Well, as those who watch for such things already know, T.I.V5 was announced recently. I made some notes on the site, but here are a few things in addition to that for those who care.
First off, you probably noticed that we are going for a May date. The date was chosen for one reason only, to accommodate me! Yep! That's right. You see, I have been having to go to Sea Otter for the last two years, (I know, it just sucks, doesn't it? ha ha!) and Sea Otter had promised at on point to move its date to May. Then they changed their minds and went back to April with no signs that they are going to change that date in the future.
Well, I can tell you that doing Sea Otter and T.I. the weekend after really drains you! No........really! So I opted for a week between the two events. Benefit to you, the T.I. event participant? A fresher, less ornery Guitar Ted. There are those that will say it will be good from a weather standpoint, but don't you go believing that! Remember, it is just the first weekend in May, it still could be brutal. It could quite as easily be great, but the weather is usually still in a volatile pattern at that time of year.
The next thing you noticed is probably the location change. We have felt all along that Trans Iowa should be about showing folks that Iowa is something more than "flat", corn fields, and pigs. There is a lot more to Iowa than that. We have endeavored to move the event around since last year when d.p, and I started talking about doing T.I.V4, so this move to Williamsburg fits in with our plans and our philosophy.
That said, we hadn't planned on moving out of our Decorah base just yet. I'm not going to go into the "why now" of the move out from Decorah. That story is known to a few, they are free to tell the tale if they want to, and I'm moving on from there. That part of T.I. is history.
The registration set up will be the same as last time. We are going to let the vets in first, then any newcomers will be allowed to register. You may have noticed that the event field limit has been reduced to 75. I did that because even though we have sought to allow as many as would want to register, (T.I.V3) and maintain a waiting list, (T.I.V4), it still seems that only about 55-65 guys and gals are really interested in actually showing up. So, I figure that is what we should shoot for, with a bit of headroom. There will be a waiting list maintained this time again.
This means that we will only possibly have 75 cue sheet sets to print up, and probably less by the time we actually pull the trigger on printing. Less waste, less money spent, less work for d.p. and I. Sounds like a plan to me!
The course is 80% set in stone and about 80% checked out already. We are not waiting this year since last time we got frozen out until about a month before the event, which sucked. We are trying to research the course in terms of possible high water problems as well. Hopefully we can pull this off without re-routes or the epic wading adventures, ala T.I.V3.
It is looking like we will have three check points this time. The big reason for this is that Check Point #1 will be only about 45-50 miles into the event. (We have our reasons for this, muwah ha ha ha!)
So, there you have all the latest. This all will go up on the Trans Iowa site once it gets converted over to Version 5 status. Stay tuned for further updates over the next few months.
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