PANORA, Iowa, February 1, 2011 – Former Iowa first lady Christie Vilsack, a veteran bicyclist and frequent trail rider, will be sharing some of her best cycling stories on Saturday, February 19, when she is the guest speaker at the fourth annual membership banquet of the Raccoon River Valley Trail Association.

The public is invited to purchase tickets and attend the event at the Lake Panorama National Resort Conference Center, just north of Panora.  A social time begins a 6 p.m., and there will be a full banquet meal at 7 p.m.

Christie Vilsack is the guest speaker for the RRVT Association banquet on February 19.

The banquet is a fundraiser to support the RRVT Association’s work of marketing, promoting and helping develop the trail in west central Iowa.  There will be raffles and a silent auction going on through the evening, and a live auction of special items as the grand finale.

Vilsack now lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband Tom, the former Iowa governor who is now U.S. Secretary of Agriculture.  Christie, who returns to Iowa frequently, serves as executive director of the Iowa Initiative, an organization in the state that through educational programs and counseling is trying to reduce unintended pregnancies. And she is being mentioned as a possible congressional candidate in future elections.

She became a favorite of Iowa bicyclists when, as first lady, she became a regular on RAGBRAI – the Des Moines Register’s Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa – from 1999 to 2006.  Christie generally rode with her chief of staff, Cyndi Pederson, who later became director of the Department of Cultural Affairs.

“Neither one of us had ridden bikes as adults until we started doing RAGBRAI,” Pederson recalled, “so we learned a lot.  We rode out of Sioux City on our first day, and stopped at the first place to get pancakes.  We just got off our bikes and got in line.  We’d been there for quite a while when one of the more veteran RAGBRAI riders finally said, ‘You know, you two don’t have to wear your helmets in the pancake line.’ Then somebody else pointed out that we were wearing our bicycles’ ID tags on our wrists and had put our wristbands on our bicycles.”

Vilsack, a former professional journalist and teacher, made advocacy for literacy her special project as first lady.  On RAGBRAI, she and Pederson would make up to a half-dozen stops a day at the public libraries in the towns the cyclists were passing through.  Christie would read stories to the local children and sometimes give away books.

“Cyndi and I used to try to shower and change between library stops,” Vilsack said. “Eventually we just gave that up on that, so there are probably lots of small town newspaper photos out there of me in spandex with helmet hair.”

The Vilsacks have also hosted teams of cyclists at their home in Mount Pleasant when that southeast Iowa town has been an overnight stop for RAGBRAI.

In more recent years, Christie has done most of her riding on recreational trails.

“I last rode my bicycle on the trail between Washington, D.C. and Mount Vernon the day before I left for Iowa for Thanksgiving,” Vilsack said.  “The last time I rode in Iowa was in late October on the trail that is less than five minutes from my townhouse in Des Moines – the Great Western Trail that goes through Waterworks Park and goes south to Cumming and Martensdale.  I like riding the Raccoon River Valley Trail out of Adel to Linden.”

She said other Iowa trails she likes riding on are the Chichaqua Valley Trail from Bondurant to Baxter; the Kewash Nature Trail from Keota to Westchester and Washington in southeast Iowa, and the Wabash Trace Nature Trail from Council Bluffs to the Missouri border.

“I don’t like riding in the city, so I usually drive out of the city so that I can ride my bike in the country,” Vilsack continued.  “I especially like the trail south from Des Moines to Cumming because I love seeing families of deer, listening to the birds and then taking a nap in the park in Cumming before I head back.”

Tickets and more information are available online here on this Internet site, or by calling RRVT Association board members Carla & Chuck Offenburger at (515) 386-5488.  Or you can contact any of the other board members — Daniel Willrich, Mike Wallace, Jim Miller, Jon Doll, Cindy Jensen, Bob German, Kevin Wilbeck, Karen Sievers, Joe Hanner, Mark Vukovich, Clark Smith, Dan Towers, Allan Sieck and Butch Niebuhr.