Minus Ten Review 2009- 18

Trans Iowa hit the big time. We had t-shirts!

Ten years ago this week I was running Trans Iowa v5. Leading up to the event I had a lot of stuff to get together, but this one was a little different. I had put half of the load on David Pals, my then co-director. He had joined me for v4 the year before, but in reality, we did not really separate duties like we did for v5. It was odd, trusting someone else for basically half the event. But that said, I still felt harried. Even though I had taken an extra week between Sea Otter and T.I.v5, it didn't help. I still felt discombobulated and the extra time meant nothing. This was when I decided as long as I was running Trans Iowa I would never go to another Sea Otter, and I haven't been back since 2009. April's total focus had to be on Trans Iowa for me to survive doing Trans Iowa. It was fortunate that I had David Pals helping or I don't know how it would have gone.

The entire set up for this Trans Iowa was super odd, and as it turned out, was a one-off Trans Iowa. If you were at v5, you had a very singular experience. The town of Williamsburg basically shut us out, and we only got the room in the upper part of the community center to use two weeks prior to Trans Iowa that year. That caused a ton of stress on both David and I.

Then the start was at a cemetery South of the town proper. The finish? At the end of a Level B road that turned into a city street on the Northeast side of the town. So, we never really used the town at all. Added to that was the fact that I stayed at David's residence in Marengo when he lived there. It was truly a hobo, homeless Trans Iowa.

But that particular Trans Iowa, overall, was a pretty sweet one. I'll touch on more of that, and some of the bad parts too, next week.