Trans Iowa Stories: A Brief History Of Numbers And Cues

Joe Frost, a v2 rider, showing his v2 number plate. Image by Jeff Kerkove

"Trans Iowa Stories" is an every Sunday post which helps tell the stories behind the event. You can check out other posts about this subject by going back to earlier Sunday posts on this blog. Thanks and enjoy!

Look around any bicycle racers "bike room", wherever in their abode that may be, and you are likely to find the most common "souvenir" from events hanging somewhere. Race/Event number plates are often saved and displayed by many racers. I've got number plates going back to my mountain bike racing days in the 1990's hanging from the ceiling of my Lab. I know other friends of mine who display theirs as well. It's a common thing to do.

So, when I mentioned something about race numbers and Trans Iowa on social media recently, it got some interest. I figured that since this was an important part of the ephemera surrounding cycling events in general, and also adding in cue sheets in particular to Trans Iowa, that a full on post about it all might be of interest.

Since Jeff Kerkove was pretty much in charge of things concerning Trans Iowas v1 and v2, he being a semi-Pro racer and all, our number plates reflected this. They were the "legit" type with the name "Trans Iowa" on them and they had a yellow background on a white plate with black numerals. Apparently they were the same for both v1 and v2 according to the images I have been able to find showing them. I have no "extras" in my stash to prove this though. But at any rate, this was , once again, a small but important part of the puzzle for the new event which made it seem legitimate.

Once Jeff had been courted by Ergon, that beginning at the middle of 2006, he left more and more of the details for Trans Iowa in my hands. Besides much of the main route finding, I then had smaller details including what to do about number plates on my "to do" list. Owing to the fact that we were then not taking entry fees, the cost to put on Trans Iowa became something I had become keenly aware of. Previous to this, I had little cash outlay, seeing how Jeff had handled most of the financial end of the event. But buying number plates seemed "extravagant" to me when, perhaps, a simpler solution costing less might be had.

This led to me finding stickers which triathletes used for their events and cost far less. I ended up getting a metric-ton of these and they were used for v3, v4, and partially, at least, for v6.

A Trans Iowa v3 rig with the number "70" on the top tube.

The number "178" on Steve Fuller's T.I.v6 rig.

The stickers weren't disliked, and I never really heard any complaints about them from the riders. Not that there weren't any, I just never heard any. Many stuck the sticker on their helmet. Many on their bikes. I recall seeing bikes in later Trans Iowa events that still were sporting their sticker numbers, so I guess that was one way that riders saved those.

The sticker numbers ended up being kind of a pain since there was almost no way to see a number unless you are almost on top of them in the event. For instance, identifying a rider for race commentary purposes, or just for keeping track of folks in groups, was impossible. It kind of was put into focus when in T.I.v5's run up we got a sponsorship for race number plates. Having those and seeing how it made keeping track of folks easier, made me rethink the sticker thing. Plus, I was running out of them by T.I.v6 and I needed to do something about that.

You can clearly see an example of the T.I.v5 plates here on Joe Meiser's bike from CP#1 of that year.

Trans Iowa v5 was singular in many ways, as I have said, but we are talking number plates. It was the only time we had "sponsored" number plates and it was the last time we did that. These were sent to us and I wish I could remember which sponsor did this, but right now I cannot recall who it was. And maybe David arranged for these and that is why I have little to no memory of this. Could very well be....

Anyway, they featured  "Trans Iowa" over the number in red, a black numeral, and a red font saying "Version 5" underneath. Again, I have no extra examples to draw any info from. But they were nice and this plate greatly influenced my getting back into Tyvek number plates again starting full-on for Trans Iowa v8.

Which leads me to a mystery about T.I.v6. We know we used some stickers for numbers but there is some indication that we also may have used some Tyvek plates as well. I have no visual evidence for that, but records on the blog here seem to point to that.

Thanks to Matt Jennings for this showing v7-v14 plates.  This is what sparked this post, actually.

Trans Iowa v7 was unique in that we didn't use numbers at all! In fact, the idea for v7 came from two different places. First of all, if you grew up in Iowa it was common to see seed bags for corn or beans flopping in the wind from barbed wire fences. Farmers seemed to fill their planters and then just fold the empty bags over a wire and leave them to be destroyed by the wind. Later, when plastic bags became common, these were also seen flopping off fences. Now days seeds come in plastic containers, so this practice has disappeared from the Iowa landscape.

I also was aware of how these flopping bags from fence lines were similar to Buddhist prayer flags. Jeff Kerkove had taken a trip to ride in Nepal once and had a few images of this which he shared. I combined the two ideas and suggested we do "prayer flags" for the riders. David Pals loved the idea and made it happen.

Originally, our idea was to have riders tie off their prayer flag to a fence where they DNF'ed, if they did, and we'd have these flags fluttering across Iowa, but that was unrealistic of us to expect that from anyone, of course. It is noteworthy to make the point that there were three, maybe four colors for these, the most prominent being yellow. If you have one that is another color, it is rare.

Then after v7 I dipped into a stash of Tyvek number plates that were sitting in a box where I used to work. No one was ever going to use these which likely dated from the late 80's/early 90's. So, I availed myself of them and started the practice of personalizing them for each rider. These plates were huge, by the way, and very easy to spot from a distance, which made tracking riders really much easier. Also, I had a ton of them to use, which kept costs down for a few versions of Trans Iowa.

But starting with v11, I found I was running a bit shy in numbers, and instead of using duplicates, which I had, I ended up supplementing the old plates with newer Tyvek plates which were smaller in size, but otherwise similar in every other way. You can see in the image above where a v11 plate is smaller and a v12 plate is back to the old size. I kept mixing sizes as needed until v13 and v14 where I had to go to using the newer size for everyone, or almost everyone.

As far as style, well, I mixed styles within years even, so for instance- I might have done single speed class rider's plates one way, the Women's plates another, and everyone else may have had a third different way. There was no rhyme or reason to it. I just did whatever I felt like doing. And of course, since they were all done by hand, no two are alike.

Trans Iowa v2 cues

Cue Sheets: 

Now cue sheets were also something that varied wildly over the first half of Trans Iowa's run. Originally we fashioned these to be similar to what Mike Curiak and his helpers were using for the Great Divide Race out West. We didn't need to use a lot of detail since Iowa roads are typically marked by "street signs", and so we made our cues a lot less detailed than the Great Divide race used as a result.

This changed over time though, and as cues were changed, the formatting changed as well. I have been digging through old records here and I have noted a few odd things about old cue sheets which, frankly, I was a bit surprised by. I also had thought that the latter years type of cues had been used earlier than they were.

The first thing that struck me was how big those early cue sheets were. They were ginormous compared to the last cues sheets I used! This persisted until T.I.v8, but not quite as huge as the first couple of years cues were. There were several formats used also, which I found strange. Part of this is due to splitting up the cue sheet duties between David Pals and I for versions 4-7.

The paper was also pretty much just your garden variety of typing paper, or printer paper which could be had free or nearly free. In fact, the first Trans Iowa cues were printed off on the old shop printer at Europa using paper meant for the recycling bin! Jeff and I hand cut those cues using an ancient paper cutter at the shop, which was also done for v2 as well.

Due to the snafu with v3's cues, I redid them, printed them on a ratty old printer hooked up to my PC, and cut them with scissors, if I recall correctly, all in my home. Starting with v4-v6 I had not a lot of hands on work with cues since that was David's domain. So, my memories of those cues is cloudy, as far as production of them. I do know, from looking at the examples I have, that every year they looked different from versions 4-7.

Josh Lederman's cue set from a past TI. (Route obscured by GT )

Starting with v8, the Trans Iowa cues fell into the format I used through to v14. I found this template when I searched for that on the internet from a now defunct randonnuer cycling site which had a few formats free to download at the time. I looked at the ones available and settled in on this as the way that made the most sense to my mind. Ironically I had seen the "tulip" style sheets and I wasn't impressed by them enough to choose that format over what I ended up with. So, my style came off as unique in the gravel world, since to my knowledge no one else ever used this format for gravel racing. The tulip style ended up being the most widely used type. Probably due to a romanticized view of cycling, and mostly that this style is the most easily found format today.

At any rate, I used that old, rare style and never veered away from it. In fact, I still use it for the C.O.G. 100. My feedback over the various Trans Iowa events and from a wide variety of riders has told me it works well. So, don't fix what ain't broke, right? That's my take on these cues.

 The first couple of years of the last format were printed here at G-Ted HQ with me cutting cues sheets up from card stock on the previously mentioned paper cutter from my old job. I also handled all the stuffing of those cues into their bags. Then, oh about T.I.v11 or so, former finisher and veteran of Trans Iowa, Mike Johnson offered to pay for the cue sheet printing, paper, and he and his wife Amy, along with N.Y. Roll or Jeremy Fry at times, would help with the stuffing of cues into their bags. We had that system down pat for the last few years, for sure. Thanks to Mike, Amy, N.Y, Roll, and Jeremy for all the help with that in the years they helped. What a huge relief that was to have those folks as resources!

I always took a lot of heat in the latter years for using cues and I heard the "I'll never do a Guitar Ted event because he uses those stupid cue sheets" plenty of times. Well, there are various event types for a reason. Go do something where you don't have to figure out where you are going then. I never cared what they said, and still don't.

In fact, besides the distance, I'm pretty sure my number plates and cue sheets kept a lot of people from entering Trans Iowa. I'm actually pretty happy about that. Why? Because if silly reasons like using cue sheets and cheesy numbers kept you from coming to Trans Iowa, well you probably didn't belong in an event like that in the first place.

Next: I'll get back into the run-up for Trans Iowa v8.