Minus Ten Review -25

I got this old El Mariachi from a friend at the time. What a great bike that was!

Ten years ago on the blog here I was gabbing about all sorts of things. I got an old El Mariachi demo fleet bike from a then friend of mine. That was a great bike too. Then later in the week I was up in the Twin Cities for the media launch of the Salsa "Big Mama" full suspension bike. Remember that one? It was pretty rad at that time, but it quickly fell off the back as geometry, standards for frames, and more were quickly changing for 29"ers. For instance, the Big Mama had a head tube angle of 71°. Imagine a bike with that steep of a head angle today!

Then there was a move to ban bicycle group rides in Dallas County by way of making the requirements to have such a ride so burdensome that the ordinance would effectively wipe out any chance of organized rides happening in that county. Here's a snippet from back then:

On June 24th at 9:30 am the Dallas County Board of Supervisors will meet at the Adel City Hall, 301 S. 10th Street Adel, IA 50003, to discuss an ordinance that will require bicycle events to obtain $1 million insurance policies for bicycle events. This could effect rides as small as 10-20 people.

Fortunately that never happened!

Then a significant date in Trans Iowa history happened, which was a bicycle ride and blog post about it that had nothing at all to do with Trans Iowa. You can read that post HERE.  If you click that link you will read about the day that the second Big Wheeled Ballyhoo was to take place in Decorah, Iowa, but did not happen due to the raging flooding that affected Decorah and Iowa that year in general. 

How in the world is this tied to Trans Iowa? Well, after that blog post was published, I received an e-mail from a disgruntled, influential member of the Decorah cycling community who shall remain nameless here. Who it was doesn't matter today. The person in question was offended greatly that I had suggested certain things were the way I described them in my post. I had a back and forth e-mail conversation with the individual to settle our differences, but, this individual asked that I ".....not consider Decorah for any future cycling events." With the situation being what it was in 2008, and my initial plans for doing another Trans Iowa out of Decorah for 2009, I had to stop and reconsider those plans. I discussed the situation with my then co-director, David Pals, and we agreed that this was now not a welcome home for Trans Iowa. Such sway this person held over cycling matters in Decorah at that time would have made planning difficult at best. So we decided to move Trans Iowa's start for the second time in its history.  

That story will come up later this year.......