History:

Many years ago on Ragbrai, when just Tim O’Brien and I would embark on the journey, I sagged with a disheveled and dirty, but rowdy and fun bunch of guys and girls on a miniature bus slapdashedly painted yellow and red. They were known to the Ragbrai community and the Iowa underground drinker/biker community as “Fat Tom’s Army”.

Based in Lehigh, Iowa near Fort Dodge, this team’s namesake is an original member of the group, Fat Tom himself. The quotes, slogans “You’ll see. You’ll all see.”, and logos stemmed from this character. Bus owner and team captain, Matt O’Hearn, bought a “new” Ragbrai bus for the team in 2003.

I joined the team this year along with JR Ruiz of Cedar Rapids, his girlfriend at the time, Tracey, and current Army members, Tim O’Brien, Riley Hess, Don Goen, Dana “Shit” Eggleston, Beth Ludwig and Pam Hove. We were transfers from the legendary Team Red Eye, who are now self-contained except for their relatively uncontained, kilt covered nether-regions.

I have many fond memories of my time with FTA, the drunken team sag days where nobody would ride and we would spend hours drinking vodka and urinating on things, and drinking shots from a rusty old tire iron aptly nicknamed “The Wheel”. I remember Jesus (Doug) telling Jonesy he needed to douche his ass when the bus was parked at HyVee in Harlan. Jonesy went into the store, bought a 2 pack of the stuff and did just that. The next day I saw him drinking out of the other bottle from the 2 pack. I remember Marty being attached by the hip to his stuffed duck koozie that was a gift from Matt’s current wife, Mary. That is until Jonesy blew it up with an M-80. I never thought I’d see a large man with a fu-manchu mustache and a pink dress cry over a stuffed duck.

The pink dress he picked up while riding with me. We came across 2 girls along the route just handing out costume clothing from the trunk of a car. I donned a cowboy vest and pistols while Marty opted for the pink dress. He wore it the entire next year.

Dave Ekstrom (Wizard) was a hell of a driver and a hell of a good time. One night when he was drunk enough to hit on a very large bull-dike with blood on her knee that matched her red hair, I convinced him to try to eat a bug from the bus ceiling. The second the 2 inch long cicada hit his tongue, he sprinted to the front of the bus and vomited from the stairs.

Those were good memories, but as the top brass of most drinking teams usually do, FTA decided to sell the bus and go self contained. That’s when Mike James had to step up and protect the sanctity of that 1986 Ford Shitheap. Hence was born, the Fat TIRE Army.

Jace Cole of Chicago, as well as Robin and Kyle Williams of Iowa City, who joined FTA the year before signed on as co-owners. With a new paint job that did not compromise the many obscene quotes scribbled onto the bus in drunken haste, and a sponsorship from New Belgium Brewery providing 25 cases of Fat Tire Beer, the bus took off with a new Matt O. at the helm.

Matt Olson. He had never driven a stick up until about 2 weeks before driving the bus, which has a rather difficult transmission, 1000 miles across Iowa and back with 15 screaming drunks in the back. It’s no surprise that he didn’t offer to come back the next year.

Kyle and Mike made a road trip that year to Ft. Collins, CO. for the beer. They were like two 4 year old kids on Christmas morning when the earthy but somehow attractive female bartender/tour guide at New Belgium brought them to a back room with a whole palate full of beer and schwag just for them.

Lessons learned from RAGBRAI XXXIV: The only reason you should ever drink 15 Fat Tires a day for 4 days in a row is if you need to shit through a coffee filter for some reason. Not good. The Army is not known to let a little angry ass syndrome keep it down. Good times were had by all.

This brings us to Ragbrai XXXV, the inaugural trip of the bus under its new title, The Perineum Falcon. (A perineum is a taint there, Stephen Hawking.) The tales to be told of this riotous path of destruction across Iowa are many and are to be reserved for another section (RAGBRAI XXXV Debriefing). Suffice it to say that with our new valued team-members (Alan Lisse, a.k.a. “Uncle Al”, a.k.a. “Shatner”, Scott Pennington, Erik Didriksen, Sean Cisney, Brad Rist, Kevin McQueen, Jay Polson, John “Calves” Eash, Mike Toscano, a.k.a. “Wanker”, Abby Sherman, Lee Kline, Phil James, Ardith Hobach, Marc Monroe and Arun Ramachandran) as well as our veteran members, Jace Cole, Mike James, Jennifer Bowen, Tim’ Obrien, Riley Hess, Don Goen, Joe Whitsitt, Adam Hedberg-Buenz, Pam Hove and Beth Ludwig) and our friends at New Belgium Brewery, left a trail of days that is a gallery of personal triumph over the physical and mental demands of biking across Iowa and drinking heavily.

Dr. Michael James

RAGBRAI XXXV