RAGBRAI 2012: John Karras, ‘Grandpa RAGBRAI,’ accepts thanks (and ribbing)

Tue, Jul 24, 2012 | by Kyle Munson

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STRATFORD, Ia. – When you’re 82 years old and created what has become an Iowa rite of summer, it’s OK to stand in one spot and let the Register’s Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa come to you.

Thus John Karras, who with fellow Register writer Donald Kaul in 1973 co-founded RAGBRAI and popularized the cross-state concept, spent all of Tuesday confined to a mere city block of the route in downtown Stratford.

Karras’ cardiologist kept him at home in Colorado last year, but he returned for this 40th shindig in grand style: a reception line midway along the Karras Loop named in his honor. The extra leg between Dayton and Lehigh pushed Tuesday’s 81-mile route past 100 miles.

Some called him “Grandpa RAGBRAI” as his sweat-drenched and sunburned disciples approached the throne — a lawn chair beneath a blue RAGBRAI tent.

There were elementary school kids and septuagenarians alike. They hailed from Seattle, New York, England, Holland.

Instead of his bicycling legs, Karras’ hands and cheek muscles got a workout from the continual grip and grin. Kaul wasn’t able to return from Michigan this year to help shoulder the rock-star burden.

Riders thanked their idol or ribbed him as they picked up commemorative patches:

“Is this the man whose fault it is?”

“He’s the reason everybody’s legs hurt today.”

“I gotta meet the man — the man, the legend.”

“Thank you for starting this wonderful ride.”

“Nice to know there were other crazy people before me.”

“I just wanted to see if he’s alive.”

“A lot of people are healthier because of you.”

“Everyone takes your name in vain every year.”

“It’s a good thing you’ve done.”

“Thank you for starting this. My wife would say something different, but she’s not around.”

Way back in 1974, Karras wrote that “the difference between being able to ride five miles and 100 miles at a stretch (one day, that is, including rest stops) involves no more than doing it.”

So maybe there was a little karma delivered with the adulation.

“You’re our hero,” a bicyclist said, “even though you made this day real hard.”

Stop blaming him for the route! Karras reiterated that he no longer has anything to do with mapping it.

Part of the inspiration of Karras is that he seized upon his passion and turned it not just into a vocation, but a craze.

“A reader suggests I quit writing about bicycling,” he wrote in 1982. “I’ve tried, God knows, I’ve tried, but some dark, irresistible impulse drives me to it again and again.”

The fruits of that impulse were on full display for a solid seven hours. Karras and his wife, Ann, took their posts not long after 8:30 a.m., with one man already patiently waiting for his patch.

Ann sat beneath the tent, where she guarded the box of 4,000 patches and helped hand out about 3,500 of them to registered riders with wristbands.

“I told John he ought to shave,” she said, shaking her head at his RAGBRAI stubble.

The couple was situated at the south end of the downtown business district, where riders strolled by the food booths along Shakespeare Avenue (this is Stratford, remember). They stopped to see the bicycle bard in front of city hall and the Family Pharmacy as a pair of accordionists serenaded.

Karras’ lean, angular frame was clad in a 1998 RAGBRAI jersey randomly plucked from his duffel bag, plus black biking shorts, white socks and sandals. He kept stamping his left foot to relieve numbness.

Most of the riders were strangers, but not Scott Dickson — one of the handful of bicycling vets to have ridden all 40 RAGBRAIs.

“I thought he was an old guy then,” Dickson riffed, thinking back to 1973. Dickson’s mother used to sew biking shorts for Karras.

Rick Paulos of Cedar Rapids, another all-40-RAGBRAIs guy, also sat down for a chat.

Karras barely had time to pull out his hanky and blow his nose.

“Now it’s getting to be a mob scene,” Ann said shortly after 10 a.m.

“Folks, I have to take a short break,” Karras announced at 11. “My leg is killing me.”

But just a few minutes and swallows of water later, he was back on his feet and out in the sunshine.

Patches and handshakes soon turned into photos, and by 1 p.m. Karras was signing the backs of jerseys.

“So I have one question,” a rider asked. “Why the end of July?”

“It all has to do with when the State Fair starts,” Karras patiently explained for the umpteenth time.

First-timer Mike Hubl from Scottsdale, Ariz., asked whether the last name was pronounced “Kar-ass.”

“I’m going to correct all my buddies,” he promised.

That was funny considering Karras continued to promote his preferred pronunciation of the ride as “rag-bray.”

RAGBRAI “wasn’t supposed to turn into anything,” Karras said between handshakes. But he’s been astonished ever since its inaugural year. Who thought anybody would agree to follow “a couple of wannabe hippies” in the first place?

“It is still nutty,” he said. “Lovely nutty.”

Karras pointed out that he grew up in Cleveland, his co-founder Kaul in Detroit. I suppose it’s appropriate that it was a pair of out-of-state city boys with an outsider’s perspective who established a roving festival to cherish Iowa’s small-town culture.

Karras once wrote that bicycling is an apt metaphor for life: “It is occasionally glorious, often difficult, sometimes maddening, and most often tedious.”

After the glorious tedium of thousands of grateful handshakes and photos, Ann had a request for her lanky husband: “John, I don’t want to hear you say you don’t know anybody on this route now.”

28 minutes of footage from 1974′s Second Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa:

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