The Summer That Changed Everything

  In celebration of the twentieth year of this blog, I have a few tales to tell. This post is one of them. This series will occur off and on throughout this anniversary year, I hope to illuminate some behind-the-scenes stories and highlights from the blog during this time. Enjoy!

 

 

One Summer that really was nuts and changed the trajectory of this blog and my life was the Summer of 2008. I was reminded of this by my recent visit with Ari Andonopoulos because 2008 was the year I met him in the Spring at Trans Iowa v4.  

That Summer was crazy. It rained, stormed, and all sorts of damage was done. The Parkersburg tornado destroyed that town and I was a part of the clean-up for the disaster. There was record flooding in the Mid-West and Iowa was at the epicenter. On top of all of those things I was deep into my reviewing tasks and this facet of my bicycling life had grown more intense. I won't mention my family and job at the bike shop, which were requiring a lot of attention and deservedly so. 

It never happened

One of my biggest regrets in cycling was getting pulled into the Big Wheeled Ballyhoo 29"er/MTB festival which was an idea of mine but was co-opted by the founder of the "Twentynine Inches" site and twisted into something I never would have agreed to be a part of had I known what he had in mind. 

It was a difficult situation since I had been promised a salary, (which never materialized) for my work on his site and since this was a part of my "employment", I felt obligated to follow the "boss's" lead. I was to be the "boots on the ground" organizer and this fellow I was associated with was supposed to be doing logistical work in the background. Things like getting sponsors, brands to show up, and basically promoting the event. 

Well, that all fell through because this guy flaked out and by 2009 he had nothing to do with the 29"er site or anything else he had created on the internet either, leaving myself and a group of others that had believed in his empty promises to flounder. Great! This all started to unravel in the Summer of 2008. 

So, I wasn't getting paid, I had no back-end support, and we had catastrophic flooding at the venue site in Decorah, Iowa just two weeks out from the planned festival. With 12 feet of water, or more, flowing over our planned expo and camping sites, I decided to pull the plug on the event. I was getting a LOT of inquiries from would-be vendors that wanted to make other plans if the flooding was going to put the festival in jeopardy. I had contacted the trail group in Decorah who weren't very helpful to me in making any decision, I think because they really wanted this, but weren't willing to, or incapable of understanding my end of the thing and what vendors were needing from this. 

It all was put on my shoulders and all that despite my trying to involve others in the decision. So, I made the call. I wasn't going to cotton to any bellyaching about it afterward because everyone had a chance to have input, but pretty much waffled on their chance to be heard one way or the other. 

The day the Ballyhoo was originally planned, I rode those trails in Decorah and found some concerns.

Even after I made the call, there was obviously some disappointment, but there were no complaints, and certainly no one had voiced concerns over not being consulted in the decision process. Also, after I had decided to go to Decorah on the very day we would have had the Ballyhoo and ride, I found several concerns over road and trail conditions. Not to mention the planned expo area and camping area were still a disaster area with flood silt and soft grounds. 

There was no question I had made the correct decision. However; after I had written a post about my ride up there I had one very pointed criticism of my take, how I was completely wrong about my assessments, and that I should not "...consider Decorah for any future events". This was voiced by a singular person in an email who was, (and may still be, I don't know), a very influential person in the MTB community in Decorah. 

Well, we had been putting on Trans Iowa out of Decorah for two years at that point and v5 was coming up. Since the emailer said that I should not consider Decorah for any future events, I granted that wish. That person doesn't need to be "outed", and that's all I have to say about this individual. But this is the reason Trans Iowa eventually ended up in Williamsburg, Iowa, and when that city pretty much shunned us, it became the eventual reason for Trans Iowa to be held out of Grinnell, Iowa. 

The Ballyhoo idea ended up becoming a big disappointment to me. I tried to revive the idea for the following year in Nebraska in a format I was more in tune with, but it all was for naught. I ended up having to miss the event due to an illness in the family and then it snowed on everyone that did go to the event. That sucked the wind out of my sails for that idea and I was consumed by other things heading into 2010 anyway. 

Had the weather been good and the Ballyhoo been a success, had my boss at the 29"er site not flaked out, had that certain individual hit "delete" instead of "send", who knows where I'd be today. I only know that the events of the Summer of 2008 were monumental in sending me down the path I ended up on.