She pedaled up to me riding a pink bike, wearing a pink scoop top, pink biking shorts, pink pom-pom strands on the handle bars and of course pink shoes, helmet and sunglasses. She was a long-haired blond with her hair pulled back into a ponytail, a huge smile and the scoop top was distracting. We were riding with about 5,000 other bicycle riders on an annual ride through the Iowa corn and soybean fields at the end of the summer. It's a bike ride that was sponsored by the Des Moines Register and was thus titled RAGBRAI, (Register's Great Bike Ride Across Iowa). The tradition was to dip your back tire in the Missouri river on the west end of the state and dip the front end of your bike in the river in the Mississippi at the east end because over a week you ride across the state. You stop in little towns. You meet people, drink and eat too much. You sleep in tents and cold-shower in public showers in towns of 10,000 that have exploded because of all of the cyclists and their friends. The entire ride winds up being between 55 and 80 miles per day in August. That's 90/90 weather in Iowa, 90 degree heat, 90% humidity. You meet people, like the blond woman from California. She was probably going to be 39 years old forever, with the assistance of a variety of treatments and medical care. I was catching her at about 37. I was 24 and thought that she was the most unique person I had seen out of all 5,000 people on the ride. There were people who were going to ride for one day and you could tell because of their fresh clothes. Hard-core cyclists traveled fast, in packs and would ride in a line so that they could shift who was in front and the others could draft after them. My favorites were the 60-year old crews who clearly rode together on Saturday mornings after breakfast at a medium speed and traveled long enough and far enough to reach their favorite watering hole for beers and lunch. As for my new blond friend, almost thirty years later I can see her like an etching, while the rest are barely watercolors. Simon Cowell talks about great acts from the television show he produces and judges, "America's Got Talent." He disqualifies good acts, in part, because he says that he “will forget them in a minute.” They are not memorable. They are just so much like other acts of quality, but not acts of distinction. I think back in my life for people who stuck out as memorable. If I set aside friends and family as being memorable because of our relationship and just stick to people I have met that have been memorable over more than fifteen years, the list thins out fast. When I was in high school, an old priest, our Algebra teacher, who had played semi-professional baseball would come into Algebra class with a box of balls. There were different kinds of balls. There hard-rubber eight balls, plastic balls, ping-pong balls and the balls from the ends of slap-ball paddles. He threw two into the room fast at the bell, so all of us were at our seats standing, trying to catch one of the two balls thrown. If you caught a ball, he would put your initials on it. If you caught the same ball twice, you got to keep the ball. He put two balls every day on the chalk ledge at the front of the room as he was teaching algebra. If he thought you were not paying attention, talking to other people or doing work for another class, he would hit you with a ball. He threw hard and he was accurate. He might have been an old-priest, but he still had his semi-pro arm. Forty years later, I still remember his classes. I got hit once by a green ball that had a soccer-ball pattern cut into it and a lot of initials on it. This meant he had thrown it at a lot of people and much better kids had caught it. In the four years I was at that school, I also know the only kid who wound up catching two of the thrown balls twice and taking them home. He still has them to this day. Memorable. The Zoo Bar in Lincoln, Nebraska featured a blues great by the name of Magic Slim and the Teardrops. Magic Slim played a lot and drank a lot of Jack and Coke at the bar, waiting until the Teardrops called him up on stage. His son was in the band and they were great. They would play on their own for 45 minutes in a set and at about that time they would start working the audience into a frenzy calling Magic Slim to come up and play. He was drinking his Jack and Coke at the bar and waving his arm at the band saying, "Nah, y'all keep playing. Lemme finish this drink first." The band would keep pushing him, he'd keep waving them off until the room was thunderous, then Magic Slim would get off his stool and make his way through the tables to the stage and get up, and grab his guitar. Step back a second. Magic Slim was 6' 2" or more and at least 320 lbs. He wore a black cowboy hat and black cowboy boots. They matched his mustache and his hands. He was an imposing figure coming through the tables. When he picked up his guitar he looked like LeBron James picking up a ukulele. Each finger seemed to be the width of the neck of the guitar itself. Then it came. The band was great on their own, but when he played the guitar and sang, the music came, the legendary blues of Magic Slim and the Teardrops. The Zoo Bar was not huge, but it was one of my first chances to really hear blues and I had no idea I was listening to a legend. I only knew that I would not forget it. My list is longer than these, but not much longer. I have memories of lots of people and of lots of moments, but I do not think many of them make the threshold of memorable. I remember my first kiss, but that does not make it memorable. I also remember my first car, hiring, firing, move into my own apartment, wedding and other events. They are memories. For some reason, they are not memorable. I can tell you the smell of the beer in the air, feel the heat in the room and the sticky table, open and close my jaw because my ears were ringing and I needed to clear them when I was listening to Magic Slim. That’s what I mean by memorable. Maybe the reason the pieces I call memorable are just odd. These are details I should not remember. I should remember all of the things that I listed and more as memories. Those moments are worthy. An eccentric algebra teacher and a great night hearing a deceased blues player should not be so indelible. I do not have any reason why certain things sort in my storage bins called memories and memorable. I wish I could control that more. I can tell you this. After I talked to the lady from California and she rode away, the license plate she had made for her bicycle that was attached to the seat for anyone behind her to see said "BOMBSHELL." Maybe it is the not what is memorable that sticks, possibly is what is unforgettable.