Minus Ten Review- 2

The first Gary Bar, offered in silver, has been long discontinued.

Ten years ago on the blog here I was gabbing about stuff still relevant for 2018. One of those things was (surprise!) the weather, which ironically mirrors what we've had here this week. Snow looked great, then there was a thaw, which ruined the snow, then fog, which froze, and a threat of ice or snow that would sit on ice and basically screw up Winter sports activities for the remainder of Winter. Yep! Checked all the boxes for what is happening here currently. Weird!

Then there was the mention of "rumors" and knowledge I had of products about to be revealed. Same. The situation this time is that I happen to know about two new series of gravel bikes that are going to be pretty significant. On one hand there will be a "price point" set of gravel bikes coming that I think will present a great value to the consumer who is looking to get a "serious" gravel rig but doesn't want to spend a lot of cash on one. The second will be an innovation which I have seen coming and will, upon its debut, be the best gravel bike you can buy, in my opinion. It will become the bar everyone else will shoot for in gravel bikes. Expensive? Yes. But there will be a range of models and there will be some more affordable ones in the range.

Then there was Trans Iowa. Well, of course that is the same, but the details were not. In 2008 we were looking at doing the second "big assed loop" version of Trans Iowa. I was hinting that it may only be 320-ish miles maximum, and that the route would be "awesome". It was notable that I mentioned that I had many folks asking me to let them volunteer. That's been an ever-present thing about TI ever since then. I never have had to push for volunteers, ever. That's incredible and it still is happening to this day. In fact I had a request this week. One last week, and I will get more, I am sure.

I'll forever be amazed, humbled, and grateful for the volunteers I get for Trans Iowa. There is just no way to thank those folks enough when I know that other events have a tough time even getting enough folks to run their events. I have to turn folks away every year! Amazing! Thank you, thank you, thank you, volunteers! You rock!