Our bicycle outings should get back to normal now on the Chichaqua Valley Trail. These past two or three weeks, Saturday morning seemed like a trade show. Bright colors, lots of logos and thousands of dollars’ worth of equipment on display.

Maybe Donald Kaul and John Karras should have set out, all those summers ago, to ride all the way around the edge of Iowa instead of just slashing from west to east. That might have kept the number of RAGBRAI participants at a more realistic level.

Instead, there’s a burst of preparation midsummer, producing a crowd of people desperate to get in shape by barreling along between Bondurant and Baxter.

When the spandex crowd goes away, it’s about as laid-back a recreation facility as you can find in Central Iowa. No lines, no concession stands, no noise.

Early in the morning, it’s a rabbit-rich environment. The little guys seem to like to get out of the underbrush just for a look around. On one part of the trail, you’re likely to spot Baltimore orioles; some places deliver the sound of frogs. On a hot, humid day you’ll roll through brief steambaths and wonder why it works that way. In cooler seasons, you might find a snake warming itself on the asphalt. And no matter when you go, you appreciate that blacktop.

Go ride on a trail featuring crushed rock, washouts and branches that stay right where they fell, and you’ll think nostalgically of this mini-highway across the countryside.

Or ride on a country highway and realize how diabolical a moderate uphill stretch can be – as so many RAGBRAI novices are finding out right about now. But on an old railroad bed like this one, which lost its place in the world of commerce but found a pleasant way to spend its retirement, the builders kept the grade as level as possible.

Ground squirrels scurry alongside the trail, and once we watched a trio of young raccoons. This fall we’ll count woolly bear caterpillars that are convinced the opposite side of the trail holds the key to happiness and winter survival.

We smell things, too – corn, thick weeds and a few cattle. Not taking anything away from the Plains Indians, but if it’s this easy to locate a couple dozen cows by nose, finding a Nebraska-sized herd of buffalo must have been like using GPS.

We even delve into civil engineering, marveling at the amount of work it took to build a railroad when you have to construct a stone bridge over every little stream that just has to have its way.

We see older guys wearing seed corn caps and blue jeans instead of the latest fashions from the bicycling store. Ladies on grown-up tricycles. We see people picking raspberries and couples walking hand-in-hand. Mostly we meet people headed in the opposite direction, say hi and never see them again. It’s your life, speeded up.

Once in a while, there’s a reason to converse. When we saw a woman showing a captured snake to a baby in a stroller, we definitely stopped for that.

A couple of weeks ago, we pedaled into Baxter and realized it was the town’s annual celebration day. When you see ancient, brightly painted tractors pulling into a small town, you know that special moment has arrived.

We stopped to watch the parade, and other bikers gradually piled up at the same spot. It was like RAGBRAI hitting a small town, but in this case we were the observers, not part of the show.

We watched Little League teams in truck beds flinging hard candy at their friends, a drill team, a couple of Za-Ga-Zig Shrine motorized units and a real, live politician, then we left the festivities and headed for downtown Ira. Usually pretty quiet there.