Minus Ten Review- 13

We saw some beautiful roads during T.I.v8 recon

Ten years ago on the blog I was recovering from the big trip to the desert and looking at another Trans Iowa recon. That would have been for Trans Iowa v4, and it was another stressful run up to the big event. I learned a few things in 2008, and one of them was to NOT pack in four big events in life within five weeks time.

It didn't help that Trans Iowa recon was a wash when we tried doing it in December the year before. I learned that it was best to get the initial recon done in Fall when the weather and roads were at their best, generally speaking. Waiting until less than a month remained before Trans Iowa was.........not good. 

The other thing I recall was that this course was absolutely gorgeous. Too bad the Winter was so rough on the roads that year, because T.I.v4 was truncated and we didn't get to see what I considered to be the best parts of that course. There was one particular view that sticks with me to this very day. I'll have to get back up that way in Summer and plot out a route that encompasses that descent and some other areas around there that would be good to see by bicycle.

The amount of snow left piled along many stretches of the route was amazing for so late into the year. This was "almost April" and we passed by several 10 to 20 foot high drifts of snow along the road. We wondered aloud whether snow patches might still exist when we ran Trans Iowa. Of course, we didn't really believe that we would, but then again, we hadn't expected so many drifts of snow either. This melting of snow which occurred later was part of the undoing of T.I.v4, by the way.

This also marked the first time I had a cohort involved in recon since Jeff Kerkove and I did the T.I.v1 recon together. That was nice and David Pals was a great asset to me during his tenure as a Trans Iowa co-director. Without his help I am pretty sure Trans Iowa would have stopped a long time ago.