Family reunites so dad, 87, can take one more bike trip

Bob Buzzell, 55, front, and his father, Lee Buzzell, 87, will embark on RAGBRAI on their tandem bike. (Special to the Register)

So the Buzzells are typically low-key about mastering the Register’s Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa, although father Lee Buzzell is 87 and will ride a tandem bicycle with his son Bob, who was inspired to ramp up his riding after nearly getting his leg shot off in a hunting accident.

They will rejoin forces for the Sunday though July 30 RAGBRAI after a 15-year layoff.

“I really probably wouldn’t have gone, but (his sons) said it would be my last shot at it,” said Lee, of Bettendorf, who was born in 1924.

He’s among eight riders older than 82. Over the last 38 RAGBRAIs, some have even ridden the nation’s largest touring event into their 90s, ride officials say.

Lee has been riding bikes since he was 8, but would never consider riding all that way until his family talked him into it in the late 1970s.

His son Bob, now 55, was hunting pheasants in 1973 and had his right calf muscles shot in an accident. Doctors were ready to amputate when they decided to try to save his lower leg by cutting off most of the muscles and sewing the skin together.

It looked bad.

“We called it the Great Lakes scar because it looked like a map of the Great Lakes,” said brother Tom, 46, of Peoria, Ill., who will ride with Lee, Bob, David (another brother) and three others.

“Initially, I couldn’t move my toes up and down,” said Bob, a trucker who lives 45 miles east of the Quad Cities. “But by the next year I was on a $150 bike and rode 8,000 miles and got into racing.”

The family of eight siblings wanted to support his efforts as his remaining calf muscle grew while riding with a stiff right ankle. Two sisters agreed to join him on the 1975 RAGBRAI, the event’s third ride that stopped in mostly small towns and was just gaining widespread popularity.

Other family members, including his father Lee, joined him on later RAGBRAIs. Lee did six but stopped 15 years ago. Bob’s last was in 1983.

“My three kids are all grown up now and I can do things I couldn’t do before,” Bob said.

They tried to talk their father into a reunion RAGBRAI last year, but he was still weak from colon cancer treatments. This year Lee agreed to take the back seat on the tandem with Bob.

“That’s why I agreed to go,” said Lee, who fought in World War II. “I can take it easy.”

The best part, he said, is “just being with the gang.”

He scoffs at the ride’s difficulty. He’s been riding bikes for 79 years, and snapped off a 50-mile training ride in early July like nobody’s business.

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