Minus Ten Review- 43

A bad image of a Sunrise in late October near Marengo, Iowa ten years ago.

Ten years ago on the blog I was bantering about a "Trans Iowa Tune Up Ride" that I had planned along with David Pals, my co-director of Trans Iowa back in those days. It was a promotion to Trans Iowa rookies that had just gotten onto the roster for Trans Iowa v4. That would have been the first Trans Iowa I had worked with David Pals on and it would be the last one we would run out of Decorah, Iowa.

Anyway, we planned this long gravel ride out of Marengo, which was David's home at the time, and the ride started in the dark, to kind of mimic the start of Trans Iowa. So, you had to have a light. I cannot emphasize enough how difficult it was to find reasonably priced, powerful, long lasting lighting back then. You either had to spend hundreds of dollars on a system that usually had an external battery or even more on a specialized dynamo hub light system. Lighting up the night back then was not easy. We have it made today. 

The ride didn't go so well for me, as I recall. My body decided it was going to have a low energy day. I cannot remember if it was a bonk, the onset of sickness, or what. I was pretty bummed out, I do recall that much. It was a mostly forgettable experience.

The light thing though. That I do remember. I was using some fancy new Blackburn battery powered unit that barely made the roads visible. Now, for the same money I bought that light for, I could get a 400 Lumen light that blazes the darkness away.

Other things being talked about ten years ago were the SE Racing Stout single speed bike that came in for Twenty Nine Inches testing, The first of many bicycles I would be testing throughout the next seven years. Also, related to the TNI gig, I was brought in as a contributor/editor for The Bike Lab, which was the "everything else mountain bike" besides what we were doing on TNI. Once again, I was promised help and it went away pretty much right out of the gate. So, for the almost two years that the site was up I essentially had my work doubled and with nothing to show for it in the bank. This would have been the time that the TNI gig started to unravel for me. More on that later....