Saturday, May 13, 2017

Minus Ten Review- 17, 18, 19

I still am running this head set in something. Gotta check what bike.........
Ten years ago on the blog, (three weeks ago!), I was doing, what else? Trans Iowa! 

It was v3 and the first one we ever did in a loop format. It was a weird, wild adventure. I feel like I lived three lifetimes that weekend, and I don't wish to ever repeat that experience.

Not that it was bad or anything. Well, some of it totally sucked, but overall it was filled with fun stuff. Even though it about killed me to put that version of Trans Iowa on. I've talked about that ad nauseum. Nuff said there.

I guess the really random, weird thing about Trans Iowa v3 to my mind was being shadowed the entire weekend by an author. I mean, I cannot say that I know anyone else that has had that experience. The author was Zach Dundas, and for me, it was really fun to see the event through his spectacles, but even more fun was his take on it in his book, "The Renegade Sportsman". Having "your story" left in the hands of a stranger to be interpreted and printed for the ages on actual paper is a bit of a daunting thought. But, I was pretty happy about the result and what Zach stated about myself and Trans Iowa was all pretty spot on.

I had five volunteers! That is less than I have for Checkpoint #1 nowadays. But still, having any volunteers at all was a huge revelation to what was possible for Trans Iowa going forward. Which it almost did not. Go forward, happen again, and carry on, that is. I was dead set against doing it ever again. But that's another story.

In other news, I had products to test, work to do at the shop, and more 29"er tidbits to share. One of the more interesting things I noted was how the 29"er forum on MTBR.com had changed. Now I look back and I think what I was noticing was how our culture was changing in microcosm. We became a throng of keyboard jockeys that thought we knew everything without doing any research, and we got meaner. And all that before smart phones made us dumb.

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