Eastern Iowan bicyclists share health journeys

We cast a net over social media for bicyclists, and were overwhelmed by the response of people willing to share their cycling experiences. Here are three snapshots of riding for different reasons, with a common thread toward staying healthy.

Down and back up

Lisa Mormann of Dyersville is pedaling to maintain, not gain.

“I have a neuromuscular condition. The muscle I have today is all I’ll ever have,” she said. So when her doctor suggested she take up bicycling, she listened.

“Today I can walk maybe a mile but ride 100,” she said.

Her condition is Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease, or CMT, also termed hereditary motor and sensory neuropathy. According to mayoclinic.org, the condition causes nerve damage in arms and legs, as well as foot deformities, and “results in smaller, weaker muscles.” Those afflicted “may also experience loss of sensation and muscle contractions, and difficulty walking.”

“There’s a lot of challenges I had to overcome. Basically, I deal with numbness and neuropathy every day,” she said. “For me, it affects my whole body, but mainly knee-down and elbow-down. You learn to cope with it. You learn to deal with it. You learn to deal with the discomfort and you keep on moving forward.”

Turning 50 in August, she’s lived with CMT her whole life.

“I’m told I fell a lot as a child. I couldn’t walk,” she said. “But then I was in corrective shoes well into middle school, when I refused to wear them.”

She was being treated at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics in Iowa City at the time, and her parents were told she would have to deal with the condition later in life.

Around age 20 or 21, she began developing a lot of pain and dropping things, so she went back to Iowa City for treatment. She had seven surgeries in the late 1990s, up to 2001, and used braces up to her knees to walk. Because she had gained weight, her mobility was suffering, so her neurologist suggested she take up swimming or cycling.

“That was July 5, 2001. That day I went to the bike shop (in Dubuque) and got a bike,” she said. “That July I rode the last three days of RAGBRAI and never looked back.”

When she was road riding, she would log 8,500 to 9,000 miles a year. Now that she’s added gravel- and fat tire riding, she doesn’t rack up as many miles, since the riding is more time-consuming. But she still put 100 miles on her road bike on a recent Saturday, and was looking forward to a group ride of 25 to 30 miles on gravel after work the next week.

She rides every day, and will ride as many days as she’s able on the Register’s Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa this year, marking either her 21st or 22nd time.

As much as she enjoys the social aspects of the group settings, she also loves the peace and tranquillity of riding solo on gravel roads. But that path hasn’t always been smooth. Sept. 20, 2020, she was riding on an unmaintained road, with disastrous results.

“(I) hit a spillway at 22 miles an hour and lost control. Shattered my pelvis, shattered my tailbone, broke my back, broke my leg, broke my arm, my wrist and had a concussion. I broke basically the whole right side of my body.”

Three children who were fishing saw the crash and came to her aid, but being in shock, she got back on her bike and pedaled another half mile to the end of the road, where a man out mowing his yard saw her and took her home. She thought she had some road rash, but her husband rushed her to the hospital in Dubuque.

She doesn’t remember much from the next three weeks. After being stabilized, she had to wait five months to have her pelvis rebuilt. “That’s all titanium now,” she said.

About five weeks later, she was back on her bike.

She crashed again on July 14, 2022, when she skimmed a pothole on a blacktop. It blew the front tire off the rim of her road bike. This time, she used her cellphone to call her husband, and he took her to the hospital.

She had cracked 12 ribs and lacerated her liver.

“That one was more painful, but less damage,” she said. “That one took about nine months ’til I started feeling decent.”

She still can’t take “a good deep breath.” The other lingering effects are “a fear of downhill speed on gravel,” she said. “And if I come to a water crossing, I walk. It’s not worth the risk any longer.”

Getting serious at 67

After bicycling in his youth, Larry Ritland, a Cedar Rapids resident since 2008, found his stride at age 67, and has put in some serious mileage since then. He writes:

I am a 75-year-old Vietnam veteran, retired tour owner/operator and truck driver, and 41-year member of the American Legion. I did not begin serious cycling until I was 67.

Here is my story and cycling resume:

Growing up in Central Iowa on a Century Iowa Farm in the 1950s provided little opportunity to ride a bike. Gravel roads surrounded our farm.

An uncle gave my older brother and me a bicycle. Gene, my older brother, was 7 years old and promptly broke his elbow during the initial ride on our “new” bicycle. It was a few more years before either of us were allowed to again ride a bicycle. Farm chores and field work took up most of our free time.

Finally, at 10 years of age, I was permitted to purchase a bike with my own money from farm jobs. During the spring and fall I constantly pestered my parents about riding my bike to school in Roland, Iowa, about 2 1/2 miles from the farm. Occasionally I was given permission. Those days were absolutely the best, I loved riding my bike.

After high school graduation in 1966, three years in the Army, marriage, several jobs, my own business, and three adult daughters later, I again thought about riding a bike in 2014, only because of RAGBRAI. Hey, I lived in Iowa and at age 67 thought if I was ever to ride RAGBRAI, it was time.

In late 2014 my youngest daughter, Laura, and I were discussing RAGBRAI. We decided the time was right and we would do it together. I joined a fitness club, rode a stationary bicycle as often as I could, thinking if I could reach 20 miles on the stationary during the winter I would then train hard outside on my old Schwinn during the spring and early summer of 2015. It was all coming together, the training was paying off.

Suddenly my efforts seemed to be of no avail. Early in 2015 Laura announced that she was pregnant and planning to marry, later in 2015. What could I do? I offered my best and continued to train for RAGBRAI. The wedding was great, the new grandson is beautiful, and I killed my first RAGBRAI in July. It was so easy.

So easy, as a matter of fact, I began looking for something even more challenging. Over the years I had made several trips to Alaska while operating my group travel business. My tours would travel the entire Alaska Highway, a 30-day travel program touring western Canada and Alaska. That was it! The summer of 2016 a buddy and I cycled the Alaska Highway. It took us 21 days from Dawson City, British Columbia, to Delta Junction, Alaska: 1,387 miles.

My enthusiasm continued with more RAGBRAIs, many group rides, and becoming a member of two cycling clubs.

In 2019 the American Legion was going to celebrate its 100th anniversary. Well, why not? The Legion, started in 1919, is a national organization (actually it is international), so to ride across the country seemed like an interesting thought. Now 71 years old, I left Ocean Shores, Wash., on June 6, 2019, and arrived in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 18, 2019: 74 days, 3,620 miles. My route was planned so I could ride across Iowa with my RAGBRAI team from Cedar Rapids.

When I arrived at the Iwo Jima Monument, along with my wife, I was met by my three daughters and five grandkids. Sen. Chuck Grassley caught wind of my ride, and for my efforts, sent me the flag that had flown over the U.S. Capitol Building on Aug. 18, 2019.

With cycling there can be some pain along the way. I’ve had to work through broken ribs, a broken ankle and during one outing, being leveled by a pickup. All is good: I heal quickly and I’m still cycling.

Last November, my wife and I entered a ride in Tucson, Ariz. In March we joined a ride from Selma to Montgomery, Ala., and this year I will be riding two days of RAGBRAI. Because of family commitments, I am unable to ride the entire week.

My bicycling resume since age 67 now includes: six RAGBRAIs, 10 centuries (100 miles in a day), the Alaska Highway, cross-country ride (Washington state to Washington, D.C., to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the American Legion), cycling in 23 states and D.C., and since age 68, cycling my age each birthday.

Fun fact: When I got out of the Army in 1970, I purchased a brand-new, 1970 Ford Maverick for $1,995. When I got serious about biking in 2015, I purchased a brand-new, Specialized Roubaix road bike for $1,995. I did not have to take out a loan for the bike.

Rock ’n’ roll

Nikki Northrop of Cedar Rapids not only is singer Nikki D with the Retro Rockits, performing Friday during the Amana stop on RAGBRAI, she’s also a Pied Piper, organizing group bike rides and advocating for the physical and environmental benefits of cycling.

Now 63, like so many others, she started riding bikes for fun in her youth, then parked those wheels. However, a birthday present from her daughter around 1995 got her back in the saddle, riding for enjoyment.

“I lived in Kentucky — beautiful hills, beautiful scenery,” Northrop said.

Riding to work entered the picture in 2004 when she moved back to Cedar Rapids and pedaled her way to then-Rockwell Collins, 8 miles round trip. She started a bike community there and a bike group, and helped organized the company’s Bike to Work Week, an environmentally friendly initiative that’s also close to her heart.

She advocates for people to hop on a bike instead of into a car for quick trips to the grocery store, pharmacy or other errand sites.

“No. 1, people usually have a store within a few miles, at least in Iowa,” she noted, adding that accessories like bicycle bags or panniers that fit over the back tire can hold “a lot of stuff” that comes in unbreakable containers.

Even short bike jaunts can lessen a person’s environmental impact.

“I believe that we take care of the world we’re in,” she said. “The most carbon emissions that come out of a car are when you start it up. So when you start it to go to the store and when you come back, that’s when the most carbon emissions are,” she said. “And if you’re going on a 2- or 3-mile ride, like, I need to go pick up some something at the drugstore, I’m going to ride my bike there later this afternoon.”

She continued riding her bike to work when she moved from Rockwell to Hibu, where she recently retired from her position as a marketing account manager. That trek downtown gave her a 6-mile round trip ride.

She has four bicycles, including a road or touring bike, and a fat-tire bike. And even though she’s no longer riding to work, she will continue to ride 3 miles to church, as well as organize group rides. In 2017, she helped launch the Meet Me at the Market rides to and from Cedar Rapids’ NewBo City Market.

Those Thursday trips generally were short, she said, but she did include some longer “field trips” to the Mother Mosque, Temple Judah and out toward The Eastern Iowa Airport. She even did a yearly moonlight ride, where she would sing when the moon came up.

“My focus was teaching people to ride safely on the streets, and that they could actually get from point A to point B with their bikes,” she said. “ … I just wanted people to know that they could ride a bike for transportation and for enjoyment.”

She loves the camaraderie of group rides, especially the ones like RAGBRAI, that attract out-of-town participants.

“You meet people from all over, but you have a common interest, and you just find a sense of peace, and I always say ‘freedom.’ When you’re on a bike, you go back to that feeling like you’re a kid,” she said. “And I think that just gives you an extra sense of confidence, like ‘I can conquer the world.’”

Comments: (319) 368-8508; diana.nollen@thegazette.com