately I said "my class ring" and he reached into his pocket and produced the little gem.

You see it was all part of the "junkue" that was submitted to Pinney so that he could configure a collection of my life up the that date. I suspect based on the used ticket stub for a Kreskin appearance that it was the very late 70s or early 80s.

Obviously my class ring had not made the cut for the piece of art. What did make it though were items like an Amana beer can, unpaid parking tickets most likely issued at my personal parking space at the Flame Room, frown buttons and ironically a cigar. Obviously, Mr. Pinney did not return the ring when he returned the rest of the rejected media. I remember at the time, thinking that I had given him the class ring, but was not sure. For the next 29 years I have not thought about it.

Enter Todd Sabin who was hired to do some demolition work at the old Pinney residence after his death. Todd tells of running a bobcat clearing the area where once the Pinney studio had been and seeing a shiny article in the dirt. He gets off the machine and sees its a ring. He sees the initials B E and Amana and 1966 and he deduces that its mine.

What are the odds? Anyone want to go steady?

Great Flood Video

Billy's Godmother, Carol just sent us this great video and Billy insisted I share with all you all. Just in Time for the Fourth. God Bless America. God Bless Iowa and Cedar Rapids.

Smokum if you got them

Yesterday was the final day you could legally smoke indoors in public and Bob Bruce was broadcasting from the Six Foot Under Lounge at Daniel Arthurs. Right there is the making for a blog.

I usually don't smoke, but decided it was a happening and therefore opted to attend.

Billy has two heroes in life. One is Brian Kilmeade from Fox News and the other is Bob Bruce. When Billy's neck is strained from watching the boob tube he takes solace in just laying there beside his transistor AM radio. I swear the dial is permanently stuck on 600. Billy is a P-1 and when he heard that Bob Bruce of the BBRE was doing a remote, he insisted I drag (no pun intended) him along.

We showed up at about the same time as the press and I quickly found a spot for him on the open air patio out of the way of the busy wait staff and haze of the cigar smoke. The Six Foot Under Lounge was humming due to the deft hands of Erika and Heather. They were cranking out martinis and other potables as fast as they could.

The co-owners were kept busy. Dan was doing interviews and I caught Lori in the middle of a delivery.


Some of the Ex Club wags were there as well. Pete, Bernie, Gary,...but no Puzzler. The Puzzler was offered a spot near Billy but then he might have been exposed to daylight which is something he fears. There is a reason why Billy calls him the Puzzler.

Billy was able to meet Abby who he has only heard about in the past. Abby is Bob's call screener and hopefully she is able to weed out the prank calls and keep the show moving smoothly. Billy asked me to give Abby one of his calling cards and I so obliged.

Courtney, the Gazette photographer who is a pleasant upgrade from Lorraine was there along with crews from KCRG and other stations. Somehow my mug made it to the front page of my morning friend.

It was fun while it lasted but I believe it will be more fun after today. Billy can breathe a little easier...actually we all will.