Old Guys See Green and Gray

For the past 35 years a bunch of nutty people ride bikes more than 450 miles across the state of Iowa. It probably started out as a testosterone-laden challenge from one reporter to another. Years later there are 10,000 nutty riders.

My wife, high-school-aged son and I are some of those nutty riders.

We have to drive about 800 miles from the Deep South to the Heartland. We see a lot of road and landscape between there and here. But there's something striking about Iowa landscape.

Iowa is NOT flat. It's not mountainous like eastern Tennessee or Western Colorado, but it is not flat. Ride in the Loess Hills in Western Iowa and you'll change your mind. And there are plenty of steep hills in Northeastern Iowa. We rode 50 miles/hour down a hill near Guttenberg a few years ago.

The other striking aspect about Iowa's physical beauty is the green. How many shades of green did God create and how many have humans help create. Just think: how many varieties of corn and soy beans grow each with its own color, then add shades from leaves growing at different levels, add the wind that blows the plants to provide more shades of green. It's absolutely amazing.

Then Old Guys see gray as well. Eastern Iowa suffered, and suffers with the aftermath of flooding. Towns like Cedar Rapids were in the news for loosing hundreds of homes. I saw some areas of Waterloo, Iowa today. These homes have watermarks to show how high the waters swallowed them and pages of paper on the front door to tell the owner/occupants that they are no longer welcome to live there. One sees gray "yards" that show where water and crap left their marks.

My sister and her family filled sandbags. A family friend of hers is going to volunteer in Waverly, Iowa, tomorrow to help with destroyed homes. We ate at a Mexican food place and read about the services available in Bremer County, Iowa. As we drove by a grain elevator (storage structure) that had been flooded. My sister explained that the grain rotted and stunk terribly. My brother says the damage will be more than a trillion dollars. I bought sweet corn from a farmer today and he said he'll have corn until late August because the corn is so late this year. Too much rain means late crops - if any. Another guy told me that 4000 homes will be condemned. On the radio this morning I heard that people who have lost their homes in that community can move into FEMA trailers.

One has to wonder if Iowa Governor Chet Culver will survive this crisis. Remember one southern governor fared well after Hurricane Katrina and one did not.



It's sad to see such beauty alongside such destruction.

Old Guys See Green and Gray.