Oswego High School teacher Heidi Conland Sheffield’s ’88 version of “How I spent my summer vacation” no doubt includes the 472-mile Register’s Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa that she and her family took in July.

She first participated in the premier cycling ride better known as RAGBRAI at the encouragement of her mother, Katrina Conland, in 2005.

“I was hooked after doing it,” Heidi said. “It was very much back to basics.”

The ride-camp-eat-repeat routine leaves little room to worry about much else, she said. “It’s very relaxing.”

Sheffield and her husband, John ’87, included the whole family for this year’s event. Both Sheffields first got into cycling while students at Oswego.

“In college, I was inseparable from my bicycle – it was my mode of transportation,” John said.

Both put those college wheels away after school, but revived the ride a few years ago. In addition to the Iowa event, the two frequently take rides closer to home along the Erie Canal or around Ithaca.

“I enjoy having something we can share as a couple,” said John, a teacher in the Central Square School District. “And we ride with such a great group of people (in Iowa)."

The seven-day ride took Heidi, John and sons, Tyler and Connor, through numerous towns and cities across the state. They were greeted at each stop with great food and friendly people, John said.

-- Shane M. Liebler

PHOTO CAPTION:
From left, Heidi Conland Sheffield ’88; Connor, 12, Tyler, 14; and John Sheffield ’87 spent seven days cycling across Iowa this summer.

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