Floating An Idea

This t-shirt has a purpose.

 When I ended Trans Iowa back in 2018, some folks were asking for stories about the event to be told that were not well known. The history, if you will, but more than that. The back-stories, the unknown bits to anyone but a few insiders, and some things never told before. 

This has been my motivation since 2018 to write the series "Trans Iowa Stories" which I started posting every Sunday here starting almost exactly two years ago now. (6/2/19) If you've never seen any of those entries they are all being added to their own page which has a link underneath the header here. 

So, there are a number of 'fans' of this gravel event. They have been with me on this ride for years and continue to support my efforts to write up these stories. One of these folks is Ari Andonopoulous, a Trans Iowa rider that came to every Trans Iowa to ride since T.I.v4. He is also known as the leader of those guys and gals that were known as the "Slender Fungus Cycling Association" and some of these fellows still stay in touch with each other despite our far-flung locations from each other. Well, Ari came up with an idea and floated his thoughts to me to consider and to get my blessings on them. 

Ari would dearly love to see a book, a real book, mind you, come out of all these Trans Iowa stories when I am through with the series. He had this idea to produce a Trans Iowa related shirt and raise funds to put aside to help with this effort. As for me, I have always wanted to bring this series to a book form, and really, that was kind of the idea all along, as far as I was concerned. So, I am giving my blessings to the t-shirt design, this idea to raise funds, and perhaps get this book idea off the ground. Here are a few things to know about this:

• The T-Shirt Design: Ari's heart was set on doing a t-shirt featuring the last design for the header art for the Trans Iowa site which I came up with. I'm not going to get into fine details about this design here on this post- that story will come later in the T.I. Stories series, but this digitized version of my design was featured on bottle openers given to riders who rode in the last Trans Iowa. There was no t-shirt then, so this is a commemorative shirt which celebrates the last Trans Iowa ever. 
• The Money: The funds raised will go into an account and sit there until I get the series finished, which I estimate will be perhaps in back end of 2022. Ari will handle that end of things. The funds would help to pay for a production of a book. If all else fails, the idea is to take that money and donate it to a charity, so whatever the outcome, neither Ari, nor I, would benefit from the funds unless it was put towards the production of a book. So, of course, the book is the goal. But I thought everyone should know what might happen if a book doesn't happen for some reason. 
• The Vision: The book will not simply be a recreation directly of "Trans Iowa Stories". That would not make for a good book, even if it could be contained in one book, which I doubt it could. Instead, the plan is that the source material would be edited, condensed down to fit into one book, and with images edited down to something that would make sense. This then would go into a book which wouldn't be so long and riddled with so many images that it would be too cumbersome to interface with comfortably. That process of editing and design for the book is the point where money will have to start being applied to expedite things and get some quality injected into the project. I don't want to slap-dash this thing together and regret the outcome later. 
• How These Shirts Can Be Purchased: I will not be facilitating the sales end as far as the t-shirts go. That is all Ari's deal. He will be posting how you can buy them on his blog. He will be charging $20.00 + $7.00 shipping. He plans on using PayPal, but he also can be contacted via his blog, Instagram, or on Facebook if you need to make other arrangements or to ask questions.  

My part of this is to (a) promote the idea for Ari, and (b) to motivate myself to continue to push toward the goal to get a book out of this someday. Ari's goal is to help me out with that goal, and to celebrate Trans Iowa with this t-shirt. Details will be posted soon and I will have a link to that when Ari gets that up. Once again, I want to thank Ari for his idea here and for going ahead and getting all those shirts printed up. (Yes- he already has a bunch of these ready to go.) 

Thank you for considering this and I hope that you enjoy reading the Trans Iowa Stories so far. Any comments and/or suggestions are always welcome. LINK to Ari's post on the shirts is here.