Our vacation in Iowa

'I remember when I was 10 and RAGBRAI came through Houghton. I hopped onto my little one speed bike and I rode 1 mile with RAGBRAI – as far as my little legs could carry me - and I said, when I grow up I am going to do that,” Wendy Fedler reminisces.

When she was 19, she and her sister bought some cheap hybrids and rode RAGBRAI.

'It is a different experience at 19, when you can do anything, than when you are in your 30s,” Wendy said.

She wanted to do it again, but was in college, and it was hard to afford a good bike. Also, she didn't know anyone on a team. In 2013, the Fedlers had some friends at their church in Des Moines, co-owners of Team Kamikazi, who connected the Fedlers with their team. Wendy was ready to ride, but her husband Clint was not into biking at the time. He had wrecked one and never wanted to be on another one; he rode the bus most of the week.

She kept telling him he just needed to experience it. By the end of the week, a teammate was willing to make a loaner out of his extra hybrid when Clint was ready to ride part of the route.

'So I did a day and a half that week on a borrowed hybrid and enjoyed it,” he said.

The Fedlers came back for another ride in 2015. In 2016, they had just purchased co-ownership of the 20-year-old Kamikazi Team when, during the ride, Wendy received word she was the final candidate for the position of academic advisor at the University of the Virgin Islands on Saint Croix. They had a short window of time in which to make their decision to move.

Team Kamikazi is like a second family. They stay in touch and take care of each other. For them, it is all or nothing. There is the co-owner who is stateside and stores the bus on his property. The Fedlers can come back like they did in May for a week to try to hammer out a bunch of work on it. Another friend stores all the RAGBRAI stuff including the Fedlers' bikes in her basement all year long. They train on a couple of hybrids down on the island so it's great coming back here on their road bikes because they feel like they are flying.

Wendy keeps the active team roster of participants from year to year. They have a core of about 15-20 riders who return every year. Friends of team members can swell the team to 30 or more. One fellow, when stationed in Germany, flew back to ride. They like the stories of people they get to know in the small towns in Iowa. One year, Wendy had the unforgettable opportunity to ride several miles in conversation with two nuns. To add to the fun, this year, two island friends came up.

'Day one was pretty rainy so some of us skipped the first half of day one. Our team is very low pressure, so if you're not feeling well one day, you [don't have to ride]. Sunday morning was a little rough, but the rest of the week has been beautiful.”

Their bus driver has gained a lot of experience and can handle just about anything now. He's on the quest for the most level piece of real estate he can find to park the bus.

One of the big stressors every year is finding the host houses for such a large team to come at night time. They work on this collaboratively supplying names of those they all know in each location; and Wendy coordinates all the logistics whether will actually be able to camp there. 'This is probably our biggest year in terms of people riding, and on any given night, we have about 30 people on our team. It's hard to find a yard big enough to host the 15-20 tents we have to set up, so we really lucked out with this historical house location on South Main Street in Fairfield. We're blessed to be at the [James F. Clarke House].”

Most people ask, 'Why aren't you out on a beach?” Clint and Wendy let them know they already live on a beach. They vacation in Iowa.

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The James F. Clarke House was built for the man bearing its name in 1916 by Francis Barry Byrne, a student of Frank Lloyd Wright. According to the National Register of Historic Places, Clarke was one of the first people in the county to own an automobile, and his house had one of the first attached garages.