Minus Ten Review- 22

Stopped by a train. A theme that has been repeated a lot ten years later!

On the blog ten years ago I had a ride report from Lebanon Hills up in the Twin Cities. I'm not sure 100%, but I believe it was my first rodeo up there after hearing reams about it from Jason Boucher and Brent Gale of Twin Six. It was all they had said and more.

I was smitten by how the local trails organization, MORC, had made the trails so fun, challenging, easy to navigate, and clear. Totally unlike what we had here, (and to a great degree, it still is unlike what we have here), for soft trails. I told anyone that would listen after I got back to the W'loo/CF area that MORC and later on I would mention THOR, which runs trails in Nebraska, were models for what we should have at Ingawanis Woodlands and for the soft trails in the area here. But I guess I didn't have a clue, judging from the responses I got ten years ago and since then.

I also reported on a ride I did in the area where I got stopped by a train coming back into town after riding some gravel roads. Hmmm........ Ten years later, I am still getting stopped by trains. Many folks may not know this, but Waterloo is a railroad town. It gets a lot of publicity from having been the town where John Deere and from its history in meat packing with the shuttered Rath Packing. But before those companies got their roots laid down in Waterloo, the railroad was already here and Waterloo was a hub for the industry in Iowa along with several other cities. Some of those cities have lost the railroad industry, but not Waterloo. Therefore; we have a lot of freight trains switched out here, and a lot of rail traffic. Thus the crossings and chances to get stopped.

Some things haven't changed in ten years of writing this blog.