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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


Meet the Honeycycle!
Here's a quick view of the Honeycycle at our campsite in Taughannock Falls State Park.
May 281 min read


Choc Climatique
Dear Family, Friends, Campmates, and Free Spirits, It is with sorrow and finality that Radar and I have decided we cannot go to Burning...
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Who Wants to Bike to Burning Man with Us?
Hey Makers! Let's Lower Carbon Emissions by Riding Our Solar-Powered Cross-Country Bicycles to Burning Man This Year. by Laurence...
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A Concentration of Misery
by Laurence Clarkberg As if in a dream I am lying on a bed in a dimly lit hallway. Several of my various body parts are in agony. My eyes...
Sep 3, 202317 min read


F*uck Yer Burn
When people ask, How was Burning Man? I usually just say Hot and dusty, unless I think they want more. On the way in, people who wanted...
Sep 26, 20225 min read


The Big Burn
RhythmWave is a dance camp and we danced everyday. We danced the nap dance of the bowls and gongs, the yoga dance of the bodhisattvas and...
Sep 19, 20222 min read


Sky Bums
by Laurence Clarkberg I am sitting on a narrow hard bench facing the rear of a small plane. The drone of the twin engines bleeds into my...
Aug 15, 202219 min read


A Strange Way
I promised Park Police Officer Terry Fee that I would write a letter to both New York State Governor, Kathy Hochul, and the Commissioner...
Aug 1, 20225 min read


Is this a Rose or is it not a Rose
What makes Burning Man events the transformative experiences that they are? When default world people talk about Burning Man events, they...
Jun 20, 20222 min read


Welcome to Wheels of Fire
We release these our wobbly words into the elusive electronic ether. Is anyone listening? We are two playful ebike experimenters living a...
Jun 14, 20221 min read
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