Reconnecting with my favorite teacher
My favorite teacher of all time was Mrs. D. She taught an American lit class my junior year and speech my senior year of high school. I really enjoyed her personality, and the subject area came pretty close to being what I would have done for fun in my spare time anyway. I've lived about a 2.5 hour drive away from my home town, and after my parents died I went back for visits only on rare occasions. This summer RAGBRAI went through my home town. My former (retired for a long time) teacher is the director of the local historical foundation that maintains a very old building that was disassembled in Germany, transported to Iowa, and rebuilt there as a tie-in for the large number of residents descended from German ancestors. There is a RAGBRAI route inspection pre-ride every year, and this time she was pictured with the riders of the inspection ride on the RAGBRAI website in the blog about the pre-ride for that day. I knew that if she made a point of greeting 10 riders before RAGBRAI that she would definitely be there for the ride itself. I was able to visit with her for a few minutes that day, and then found her on Facebook when I got back home. Now we’re Facebook friends, and I love the chance to keep her in my life and keep up with what she’s doing. And in a way, my bike helped me bring it about.