Iowa Back Roads Host 8,000 Big Wheels on Bicycles

--More than 8,000 bicyclists from all over the country, everyone from lawyers to retirees to children, are pedaling 540 miles across Iowa’s back roads this week for a glimpse of America’s heartland. It’s RAGBRAI (pronounced ragbray) time, the Des Moines Register’s 13th Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa. Every few huffs and puffs down the road bikers find farmers and small-town residents waiting with ice-cold watermelon, lemonade and a smorgasbord of homemade goodies. “It’s definitely a slice of Middle America,” said Steve Gould, 28, a San Francisco flight attendant. “The people are so friendly. When I rode into the last town, there was a crowd of people on the bridge clapping and cheering.” “There’s nothing in the East to compare with it,” said Bob Horne, 53, an English teacher from Concord, Mass. The bicyclists are crossing the state on a zig-zag path from the Missouri to the Mississippi rivers.

--First Lady and former actress Nancy Reagan will portray a “little sister” who refrains from drug abuse in a skit today at a conference of more than 300 students, a conference organizer said. The skit, part of the annual youth-to-youth gathering at Denison University in Granville, Ohio, will show what might happen in a family of people using drugs, said Dick Trelease, vice president of Compdrug, a program to combat drug abuse. The students plan to present Mrs. Reagan with a teddy bear wearing a bandage on its side to wish President Reagan a speedy recovery from recent cancer surgery.

--Some music historians say the Bitter End coffee house in Greenwich Village is where the protest music of the 1960s started. Peter, Paul and Mary, a group at the forefront of that movement, came back to the tiny club Tuesday to celebrate their 25th anniversary in show business with a benefit concert for charity. For two hours, Peter Yarrow, Paul Stookey and Mary Travers were in top harmonious form, sounding more resonant than in the past and bringing tears to the eyes of the overflow crowd with such folk standards as “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “Where Have All the Flowers Gone” and “If I Had a Hammer.” They also brought the 200 guests, most of whom paid $100 a ticket, to their feet with a rousing new protest song--”El Salvador.”