Trans Iowa Stories: A Tale of Two Trans Iowas - Part 1

GT giving the riders the lowdown at the Pre-Race Meat-Up for v12 (Image by Scott Sumpter)

  "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 clicking on the "Trans Iowa Stories" link under the blog header. Thanks and enjoy! 

Friday at the pre-race event for the twelfth Trans Iowa I was able to pass on the news about the re-route past Checkpoint #1. That was just the beginning of troubles both known and unknown which came out of this event for me. The riders were insulated from much of this, however; and many never knew anything was amiss until well afterward, if they ever knew at all. 

On the one hand, the event was a smashing success in terms of rider's experiences. But as things unfolded during the event, a slew of circumstances arose which caused me no end of stress. And if that wasn't enough, two more things which happened during this edition of Trans Iowa were revealed which also were a kick in the gut. One I found out about almost immediately afterward, but another thing that happened didn't turn up until after Trans Iowa v13 happened. Both of these things were contributors to my decision to end the event eventually. But I am getting ahead of myself here.

The point is that Trans Iowa v12 is really a tale of two events. On the one hand, it was an overwhelmingly successful, record breaking event which was probably one of- if not the most- popular Trans Iowa ever. It featured a near breaking of the mythical 24 hour barrier. There were a lot of good times along the way, both from my standpoint and from the riders as well. But the other side of this event was one of conflicts, injury, hooliganism, and hiccups in the event process. All told, this Trans Iowa took a huge toll on me. The events of my life going in, (recently recounted in a previous 'Trans Iowa Stories' post here) and the whirlwind of activities I had lined up immediately afterward made it so that I was torn to pieces emotionally and stretched physically further than I should have allowed. 

So, in the next few editions of this series I am going to tell the tales which were the good and the bad concerning this event. I have already covered the re-route, but that was just the tip of the iceberg. I will walk through all of the good and the bad in chronological order. Although a couple of these things that happened I was unaware of at the time, I will insert those stories in where they belong as they happened. In fact, the two stories I have to tell which I was unaware of actually happened during the evening of the Pre-Race Meat-Up.

George Keslin (foreground-left) helped many times at the registration table for Trans Iowa

First, an unprecedented and rather disturbing event happened in one of the motels we used for Trans Iowa racers and support people. Someone's support guy had a bit too much to drink and proceeded to vomit all over one of the hallways leading to a hot tub area. This happened to be where a Slender Fungus member and Trans Iowa super-fan/rider/veteran of the event, Ari Andonopoulous was staying. He related to me shortly after Trans Iowa v12 that a motel worker was so upset by the mess that she was crying. 

I was appalled! I routinely had to sign off for any possible damages to rooms and motel property to get the discounted rate for riders to use for lodging at Trans Iowa. I guessed that I could have been tagged for extra cleaning costs, but thankfully, I was not. However; what I was most upset about was that someone made a very poor decision, then left the consequences of their actions to someone else to clean up- literally and figuratively. Having been a person that has had to clean up a drunk's vomit on occasion, I know how awful a job that can be. So this really was shocking to me- that someone would be so careless and thoughtless to do such a thing at Trans Iowa. I was extremely disappointed by this.

The next thing I found out about post-Trans Iowa v13 when a thread was going around about that event on Facebook. In it a T.I.v12 rider suggested that everyone riding any future T.I.'s do 'what all the leaders were doing' which he claimed was a trick for navigation. No names were named, but this individual outed himself as one that used this 'trick'. The trick, which was to take the first set of cues and download them into a GPS device and then use them as navigation prompts, meant that riders didn't have to read the cues. They just listened for the prompt to turn and looked to see which way on their device and rode on. 

Riders were taking these notes and downloading them into their GPS devices.

This clearly was in violation of my 'no GPS' rule, and when I found out my heart sank. On one hand, I should have known, right? Navigation by cue sheets is hard, and people do not like it, but that was a big part of Trans Iowa's challenge. To circumvent that, even for just 40-50 miles, was a huge advantage for fast guys that could afford GPS devices. The time to plug in 50 miles worth of cues wasn't a big deal when you had the cues in hand 8 hours ahead of the start. 

Once again I had to make an adjustment, and this was one of my biggest regrets concerning Trans Iowa. I consider handing out the first set of cues before the start at the Pre-Race my biggest failure in putting on Trans Iowa. I wish I had not done that for as long as I had, especially when I saw my change for T.I.v14 in action. The difference was huge and it made for a different sort of event. A better event, if you ask me. 

While it is true that I didn't experience these negatives during T.I.v12, these two things came out of T.Iv12, and it just so happens that chronologically, they happened at about the same time. Both were two more chinks in the armor against stopping Trans Iowa. Two more things that contributed to the 'pile' of things on the negative side of the ledger. 

But when you do something long enough, you are going to experience the fall-out from decisions made by people that you'd rather not have happen. Things that you had not considered would, or that might happen. Your trust in people erodes, and your anxiety levels increase. But that is not all. There are the mistakes unforeseen, and chance happenings which can also rear their heads and make you crazy too. That also happened during this Trans Iowa........

Next: A Tale of Two Trans Iowas - Part 2