This Would Have Been The Weekend

The first time I ever stood in front of Bikes To You in Grinnell with a bike in '09. Image by D. Pals

Note: I wrote this part of the story up about the time when everything went to heck in a hand basket for 2020. So, yeah- Had I still been doing T.I., this would have been cancelled too. But read on for what the real point of this edition of the Trans Iowa story is really about. 

This would have been a day not all that long ago that I would have been bouncing down some rural gravel road running a silly event dubbed "Trans Iowa". In fact, I would have been in Grinnell, Iowa yesterday, most likely, and wouldn't have returned back to Grinnell until tomorrow sometime. In between would have been 300 plus miles of gravel, adventure, surprises, and camaraderie between old friends. There maybe would have been new friends made too, but I'll never know now, of course.

Sometimes people ask me if I miss it. I don't, really. I think about it often. Obviously, since I have been busy researching stories for the series that runs every Sunday on the blog. That series is called "Trans Iowa Stories", and through that work I have remembered a lot of things I had forgotten. I also had old memories sparked anew. Some good, some not so much. So, I have been well acquainted with my feelings about this old event for many months now.

So, maybe it is unfair to ask the question, "Do I miss Trans Iowa?" Because certainly there are things I do miss and things I do not miss at all. The negatives outweigh the positives at this point, so this is a good thing since I don't put on the event anymore. But that is not to say that the positives are not important to me. They are important beyond belief. But I am not going as far as making another Trans Iowa happen again to relive those things.

And the last time I stood at that spot with a bike (or three) The T.I.v14 start. Image by George Keslin

But that said, look at the image above here. See all those people? If you asked me, "What do you miss most about Trans Iowa?", it would be the people. Definitely. The best people I ever met were Trans Iowa participants, volunteers, or fans of the event. I became friends with many of them. That's what I miss most, and likely will be the thing I always will miss the most. I was blessed to know many of these folks even just a little bit that I had the chance to.  I am doubly blessed to still have a few of these wonderful people as friends to this day.

Speaking of the series earlier here, I would be remiss if I didn't promote tomorrow's epic "Trans Iowa Stories" post. It is about double the length and will be a marathon read, just like Trans Iowa was a marathon level gravel grinder. But this episode of "Trans Iowa Stories" is very important. It details the end of my partnership with co-director, David Pals and how my "brother from another mother", MG and I almost lost our friendship over what happened with T.I.v7. Fortunately, that never came to be, but I do know that T.I.v7 was the version that changed everything about Trans Iowa.

And it changed me.

Stay tuned.......