Minus Ten Review- 15

No pictures from 10 years ago this week, so you get this dusty picture of R Avenue in Tama County.

Ten years ago this week I was in California attending a Fisher Bikes/Trek Bikes mountain bike release and Sea Otter. It was a whirlwind trip which changed everything from many perspectives for me.

A short trip packed with big things. I met and ate with Keith Bontrager, Travis Brown, Gary Fisher, and several high level Trek, Fisher, and Raleigh employees. I had beers with Gary Fisher in Soquel Demo Forest. I ate at a fine Mexican diner in Watsonville California, and I hobnobbed with mountain bike elite in Monterey, California at a mountain bike film premier. I sat in a van next to the inimitable James Huang, now of Cyclintips.com. I used Keith Bontrager's bathroom. I even rode gary Fishers fully electronic shifted townie bike with automatic shifting. Way before Di2.

Game changing trip. Memories that will last a lifetime.

To think that I started the blog less than one year before this trip happened. No one knew who I was. In less than a year's time, all this had happened to me. Trans Iowa was about to happen for the third time as well. I had a life that was on a very fast pace.

Now, I could have easily let this all go to my head. The good thing was that I didn't think of myself as being that big of a deal. I had a sneaking suspicion that I had snuck in the back door to a party I wasn't invited to. So I knew it wouldn't last, and I was just going to be as cool as I could be and enjoy the ride for as long as it was going to last. Now, it lasted longer than I thought it would, but it did slowly come to an end.

And I'm alright with that.