Trans Iowa Stories: Planning For A Big Exit - Part 1

The digitized logo I came up with for T.I.v10.

 The running of the tenth Trans Iowa event was immediately on my mind post T.I.v9. I was excited, after I got over my emotional melt-down post T.I.v9, to get on with getting to "The End." I'm really not sure I can communicate how hopeful and expectant I was to be out from underneath doing Trans Iowa ever again as I prepped for "The End". Not only that, but I also had made headway toward getting out of being the proprietor, main writer, and main editor of "Twenty Nine Inches", the website I got tangled up with back about the same time I was starting up Trans Iowa with Jeff Kerkove. 

Ten years. Ten years of running around like a chicken with my head cut off, stressed out, missing friends, family, and other opportunities because of my feelings of responsibilities toward the website and Trans Iowa. The stress of getting people happy, satisfied, and taken care of. People that weren't always reciprocating in kind. All these "THINGS" were unnecessary to living a happy, peaceful life. I didn't care about being "Guitar Ted" if it meant being drained of life and energy most of the time. I blamed the website and Trans Iowa. It was time for me to get out of both. And to be honest, there was a third thing I was completely ignoring, and that was my job, which was probably the worst of the three things by far. 

Yeah, looking back I was probably having more fun doing the website and Trans Iowa, but the job paid me and the other two did not, so hacking out the 'unfruitful' elements of my life made more sense from a practical standpoint. But really, it probably all came down to my dissatisfaction with my job situation back then, but that's another story.

Anyway, the tenth edition, and probably more importantly to me, the last Trans Iowa, needed to go out with a bang. Fortunately I had a benefactor with regard to sponsorship for Trans Iowa in Lederman Bail Bonds. Yes.....a bail bond company. See, one of the principals of that company was a huge fan of gravel cycling and Trans Iowa. His name is Josh Lederman, and he participated in Trans Iowa from v9-v13 every year. So, for v10 he sponsored the event allowing me the freedom to do a few things to celebrate, what I was intending to be, the last Trans Iowa. Hats and t-shirts were designed up and made available for every attending rider. 

The original v10 header I designed on the computer.

The original logo/header design for this version of Trans Iowa was also a departure from the past. For all the years leading up to Trans Iowa v10, Jeff Kerkove would graciously design up a logo/header for the event. By the time T.I.v9 was over and I was thinking about v10 in late Summer of 2013, I figured maybe I should just design the thing myself. Jeff's life had taken a turn so far away from the event that I felt asking him was more of an annoyance to him than a way to keep his name attached to the event. Plus, this was going to be the last one. I thought it was high time to put my touch on the proceedings. So, one late afternoon in August, I came up with this digitized mess of oranges, reds, and dark hues and made it the 'temporary header' for the site. 

As we will find out, those oranges and reds with a silhouetted row of hills was a sort of prophetic scene for the actual event. But I have already alluded to this in a previous entry to this series. I will touch upon this again soon. That said, this became the de facto header for much of the lead-up to T.I.v10, although that was not my original intentions. The t-shirt design logo ended up as the header art, but that came later. That logo was inspired by a container trailer sitting on the East side of Waterloo that I would pass by every time I got a haircut at my local barber shop. It featured a stylized eagle with long, angular wings. I adapted this idea with a bit of the Van Halen band logo from the late 70's and voila! A new Trans Iowa logo! This logo became the inspiration for the v13 and v14 as header art as well. 

Still the best t-shirt for Trans Iowa, in my opinion, we ever came up with.

Along about this time I also started a retrospect look at Trans Iowa starting at the beginning and running up to 2013. It was called "Trans Iowa: Ten Years Of Tales", and the series ran up to the beginning of Trans Iowa v10 with one, or two at the end, entries every weekend. There were 49 entries in all, and since much of the meat of Trans Iowa was told in those stories, I have, in this series, tried to focus on more personal details and stories left untold. At any rate, the series started in 2013 was done as a way to recap the story of the event so that once I did lock the door and throw away the key, all of the past would have been fresh in many people's minds. It was just another way to celebrate ten years of doing Trans Iowa. 

In addition to all of that, prizing for this edition of Trans Iowa was off the hook. We had prizing from small shops where some of the T.I. riders worked, we had a bunch of stuff from Salsa Cycles, and more on top of that. The tables at the Grinnell Steakhouse were laden with goodies back in the meeting room awaiting the riders when we held the event in 2014. It was, by far, the biggest swag haul since v1, and that was by design. I wanted the riders to benefit and be a part of an unwitting 'last rodeo' ride for the event. 

Now all of this hub-bub seemed to telegraph something which I feel made this version of Trans Iowa more urgent to riders than maybe subsequent ones were. I don't know why, but Trans Iowa v10 holds the record for the highest number of starters. We had 106 take the start that year, and it remained as the only Trans Iowa to have over 100 starting at the roll-out. Was there a feeling amongst Trans Iowa fans that this would be the last one, or was it the whole 'decade' thing that made them all show up? Maybe it was the weather, which for a Trans Iowa was looking far more warm and Spring-like than many had in the past. Who knows? 

All I know is that I was excited to be in the process this time. I was looking forward to tying up all the details and pulling all the disparate parts together to pull off, what I hoped would be, the best Trans Iowa ever. Especially from a rider experience standpoint. Obviously, the weather was not under my control, but I was also very hopeful there that it would be a year that would be finish-able. Not a year truncated due to weather related issues, which would have really soured me on ending at ten editions of Trans Iowa. 

Next: Some more observations on the tenth edition of Trans Iowa.