RAGBRAI 2012: Team Monkey House from California

Harcourt, Ia. (Day 3) — At the start of RAGBRAI XL‘s third day I stumbled onto Team Monkey House from Malibu, Calif., along the side of the road.

I dropped into the route at Harcourt, where Steven Fox and his 8-year-old son, Liam, also were climbing onto their bike — an adaptive German tandem complete with pedal straps for Liam (who copes with cerebral palsy) and an intercom system so that Fox can more easily answer all his son’s curious questions about their wacky fellow riders and the Iowa landscape.

“If it’s a race, it would be cheating,” Fox explained to Liam about why it was OK to start the day in Harcourt. “If it’s a ride, it’s not.”

Family Fox rides as Team Monkey House — because it’s a raucous family of three boys, with Liam’s siblings ages 10 and 4. It was either that, Fox said, or Team Mongol Horde.

Dad had a parting suggestion for me, too: Why not just go ahead, make it formal and rename the ride RAGPIE: The Register’s Annual Great Pie Iowa Expedition?

Good point. Although I suppose a Mongol horde name would work for this ride, too.

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