On Topic: Wheels up

I usually write these columns the weekend before they appear in print. I used to be a month or so ahead, but, you know, real life gets in the way.

This particular column was composed eight days ago, on Labor Day weekend. To be honest, I would rather have been out in the fresh air and sunshine riding my bike.

The week, work-wise, was anything but dull. You may have heard.

For one thing, The Gazette Company on Tuesday announced the planned sale of KCRG-TV9 and its online operation to Atlanta-based Gray Television Inc. for $100 million in cash. Details of what happens next as this newspaper and our longtime TV comrades - allies? siblings? - decouple have been released daily, pretty much as they are figured out.

We're moving, KCRG-TV9 is not - they own all this fancy broadcast equipment, after all. Where are we going? Um, still working on that.

But it'll be fun, you'll see.

And then on the Thursday evening was the culmination of lots of heavy lifting - and even more discussion - for our first Business 380 Excellence Awards banquet.

If you were not there, you should have been. One of my pals at KCRG-TV9, Ashley Hinson, and I gave out awards to 18 different Corridor companies and not-for-profits in a slew of categories, from manufacturing to technology and corporate culture.

Some 260 attendees at the Hotel at Kirkwood also got to hear keynotes Debi Durham, Iowa Economic Development Authority director, and her counterpart at the Department of Transportation, Paul Trombino III, talk about the state of economic development in Iowa and what we need to accomplish to keep moving forward.

I might be the last person to be able to give unbiased testimony as to how the event was received, but people appeared to enjoy the evening - they networked and dined, business cards were exchanged and, hey, they laughed at my jokes. Well, at most of them.

A good time, it seems, was had by all.

Meanwhile that same week, the University of Iowa picked a new president, work on Highway 100 zoomed along at breakneck pace and Westdale developers revealed Chipotle early next year will join the expanding list of retailers signed up for that $90 million redevelopment. Lots of news to cover.

So you'll understand why I'm sorely tempted to give my head a rest and not think about work for just a bit and instead take a spin on my bike.

Let me tell you about this bike: It is not new - not new in manufacture nor new to me. I came by it after its predecessor was destroyed beyond repair one late-summer afternoon due to a sudden and violent encounter between it and Ohio State University's famed Horseshoe stadium.

(Spokes popped off, the handlebar was wrenched skyward, the front wheel ended up parallel with the pedals, and I didn't fare so well myself.)

This current bicycle, an emerald-green Schwinn Classic, comes with a checkered career: I've owned it for longer than some of the people I work with here at The Gazette have been alive, and I bought it from a sax player back when I lived in Columbus.

And he got it from who knows what kind of shady character, but I do seem to recall maybe he mentioned that previous exchange had nothing to do with actual cash changing hands.

When I wheeled the Schwinn into the shop downtown last month to finally get the tires replaced - and have the front fork realigned, a longtime defect which I'd learned over the years to accommodate - all the repair guys stopped chatting over their coffee and stared. Eyebrows rose.

One of the guys dated my bike at 1962 or '63.

It is surprisingly heavy (I suspect it's made of dwarf star alloy), and it can't go terribly fast, at least until you're headed downhill. And the brakes, I'm told, are what are known as the roller-coaster type - no wimpy hand brakes, but the kind where you have to pedal backward really fast to slow down. When that doesn't work - which it doesn't always as quickly as I'd like - you try as best you can to slam your feet to the ground and dig in, Flintstones-style.

Sturdy shoes always a good idea.

When Gazette reporter B.A. Morelli, who has ridden and reported on RAGBRAI and knows far more about cycling than I do, saw a photo of the Schwinn, he noted the brakes and asked, 'Aren't those (thoughtful pause) dangerous?”

What can I say? Every ride is an adventure. I'd forgotten how much fun that is.

And probably because this bike requires me to pay attention, it takes my mind off work. Which is why Labor Day was invented, right?

OK, heading out now. See you on the streets.

' Michael Chevy Castranova is enterprise and Sunday business editor of The Gazette. (319) 398-5873; michaelchevy.castranova@thegazette.com