<===This B Maintenance road dissappears into a tunnel of trees!
<===All the B roads were too wet to travel by car. We'll have to re-check those later!
<===There were more than a few B roads that left no option but to walk, or ride in the road bed. No Ditch Riding Here!
<===It was a long, long day in a car. But we accomplished much!
Today I met d.p. in Marengo at 6am at Doose's Cafe for breakfast before we took off on our T.I.V5 recon mission. We did the tail end of the event first, and trashed about 75% of my proposed route before we even hit the gravel!
Then we made it to the first checkpoint town where I saw a rather "earth mother-ish" type standing on the edge of the curb smoking and drinking a cup of java. We were looking for a coffee joint, and low and behold, she beckons to us and we stop to find out she runs the coffee shop in the building behind her. Wow! A "siren" call, eh? Anyway, we go in and the place is like a freaking art museum. It is awesome! So we talked to her about our little event, and she was totally down with it, and wants to open early for us to sample the fine coffee and other caffeinated treats she has 'round the joint. Sweet!
Rolling on, we encounter B roads, mud, re-routes, mud, hawks, hills, more hills, mud, and then our first real checkmate in the route finding.
Our choice was truncated. So we came up with an alternate plan, no biggie. It's looking really good, then.......BAM! Gated, signed "No Tresspassing" Great! So we reconnoiter another route.....truncated! Then I finally find something that worked, even though it involved some pavement. Oh well! It was either that or re-do a major portion of the event, which basically would have put us behind, well......who knows?!! Weeks? Months? We wanted this done today, so we went with the paved option. No biggie! Only about five miles of pave' in all that re-route.
That ate up a bunch of time, but in the end, we had enough time to do the re-route at the end to see how the run in back to Williamsburg would look. So far, so good! The B roads were un-driveable, so those will need to be verified later, but that shouldn't be too big a deal. I think we're good to go, but since the re-routes were pretty extensive in a couple of places, we don't have any hard figures as of yet on mileage, time for cut offs, or an over all time for the event. We should be able to get a good idea on this really soon though. So, stay tuned!
I just got home at the fall of dark. A long, long day, but a productive one. I don't think I've gotten so much sewn up by this time doing a Trans Iowa, so it feels really good.
Now to figure out timing to do registration!
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