Ragbrai Week

     The acronym, RAGBRAI, first appeared in print in the Sunday Register's Iowa Living section on Jan. 5, 1975, in a brief story I wrote announcing that The Register had decided to sponsor another cross-Iowa bicycle ride, the third annual.
     The acronym came about this way. The first ride was called simply the Great Six-Day Bicycle Ride Across Iowa. All of us assumed at the time that the first ride also would be the last. How wrong we were. Popular sentiment -- in the form of a flood of mail to The Register -- demanded at least a second ride, which was called the Second Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa, or SAGBRAI. Again, the public response called for another and it became obvious by the third year that the event was going to have a much longer life than any of us had expected. This raised the prospect of a TAGBRAI and even a NAGBRAI.
     Something, obviously, had to be done. So I determined to make up an acronym that could go the distance, whatever that distance turned out to be, by simply tacking Roman numerals on it in each succeeding year. Further, as noted in the introduction to this book, I wanted it to be so long and ludicrous that everyone would think of it as a good-natured joke (which didn't work, alas, people took it seriously).
     And finally, Michael Gartner, then the editor of the Register and Tribune Company, suggested (actually, he told me to), "Get The Register's name in it, for crying out loud." He might not have said, "for crying out loud," which I did.
     The result in 1975 was the title we've used ever since: RAGBRAI (the Register's Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa) with a Roman numeral.



John Karras and Ann Karras, Ragbrai: Everyone Pronounces It Wrong

This Week in Iowa Nature

July heat triggers the hatching of millions of short-lived mayflies along the Mississippi; their remains often have to be shoveled from streets and sidewalks in Dubuque and other river towns.

Jean C. Prior and James Sandrock, The Iowa Nature Calendar

Connie Mutel Interview: Part 2

Given the rainfall and snowfall in 2010, climate change in the Midwest and across the nation and world seems to be intensifying. What’s your opinion?

Research clearly shows that climate change is now affecting us and that we are changing farming and other activities as a result. Iowa is growing warmer and wetter—with temperature increases especially in winter and at night and rises in soil moisture, atmospheric humidity, precipitation (particularly in the first half of the year), and heavy precipitation events being especially great. Floods now rise faster and higher than they did in the past, with climate change and landscape alteration both factoring in. Climate change is not the sole cause of today’s floods, not at all. But it confounds today’s floods and increases environmental and water stresses. Without taking many more steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, even as we adapt to future changes, I feel that our future is indeed grim.

You have made tons of presentations in the wake of A Watershed Year’s publication. What’s been the most common question?

People want to know why we are not more energetically adopting solutions for environmental problems such as flooding and climate change. Why do many politicians, decision-makers, and business owners refuse to consider that these problems are indeed intensifying and may well challenge the integrity of future lives and our planet in a major way? How can we come together to work energetically on solutions?

Tell us about your current projects.

This last winter, I helped put together a report on the impacts of climate change on Iowa (http://www.iowadnr.gov/iccac/files/executivesummary.pdf). I’m now working to complete another book, a scientific biography that’s been in the works for many years. I’d then like to do more writing about our coalescing environmental dilemmas, perhaps something on climate change in the Midwest. We’ll see.

—Cornelia F. Mutel, editor, A Watershed Year: Anatomy of the Iowa Floods of 2008