North Liberty man to pop wheelies on RAGBRAI for charity

NORTH LIBERTY - Brian Havlik had talked for years about wanting to tackle Iowa's popular summer bike ride called RAGBRAI, and with his 40th birthday approaching, he decided to get serious.

Havlik, 38, turns 39 in December, and has decided next summer is the year to complete the Register's Great Annual Bicycle Ride Across Iowa, a 500-mile trek from the Missouri River to the Mississippi River over a week in July.

But he's not one to follow the norm.

'I said, 'I want to do RAGBRAI, but I want to do it my way,' ” Havlik recalls telling his wife about a month ago. 'I said. ‘I'm going to do a wheelie.' ”

It started out as a joke, but then the North Liberty man who runs a custom tile business primarily in Cedar Rapids, thought to himself: 'I think I can do it.”

Havlik's goal is to ride 100 miles of RAGBRAI doing a wheelie - that is, popping up his front tire and riding balanced on just the rear wheel.

He is working with Camp Courageous, a camp for those with physical and mental disabilities to turn his effort into a fundraiser.

'This is a first for someone doing something like this,” said Charlie Becker, director of Camp Courageous, which is based in Monticello and serves 7,000 campers a year. 'We think he will do a great job. He has a great personality.” The logistics of the fundraiser aspect are still being worked out.

Havlik has always had an 'extreme sports” inclination since childhood. He was a skateboarder and BMX bike rider, performing stunts and jumps, and in his early adulthood got into hot rods, both building and racing them. Wheelies were second nature in his younger days, and he even entered a wheelie contest with his street racing car - a 1955 Chevrolet, he said.

It was through car racing he became familiar with Camp Courageous and thought to turn his personal challenge into something more. He'd raised money through the annual Cruisin' for Camp Courageous fundraiser.

While many people begin their RAGBRAI training in the spring, after Havlik got the idea, he began training right away. He found his Trek hybrid, which hadn't been ridden in about 10 years, and set about rediscovering his balance.

'The first two times I questioned if I could do it,” he said. 'My muscles were there, but my balance wasn't.”

But, he said, it came back pretty quickly, and he now effortlessly pedals up hills, down hills and turns. The biggest issue is the wind, he said.

As Havlik describes it, it's all pretty simple. You hop your bike up on the rear wheel, find your 'sweet spot” and use your brake if you start to tip back or pedal faster if you start to fall forward.

Havlik puts on his headphones, cranks up 1980s hair band music, and finds his zone. He's gotten up to 20 mph doing a wheelie, but his normal cruising speed is around 12 mph.

'I like doing it at night when you can't see what you are doing, and it's all done by feel,” he said. 'You find your balance and it feels like you are floating.”

Havlik has a group of 10 or so people to ride with on RAGBRAI when it returns July 23-29. Riding every mile doing a wheelie isn't practical, but he thought if he could ride 20 miles per day, and account for potentially missing a couple days, 100 miles is a realistic goal. He said he thinks he could potentially do half.

Since he's been out practicing, he tries to increase wheelie mileage each time. Last week, he upped his record from 10 to 16 miles, and has been using a GoPro camera to document it, he said.

'I'm just trying to do the best I can,” Havlik said. 'I get my mind set on something, and I totally focus on it.”