Leaving meth behind for RAGBRAI

John Schuler embarked on his first RAGBRAI this week pulling a red bicycle trailer that carried his 6-year-old daughter, Kaitlynn.

Dad and daughter rode the Tuesday and Wednesday legs of RAGBRAI as “the Schuler Brats” team — as in a light, self-deprecating joke about how they were a couple of ill-mannered children, not bratwurst sausages.

Schuler, 37, who lives in Laurens, Ia., said that when it came to his accumulated bicycle miles this year he “trained a little bit, but not with the weight.”

The pair rolled into Wednesday’s midway town, Slater, with Schuler panting in the heat. He might have been pedaling along with a total of about 100 extra pounds. But in truth he was carrying much heavier baggage on his inaugural RAGBRAI trek than any of his fellow riders could see.

“It’s a release for me, kind of proving to myself that I can — I can do it,” Schuler said of riding RAGBRAI.

Laurens moved to Iowa from southern California a few years ago after a fast slide into full-blown meth addiction.

“I’m a pretty level-headed person, but that doesn’t mean nothing,” he said of how his life unraveled in less than two years.

Schuler’s broader backstory is a complicated tangle of painful memories, family dysfunction and his own mistakes that he now wants to own up to as a sober, spiritual man. He said that when it came to meth and other drugs he “grew up around that with my parents since I was a little guy.”

Despite the cautionary example of his own childhood Schuler still succumbed and took his first taste of meth in November 2004.

“I was basically hook, line and sinker,” he said. “I wanted it no matter what.”

All the sadder, Kaitlynn was less than a year old at the time.

Schuler was born and raised in southern California but moved back to his grandparents’ and father’s hometown, Laurens, to clean up. And he stayed clean for about six months before slipping back into addiction in Iowa. Then he was arrested March 2010 in Pocahontas County and eventually convicted of possession.

“That was basically a very good thing for me because I hit rock bottom,” he said of his month in jail. “(Meth has) taken away my child, my wife, my home, my everything.”

So the Schuler Brats’ struggle up the hills this week on RAGBRAI is symbolic of how they strive to regain family normalcy.

Schuler caught wind of this oldest and longest bicycle touring ride in the nation last year when he and his father handed out free water during RAGBRAI in Pocahontas.

He also previously challenged himself by running a 5K in Pocahontas — even though Schuler continues to smoke a pack of cigarettes per day. (During his two days riding RAGBRAI, though, he’s indulged in only a couple of cigs.)

Schuler rebuilt transmissions for 18 years and now works as a machinist in Laurens. He and Kaitlynn’s mother, he said, are in the process of divorcing.

Meanwhile, Kaitlynn enters first grade this fall in Laurens. And her dad is thinking about how he might try to talk to audiences of schoolkids and other groups to give speeches to warn against addiction. He feels driven to spread the word.

With a long road still ahead, the Schulers headed off to the local swimming pool Wednesday to cool off — pools rating as Kaitlynn’s favorite part of RAGBRAI. She’s attracted a fair amount of attention from the other bikers on the road.

“Know what?” she beamed. “Somebody thought I was cute, and they gave me a bracelet.”

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