Minus Ten Review- 17

A calf loose from its pen on the road. This would eventually become the basis for the T.I.v5 header art.

Ten years ago on the blog I was recounting the events of the fourth running of Trans Iowa. That one was quite the doozy! The event almost didn't happen as copious snow melt coupled with heavy Spring rains drowned the course and made a mess of things to the point that we almost couldn't use the proposed front half of the course at all.

This one had a little bit of everything that Trans Iowa could possibly throw at us. Snow (!!), heavy winds, cold, a mudslide that blocked the roadway, flooded parts of the course, major rerouting, monstrous frost heaves, and a curtailed event due to a bad road washout in the night portion of the event.

By the time David Pals and I had flagged, staked, cleared trees, routed over the mudslide, and came upon a very bad bridge approach at the end of a long down hill, we were exhausted and frustrated. We called off the end of the event knowing that further up the road one of our Level B roads was six foot under water. More rerouting in the middle of the night? Not happening. We set up a finish line in Edgewood and waited.

One of my all time favorite Trans Iowa images.

Somehow or another five guys figured out all the rerouting and ended up coming in to Edgewood. We had one lone straggler, Corey, "Cornbread" Godfrey, who happens to figure heavily in Trans Iowa's history, by the way. He was delirious with fatigue and nearly lost in the middle of the night. We had back tracked the course looking for him, and when David spied his light, we stopped and chatted with him. Then I got the bright idea to lead him into Edgewood, flashers blazing, horn sounding, at three o'clock in the morning, much to the delight of his Lincoln Superfan crew that was waiting on him.

There were a lot of great tales sown into history that day and maybe they have grown a bit in the ensuing ten years, but that's okay. If we have half the adventure during this weekend's Trans Iowa I would be overwhelmed. I am still not sure how David and I- nor anyone in the event- survived all that madness.