I completed my first bicycle tour at the end of July.

Since arriving in Steamboat last fall, our town’s cycling scene has dominated much of my coverage as the Outdoors and Sports reporter here at the Steamboat Pilot & Today. The more I dove into it, the more intrigued I became.

However, long-distance cycling was never my sport. The greatest distance I pedaled in a day growing up was no more than 15 miles. As a Chicago-suburbanite, I played baseball and football like everyone else, and cycling was just a mode of transportation or a Sunday family activity.

My family history centers around the state of Iowa. It was my dad’s boyhood home and where we would go every holiday season to visit my grandparents, aunts and uncles. I was always eager to make the six-hour trek from Chicago to Des Moines, gather around the dining room table, sit on my grandfather’s lap and play cribbage — a popular card game throughout the Midwest.

In the years since the pandemic, graduating from college, my parents’ divorce, mental health struggles, my grandparents’ passing and moving across the country for work, Iowa has stood as a steadfast constant amid much turmoil.

Furthermore, the Hawkeye State has quite a few unique ways of bringing people together, and one of those just happens to be a bike tour.

Each year, bicyclists from across the country and globe flock to Iowa and ride 400-plus miles over the course of a week from the Missouri River to the Mississippi River. Known as RAGBRAI — the Des Moines Register’s Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa — it’s a rolling party of 40,000 riders who traverse the state, going from town to town, drinking beer, eating pork chops and pushing as hard as they can through 95-degree days with 90% humidity caused by the rolling cornfields themselves — a phenomenon called corn sweat (look it up!).

I first heard about RAGBRAI through my uncle, who for a number of years has been a leader for a team of adolescents and young teen riders who annually partake. He, along with a plethora of coaches, mentors and support staff, ensures with surgical precision that riders are awakened, fed and ready to go each dawn. He and the crew do the heavy lifting so the riders can focus on biking.

My uncle and I were conversing over the prior holidays and comparing the cycling scenes of Steamboat and Iowa when it struck me that RAGBRAI was something I should do. The event’s genesis occurred back in 1973 as a newspaper article. Lo and behold, years later I found myself serving as a burgeoning reporter at a newspaper.

So beginning in February, I bought a cheap road bike and some clearance cycling gear, and on the weekends — if I had time — I cycled some of the paved roads around Steamboat. Perhaps unsurprisingly to local cyclists, it may have been better to buy a gravel bike or mountain bike, because I grew bored and unmotivated with the minimal pavement in our area.

I only logged around 400 training miles, and my longest ride was just 30 miles. In fact, I actually didn’t bike at all in the three weeks leading up to the ride. However, my hubris told me I would be fine.

My hubris was dead wrong.

But it was not the 60- to 90-mile days, or the 4,000 daily feet of climbing that tested me. It was the loneliness and lack of camaraderie.

As the days wore on, cyclists tended to spread out like an accordion, and for much of the ride I found myself in no-man’s-land. My world was reduced to a 15-foot bubble, and the only things to think about were the heat, humidity, pain, hunger or thirst. It was a suffer-fest, not because I couldn’t physically do it, but because I had to be alone with my uncomfortable thoughts.

Each second alone felt like an hour, and my brain was screaming at me to give up. Headphones to drown out negative thoughts were frowned upon for safety reasons.

But I made one rule for myself. It was to complete every day fully on the bike — unless I was severely injured — and under no other circumstances use the supply-and-gear wagons to shuttle me to the next town.

Occasionally, I would catch up to a rider and spark a conversation. We’d chat, which helped the time pass, and motivate each other. But I was on a mission to complete the whole ride, while it seemed that many others were on a quest for beer.

However, amid some desolate hours, I was able to share some amazing moments with my family — and some complete strangers.

On the evening of Day 1, I walked across the campground with shaky legs and found my uncle. He gave me a great big bear hug, and I felt the weight of the day fall from my shoulders.

Churches and community centers in the host towns served up pounds of pasta. We took our heaping plates of noodles, sauce and cheese and sat next to complete strangers at long fold-up tables. Of the people I met, one was attempting his 43rd RAGBRAI, another his 16th, and many were first-timers like me. We talked, comparing notes on the day while recovering next to massive blowers and air-conditioning units. At times the food would blow right off our plates — we didn’t care.

My dad met me in Dyersville, at the conclusion of Day 6, where “Field of Dreams” was filmed. We drove out to the movie set, and with the backdrop of the iconic cornfield and white farmhouse, we played catch as Kevin Costner’s character Ray Kinsella did with his father at the film’s end. My smile grew with each toss, with the words “If you build it, he will come” repeating in my head.

The tradition goes that each biker dips their rear tire in the Missouri River and front tire in the Mississippi River. My dad met me at the beginning and the end, and we were able to share the moments when I walked in and out of the rivers and hoisted my bike above my head.

Once the ride was complete, I found myself smiling — but yet surprised that I didn’t feel a more complete sense of accomplishment.

As I was just about to head home from Des Moines, I made a wrong turn that took me past the cemetery where my grandparents are buried. It had been a few years since I’d been there, and I realized it was only fitting that I visit their grave.

I sat down in the grass at the foot of their headstone, and it was there that I finally felt my journey was complete. The weight of seven days of emotion hit me and helped me understand that RAGBRAI is not just about cycling. It’s about bringing people together and connecting with loved ones, both here and gone.

It’s why each year’s RAGBRAI opens with a mile of silence, honoring those who’ve perished on bicycle rides past.

The bond between father and son is magical, and my dad says next year he’d like to ride RAGBRAI with me. I can’t wait to share that experience with him.

As for now, I’m going to ice my aches and pains, tell the ones closest to me how much I love them and slowly ease back into work — while already eagerly awaiting my next tour.

P.S. — Thank you Aunt Karen and Uncle Darwin for your support, care and for always playing cribbage with me.