Cresting the hill on my bicycle in LeClaire, Iowa, June 26 and seeing the mighty Mississippi River stretch before me culminated a 34-year dream of participating in the Register's Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa (RAGBRAI). I remember reading about it first while perusing a camping equipment catalog during a volunteer year at a mission in Espanola, New Mexico. (See photo album here)

It seems two biking enthusiasts from the Des Moines Register challenged each other to ride across the state and opened it for others to join them.

Three hundred showed up and the next year 2,700 joined them. I thought, "I'd like to do that."

The ride has since grown so huge that the Des Moines Register employs four people fulltime and a summer intern just to plan and coordinate it year round.

The Register "limits" official week-long riders to about 10,000 but with day passes and "bandits" it swelled this year on its largest day from Ames to more than 27,000 riders; a record. I was among them.

While the route changes each year, it always starts in the west at the Missouri River, and ends in the east at the Mississippi. This year it started in Missouri Valley and ended in LeClaire.

Between these towns stretched dozens of tiny, even unincorporated burgs over seven days and 500 miles of rolling hills, rivers, sweeping vistas of a live and vibrant corn and soybean quilt tucked around the shoulders of neat-as-a-pin barns, houses and yards — and seven nights of tents in proximity so close the first zipper of the morning became the whole group's alarm clock.

Most memorable after the muscle soreness subsides, the fragrance of new mown hay and pollinating corn fades and the thrill of the ride assumes new majesty in memory, the sense of community will linger.

These riders were strangers. They came from every state in the union and many other countries. On one shuttle a half dozen riders hailed from North Carolina, Michigan, New York, Florida and Texas.

We were of all ages.

One man in his seventies has ridden every one of the 36 annual events. On a specialty bike built for four, a dad rode in front, mom behind and two kids of approximate ages six and four peddled from two seats in the middle.

They were from all walks of life. Every parameter and marker we use to identify "who" we are was covered in this mass of people who converged from points all over the world for an adventure on two wheels — or three, given the number of specialty tricycles that made the trip. Oops, I forgot. One guy rode the entire route on a unicycle and another roller bladed it. That might be eight wheels.

From that disparate group emerged a community with a single unifying element: the bike. What made this stream of strangers "community"?

• In this community you could ride up or sit down next to a total stranger and with no hesitation strike up a conversation.You could ask for help fixing a tire and five guys would surround you with advice and tools.
• You were free to ask for help from anyone and glad to offer help to anyone.
• Bikers beside the road with a blown tire or some other problem found help from passing cyclists or a sag wagon right behind.
• The first morning we broke camp in the rain and I heard not a single disparaging word.
• No one cursed the weather or our bad luck.
• People waiting for a shower didn't complain, they just struck up a conversation with others in line.
• People expressed gratitude to the volunteers who made it all happen. Police officers directing traffic heard "thank you" hundreds of times as riders passed them.
• Chatter in the miles-long line of cyclists picked up on unique sayings on jerseys or found people from a state or town near their own, gleaned from an orange license plate on the back of each bike. People worked and put themselves out to relate to others.
• Riders left expensive bicycles and luggage open and unattended, and I did not hear all week of a single item being "lost."

In a transient world on the move as people seek work and new living environments, we all look for community, a sense of belonging to another group of people to whom we can relate and among whom we can feel secure.

What prompts this sense of community among strangers, people who never met before and will likely never see each other again?

It is a shared, common experience.

For cyclists, it is the bike and events around riding. That week it was RAGBRAI specifically. We had nothing else in common as a whole. But we had the bike, which led to conversations about other rides and states visited and family you might have in those states or lived there yourself and where to find the best food or campground and my daughter is thinking of going to college there and what school can you recommend and I have a son who went through this as a teenager and you learned a lesson from that situation and maybe you found help at church and who is your pastor and I went to seminary with him and isn't God good?

I'm less reticent now but years ago when my family was trying to break into a new church in Oklahoma I felt on the outside of conversations of men in a circle who were laughing and enjoying each other's company. I heard snippets from the outside and realized what makes them a circle of friends is shared experiences.

By shared experience, I'm talking about much more than attending the same events, such as worship. I'm talking about experiences in which participants worked hard to the point of sacrifice, requiring them to draw upon resources and reserves they might not even know they possessed — including each other.

Does your church offer members an avenue for shared experiences?

Besides the good they do on the field, missions trips are so good for churches because they give your members a shared experience. Even those who raised money to send them participated in the long-term benefit and shared experience.

Vacation Bible School provides shared experiences for adult teachers and students alike. That includes the cookie bakers, Kool-Aid makers, and song-leading shakers.

Operation Inasmuch is a mission action that brings whole communities together.

In the anonymous honeycomb of nightly tent cities which sprout in back yards and parks of tiny towns suddenly swollen to 10 times their size overnight, it can be hard to find the tent that is "yours" if you haven't marked it uniquely. One rider in our group located his own tent each night by finding his neighbor's tent first, which sported a pair of pink flamingos at the vestibule.

That can be a great start at community building — finding your neighbor, first.