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Health & Fitness

MelonHeads Ride the Amy Meyers Memorial Bike Ride in Muscatine, Support Gilda's Club

Our RAGBRAI team and favorite bike club, the MelonHeads of Muscatine and Iowa City, rode the 6th Annual Amy Meyers Memorial Bike Ride around Muscatine Saturday, Sept. 28, 2013, to remember Amy Meyers, a gregarious and caring Muscatine schoolteacher and Muscatine Journal columnist who died tragically young of cancer at 40, and to support what we hope will be a Muscatine chapter of Gilda's Club, named after comic actress Gilda Radner of Saturday Night Live. Her husband, actor Gene Wilder; her psychotherapist, Joanna Bull; and Gilda's friends founded the organization to support men, women, and children with cancer, in memory of Gilda, who died of ovarian cancer.

My husband Jim didn't tell me that the ride started with a steep ascent to the top of a hill rising out of the Mississippi River basin after we parked in Riverside Park. I'm glad he didn't. The shock of waking up at 5:00 a.m. was plenty, and my body responded by going back to sleep until 6:00 a.m. while Jim showered and dressed.

Cursing all the way, I got on my bike at the Riverside Park on the Mississippi River and ascended an impossibly long and steep hill in one go. I couldn't believe it. When we arrived at Mike's Hilltop Bar, I said I wasn't sure if I should pay for the ride or if they should pay me for ascending that steep riverside hill. It was a cheap ride, really, at $5 a person. I was so happy that I did it in one angry go that I would have paid more, really, if I could have found the person who plotted the route and kicked him or her into the middle of next week.

But alas, Amy's family was there. Somber and suddenly saddened, I realized that I no longer wanted to kick anyone except maybe the muscular guy I saw in the crowd whose T-shirt said, "I'm open to all suggestions, as long as the suggestions are mine." 

I didn't want him, but I did want his T-shirt in a smaller size.

Tom Hammer, our MelonHead consultant, formerly a vice president of something or other at Hon Industries, managed to pose us so often for photographs that I forgot to take any of my own. Then other people wanted to take group photos of us, which irritated me so much I continued to forget to take any photos of my own. Of course, I was still sound asleep.

Brian Bentley, a kindly MelonHead whose presence and good stories I've missed for some time, bought me a gin-and-tonic, and that went down so well that I ordered another at Pete's, the next bar.

Alas! All they had was Mike's hard lemonade.

My husband, who has an annoying habit of being right far too often to suit, told me to nurse the lemonade because it's surprisingly strong, turned out to be right. I thought I'd "nursed" it, but apparently I hadn't. I felt Melonhead Bendar, a.k.a. Dave Bender, gently helping me on my bicycle as I struggled to stay upright long enough to reach the next bar, which was fortunately not too far off. It was raining though, and I was riding in traffic. 

At the next bar I shared a maid-right with Jim. The maid-right was made with a surprising combination of mustard, mayo, and pickle, no ketchup, which was amazingly good. I like ketchup a lot, but the maid-right was better without. I believe the Meyers family provided the maid-rights, although we paid for them and thereby contributed to the cause of Gilda's Club.

We met two of MelonHead Brian Bentley's children, Adrian, his daughter who is a nurse at University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics, and his only son, a graduate student, at the Missipi Brew, deliberately misspelled for reasons that remain a mystery to me.

The MelonHeads have supported the Brew so enthusiastically with their frequent attendance that Dave Armstrong, who owns the Brew, has supported the MelonHeads. He also sponsored Amy's Ride. I met him at Pete's Bar and saw him again at the Brew. All the bars chipped in.

The Missipi Brew appears on the MelonHeads' pink, black, and green jerseys. Erudite RAGBRAI-ers proud of their ability to spell long words have often approached us to point out the misspelling, but we didn't name the bar. Dave Armstrong or his predecessor did when the bar was established in 1980. We just support Armstrong's spirits and food. Take a look at our group photo and I believe you'll have to agree that at least a few of us have had more than our share.

Only I have a watermelon helmet, but various MelonHeads took turns trying it on at the Brew yesterday.  Ginny, a MelonHead of the female persuasion liked it, but it was too big for her. It fit all of the MelonHead men except for Jim and Tom Hammer. Sadly, I bought it from Nutcase brand helmets on line (it's not custom made) about five years ago, and I'm not sure they still sell the watermelon pattern. I've seen a few of them over the years. I saw a toddler in a baby bicycle buggy in downtown Iowa City wearing one in a tiny size. I saw two or three children and adults, mostly adults, wearing them on RAGBRAI, but MelonHead helmets seem to be a rare commodity.

Nutcase helmets now come in a literal grey matter pattern, which is in keeping with their "I love my brain" campaign, printed on the inside padding of every Nutcase helmet, but grey matter is a little too graphic for the average biker.

After I saw half of the Amy Meyers Memorial Bike Ride bicyclists riding without helmets on steep downhills with innumerable cracks and ruts in the roads, I told an elderly man at the American Legion bar we stopped at, "Our next benefit event will be for those rehabbing from serious brain injuries."

The hearts of the Muscatine river rats are definitely in the right place, but their roads are even worse than Iowa City's.

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