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.