Saturday, April 02, 2016

Minus Ten Review- 13

From Trans Iowa v2 recon ten years ago.
Ten years ago on the blog here I was mentioning that Daylight Savings Time was set to kick in on the first weekend in April. Remember that? We used to have to wait until April before the time "sprang forward" and we got a dramatic shift in the day.

I still think the concept is goofy.

Anyway, another big deal on the blog on this week ten years ago was my third "Ted-terview" of an endurance athlete. This time it was Paddy Humenny of Canada who got the focus. I met Paddy through Trans Iowa, (amongst many others since then), and he also was a finisher of the first Dirty Kanza which was set to happen later after our interview.

Finally, I was out and about toward the first part of April doing some checking on the Trans Iowa v2 course. Some things don't change in a decade! However; that year was a first for me, and I was doing much of the course work on my own at that time. I do remember that Jeff and I drove out there once and looked at things, then I am pretty sure I did that once on my own, (which may have been this trip in April '06), and I know I was out one other time alone. Keeping in mind that it was a four to five hour drive just to get to the beginning of the route, and you can maybe see why when we found out about the DK200's loop format, we were immediate fans! Oh! And all of those hours of windshield time and work went for naught in '06 as the route was never traveled due to weather. Only about 50-75 miles were traversed by most and a 110 by a couple of guys. That was unprecedented until the '10 event which was similarly wet, and the shortest was last years' event. Only Greg Gleason made it 128 miles, everyone else was out by Mile 53. Compare what Gleason did last year to T.I.v2, and he would not have gotten to Algona, which was the only checkpoint that year, with that amount of mileage with the rest of the state left to cross. In other words, that Level B in the image above? He wouldn't have seen that either!

This road, by the way, was eventually seen by Greg Gleason! Yes, because he rode it, along with a few others, on the Trans Iowa Master's Course route in 2014.

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