May 15, 2013

Karras: Ready to RIDE RAGBRAI Again?

As the Register’s Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa looms in the near distance, two notions and a question scurry about in my mind. The question, of course, is whether I’ll finally get my legs back under me enough to get back into the fray.

May 21, 2012

Clarence Pickard’s Ladies Schwinn

John Karras rolled down memory lane in his article "Thoughts from Grampa RAGBRAI". Most of the article centered on the iconic Clarence Pickard and his amazing feat. John recalled the "clunky" green and white ladies bike that Pickard purchased just two weeks before the ride.

May 17, 2012

Thoughts from Grampa RAGBRAI

Updates from John Karras, RAGBRAI Co-Founder... With RAGBRAI XL (that’s 40, to you non-Roman-numeraly hip dudes) looming ever closer, an unwanted fact keeps bonking around in the back of my mind: That fact is that I am one year younger than Clarence Pickard was in 1973, when Donald Kaul and I launched this general silliness.

May 04, 2009

Remembering Clarence Pickard

It is most fitting that RAGBRAI finally is going to spend a night in Indianola. The town was the home for many years of Clarence Pickard, who, in the short space of a week on the first RAGBRAI rode his bike across the state the last week of August in 1973 and inspired the masses to follow his feat.