Trans Iowa Stories: Gearing Up For The Last Time

"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!  

As things wound down to the start of the last Trans Iowa, I was busy as usual tying up the loose ends, posting communications, mostly via this blog, and I was really only worried about one thing.

That was that no one would get seriously hurt or injured. 

Really, that was all I pretty much thought about in the final days leading up to the event. I felt like I had rolled the dice 13 previous times and came up a winner. I never had a rider die. I never had a rider get permanently injured. I never had anyone get hit by a car. That sort of thing. I felt as though that the law of averages was going to fall the wrong way eventually though. I was afraid  I'd see the thing I feared most about running this event- someone getting hit and killed by a car driver. 

Sample of waivers

I was overwhelmed at times by these thoughts. I know- some of you might think having waivers, insurance, and whatnot is a barrier that you can hide behind and live worry free from those concerns, and maybe some can, I know I could not. It haunted me. I was tormented every year by these thoughts. 

I just hoped and I prayed that one more time I would escape having to deal with a nightmare. And looking back on these times, those were some pretty selfish thoughts. Now, that isn't to say that I didn't care about the riders. I did. A LOT. And that was the other side of the thing about Trans Iowa. The care I had for everyone involved in the event. 

Some people can spread their attention across a lot of people. I am not one of those folks. I tend to be rather reclusive. I can do without a lot of interpersonal relating, but that isn't to say I don't like people- I do. Just in small doses. A little goes a long way for me, and so maybe that's a base reason why I didn't like big events and still don't. That's maybe an underlying reason for keeping Trans Iowa "small", although the entire format of the event is not reproducible on a larger scale, so there is that overriding reason. 

The all-important sets of cue sheets. Here separated out for the start, CP#1, and CP#2.

 At any rate, caring for around 100-150 people over a weekend was draining for me. Really draining. It took a couple of years away from event production for me to really see how much it was drawing me down. So, trying to muster the energy it required to do this last Trans Iowa- for me- was a big lift. And having the whole "how to address "The End" thing on top of it? Uggh! 

So, when it came down to it, I think a lot of my defense mechanisms kicked in when I set off to facilitate the last Trans Iowa. In many ways I was sort of an outsider looking in. It was weird and this came out in several ways throughout the weekend. 

Next: A Rough Start