RAGBRAI Co-Founder Karras Dead at 91

Tweet from Phillip Jones, co-writer of the story announcing John Karras' death.

 If you've read this blog for enough years, or are a pretty hardcore fan of cycling, you know what RAGBRAI is. I don't have to tell you anything more than the name. That's how big, how world-wide the ride has become. 

RAGBRAI was founded by two "Des Moines Register" writers named Donald Kaul and John Karras. The story about the death of Karras recently and the backstory on RAGBRAI can all be found here in the "Des Moines Register's" online site. 

Everything you thought you knew about RAGBRAI and stuff you may not have known is in that story at that link. (I learned a few things even!) So, I won't cover any of that here. Go click that link, read up on RAGBRAI and John Karras and come back... I'll wait.....

A (poor) scan of a 1980 article about the crossing of Iowa in a day by bicycle

Okay, so by the late 70's this RAGBRAI thing had gained some traction and it was quickly becoming a byword in Iowa. If you cycled, the general populace figured- well- you must be trainin' fer Ragby, right? And for competitive types who were training for crits and road races, well it got kind of annoying. 

As far as I can tell, this got into the craw of four area cyclists here and they pretty much said, "Pshaw! RAGBRAI takes a week to cross the state? We can do that in a day!", and then they, as the saying goes, put their money where their mouths were. They actually pulled of the stunt in the Summer of 1980. 

Well, if you've been listening and paying attention, you already know what is coming next. The story of how Trans Iowa got started is rooted in response to the "Iowa In A Day" stunt from 1980. Which is a response to crossing Iowa in seven days on RAGBRAI. So, in kind of a round-about way, John Karras and Donald Kaul's idea ended up inspiring us, Jeff Kerkove and I, into doing Trans Iowa. 

That event kicked off the modern gravel scene. That ended up becoming the number one biggest competitive and recreational cycling movement since the 1970's "Bike Boom". And that is pretty freaking amazing. 

And to think it all started out from a love of seeing Iowa from the seat of a bicycle.

RAGBRAI Co-Founder Karras Dead at 91

Tweet from Phillip Jones, co-writer of the story announcing John Karras' death.

 If you've read this blog for enough years, or are a pretty hardcore fan of cycling, you know what RAGBRAI is. I don't have to tell you anything more than the name. That's how big, how world-wide the ride has become. 

RAGBRAI was founded by two "Des Moines Register" writers named Donald Kaul and John Karras. The story about the death of Karras recently and the backstory on RAGBRAI can all be found here in the "Des Moines Register's" online site. 

Everything you thought you knew about RAGBRAI and stuff you may not have known is in that story at that link. (I learned a few things even!) So, I won't cover any of that here. Go click that link, read up on RAGBRAI and John Karras and come back... I'll wait.....

A (poor) scan of a 1980 article about the crossing of Iowa in a day by bicycle

Okay, so by the late 70's this RAGBRAI thing had gained some traction and it was quickly becoming a byword in Iowa. If you cycled, the general populace figured- well- you must be trainin' fer Ragby, right? And for competitive types who were training for crits and road races, well it got kind of annoying. 

As far as I can tell, this got into the craw of four area cyclists here and they pretty much said, "Pshaw! RAGBRAI takes a week to cross the state? We can do that in a day!", and then they, as the saying goes, put their money where their mouths were. They actually pulled of the stunt in the Summer of 1980. 

Well, if you've been listening and paying attention, you already know what is coming next. The story of how Trans Iowa got started is rooted in response to the "Iowa In A Day" stunt from 1980. Which is a response to crossing Iowa in seven days on RAGBRAI. So, in kind of a round-about way, John Karras and Donald Kaul's idea ended up inspiring us, Jeff Kerkove and I, into doing Trans Iowa. 

That event kicked off the modern gravel scene. That ended up becoming the number one biggest competitive and recreational cycling movement since the 1970's "Bike Boom". And that is pretty freaking amazing. 

And to think it all started out from a love of seeing Iowa from the seat of a bicycle.

Trans Iowa Stories: History Rediscovered

A downlaoded screen shot printed on typing paper of the original Trans Iowa site header

"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 going back to earlier Sunday posts on this blog. Thanks and enjoy!

We are going to go backward a bit today with today's chapter in the "Trans Iowa Stories". All the way back to the beginnings of the event. But first, a little background for context here.

As Trans Iowa developed and moved from year to year, I would find a binder, or heavy duty folder, and download all records, extra cues from recon, maps, drafts, waivers, and whatever else from a particular Trans Iowa into that binder or folder and put it on a shelf, or in a drawer, or wherever I could find space. After about four or five of these deals, I realized that these were historically important. At least to anyone like myself that cared about Trans Iowa. So, I made a concerted effort to find nicer binders and folders where necessary, (Trans Iowa v1 in particular), and then I put these things back on the shelf. I rarely ever looked back at the old stuff, so sometimes these folders and binders would get separated, one from the other.

As it happened, about two years ago, after the last Trans Iowa, I went looking for all the binders to account for them. I was only able to locate binders for v8-v14. The earlier ones seemed to be MIA. I figured that they had to be somewhere in the swirling vortex of detritus called Guitar Ted Productions. But where?

Well, a few weeks back I discovered the whereabouts of these documents. They had been put into a tub which was sitting out in my damp, leaky garage! Fortunately everything was dry, but you can bet this stuff came back inside that very day that I found it all. And by "all", I mean all of it. Versions 1-7 were in that tub. Awesome!

So, amongst the treasures of roster sheets, notes, maps, and cues, I found the first Trans Iowa book which had a complete downloaded hard copy of the v1 webpages, screen shot three days before the event! Note the "ticker" under the header which was counting down the time to the event. Then also, you can see when the last "news" entry was put up on April 16th, 2005. In fact, there are three or four pages worth of things which are all about the first Trans Iowa. It's fascinating reading, from my perspective, because all that stuff was straight out of Jeff Kerkove's mind. I had zero to do with how any of that was written then. The v2 and subsequent Trans Iowas were all my baby in that regard.

So, look closely at that header. What does that remind you of? Something straight out of 2020 perhaps? We had a "presenting sponsor", and speaking of sponsors, there were a full line up of "heavy hitters". These were no slouch sponsors! Tifosi eyewear, Ergon, Giant Bicycles, and more. But again, that was all due to Jeff's endurance racing/solo 24hr successes. It had nothing at all to do with gravel racing. 

I'll get into the whole sponsorship deal in future "Trans Iowa Stories", but for now, I just wanted to share this "find" that I had forgotten all about. Whether it was Jeff or myself that had the presence of mind to screen shot all this and print it later, I don't recall, but it is literally a snap-shot of a point in history that otherwise would be lost to the mists of time.

Next: New Things Part 2

Trans Iowa Stories: History Rediscovered

A downlaoded screen shot printed on typing paper of the original Trans Iowa site header

"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 going back to earlier Sunday posts on this blog. Thanks and enjoy!

We are going to go backward a bit today with today's chapter in the "Trans Iowa Stories". All the way back to the beginnings of the event. But first, a little background for context here.

As Trans Iowa developed and moved from year to year, I would find a binder, or heavy duty folder, and download all records, extra cues from recon, maps, drafts, waivers, and whatever else from a particular Trans Iowa into that binder or folder and put it on a shelf, or in a drawer, or wherever I could find space. After about four or five of these deals, I realized that these were historically important. At least to anyone like myself that cared about Trans Iowa. So, I made a concerted effort to find nicer binders and folders where necessary, (Trans Iowa v1 in particular), and then I put these things back on the shelf. I rarely ever looked back at the old stuff, so sometimes these folders and binders would get separated, one from the other.

As it happened, about two years ago, after the last Trans Iowa, I went looking for all the binders to account for them. I was only able to locate binders for v8-v14. The earlier ones seemed to be MIA. I figured that they had to be somewhere in the swirling vortex of detritus called Guitar Ted Productions. But where?

Well, a few weeks back I discovered the whereabouts of these documents. They had been put into a tub which was sitting out in my damp, leaky garage! Fortunately everything was dry, but you can bet this stuff came back inside that very day that I found it all. And by "all", I mean all of it. Versions 1-7 were in that tub. Awesome!

So, amongst the treasures of roster sheets, notes, maps, and cues, I found the first Trans Iowa book which had a complete downloaded hard copy of the v1 webpages, screen shot three days before the event! Note the "ticker" under the header which was counting down the time to the event. Then also, you can see when the last "news" entry was put up on April 16th, 2005. In fact, there are three or four pages worth of things which are all about the first Trans Iowa. It's fascinating reading, from my perspective, because all that stuff was straight out of Jeff Kerkove's mind. I had zero to do with how any of that was written then. The v2 and subsequent Trans Iowas were all my baby in that regard.

So, look closely at that header. What does that remind you of? Something straight out of 2020 perhaps? We had a "presenting sponsor", and speaking of sponsors, there were a full line up of "heavy hitters". These were no slouch sponsors! Tifosi eyewear, Ergon, Giant Bicycles, and more. But again, that was all due to Jeff's endurance racing/solo 24hr successes. It had nothing at all to do with gravel racing. 

I'll get into the whole sponsorship deal in future "Trans Iowa Stories", but for now, I just wanted to share this "find" that I had forgotten all about. Whether it was Jeff or myself that had the presence of mind to screen shot all this and print it later, I don't recall, but it is literally a snap-shot of a point in history that otherwise would be lost to the mists of time.

Next: New Things Part 2

Minus Ten Review 2009-8

Those are not reproductions of Repack flyers. Those are the real deal there.

Ten years ago this week on the blog I was busy recapping my Frostbike 2009 adventures. This was the first Frostbike that I did strictly as "media" for "Twenty Nine Inches". I had been up to the show for '03-'08 as well, but I was a gatherer of info for the shop those years as much as I was doing things for this blog and maybe my earliest offerings on other websites.

In fact, this was my second year flying solo to Frostbike. Previous to this I was going up for one day only with my boss from the shop where I work. But this was really the beginning of the years of crazy Frostbike hi-jinx, of the sort I mentioned on here yesterday, and in this case, the first visit to Mike's Bikes, a former shop in Northfield, Minnesota.

Mike's was a treasure of old stuff and memorabilia. Mike, the owner, was a contemporary of Gary Fisher, Joe Breeze, and Charlie Kelly. Mike worked in the San Francisco area at a shop, and sometimes did work for these MTB luminaries. Mike also attended many of the early MTB rides and organized events. He had the posters and flyers to prove it, along with some historical Polaroids and film camera shots depicting different scenes of the day. Being a fan of history, and of course, bicycles, I was taken with this immediately.

Now there was more than just nostalgia. There were new friends, beer, pizza, and bike riding. Yes......bike riding indoors. Things got crazy and we were careening down the long, narrow aisles of the shop amongst racks of bikes, accessories, and then through the mechanics bay, a hard left to the back room, then a hard left through a propped open glass door, down a ramp, through a narrow hallway, another door, and then a hard left to the store proper again. Over and over, we made laps, switching out bikes along the way, and having a hoot.

Making my way into the mechanic's bay.

Inserted into the Frostbike ramblings that week was a small post about a new site for Trans Iowa History. Originally this site was going to be the landing page for "Gravel Grinder News", but I ended up liking Blogger better for that and swapped things over to the Wordpress blog for the Trans Iowa stuff. That site was also considered as a new home for this blog when I set up the address, so it is kind of a kludge when it comes to an URL address. Anyway.....

I felt the need to get the history site going since there had been four Trans Iowas by that point in 2009 and I realized that if I didn't start documenting things I was going to lose stuff and forget a lot more. In fact, T.I.v1 documents were nearly lost and it was only through trying to get things correct for the history that I found the stuff in the end. By the way, I have a folder, or notebook with all the documents as they were put away after each running of a Trans Iowa. So, there are scraps of notes, maps, dead ends for routes, and more secret stuff I still haven't decided to release at this point.

I also realized that stuff that had appeared on Jeff's blog, (I wasn't blogging yet in late 2004), may end up getting lost, so I copy and pasted that to a hard drive and I do have that stuff as well. I probably should print it to paper at some point, anyway.....

So, I had been working on all of this back in 2008, with "Gravel Grinder News" getting formatted, and the History site for Trans Iowa being done simultaneously after my kids were put down for bed at night. Between that, my day job, and doing the 29"er site, it ended up taking months to get to the point where T.I.v4 had finally been added and I could release the site to public view.

Upon publishing the site, a few Trans Iowa nut jobs took a look, but this site went largely unnoticed for years, and honestly it still isn't looked at very often. On a good day it gets five views and can go for three days at a crack with no activity. But, it is there if you care to look, and since I like history, I am happy that it is there.

Minus Ten Review 2009-8

Those are not reproductions of Repack flyers. Those are the real deal there.

Ten years ago this week on the blog I was busy recapping my Frostbike 2009 adventures. This was the first Frostbike that I did strictly as "media" for "Twenty Nine Inches". I had been up to the show for '03-'08 as well, but I was a gatherer of info for the shop those years as much as I was doing things for this blog and maybe my earliest offerings on other websites.

In fact, this was my second year flying solo to Frostbike. Previous to this I was going up for one day only with my boss from the shop where I work. But this was really the beginning of the years of crazy Frostbike hi-jinx, of the sort I mentioned on here yesterday, and in this case, the first visit to Mike's Bikes, a former shop in Northfield, Minnesota.

Mike's was a treasure of old stuff and memorabilia. Mike, the owner, was a contemporary of Gary Fisher, Joe Breeze, and Charlie Kelly. Mike worked in the San Francisco area at a shop, and sometimes did work for these MTB luminaries. Mike also attended many of the early MTB rides and organized events. He had the posters and flyers to prove it, along with some historical Polaroids and film camera shots depicting different scenes of the day. Being a fan of history, and of course, bicycles, I was taken with this immediately.

Now there was more than just nostalgia. There were new friends, beer, pizza, and bike riding. Yes......bike riding indoors. Things got crazy and we were careening down the long, narrow aisles of the shop amongst racks of bikes, accessories, and then through the mechanics bay, a hard left to the back room, then a hard left through a propped open glass door, down a ramp, through a narrow hallway, another door, and then a hard left to the store proper again. Over and over, we made laps, switching out bikes along the way, and having a hoot.

Making my way into the mechanic's bay.

Inserted into the Frostbike ramblings that week was a small post about a new site for Trans Iowa History. Originally this site was going to be the landing page for "Gravel Grinder News", but I ended up liking Blogger better for that and swapped things over to the Wordpress blog for the Trans Iowa stuff. That site was also considered as a new home for this blog when I set up the address, so it is kind of a kludge when it comes to an URL address. Anyway.....

I felt the need to get the history site going since there had been four Trans Iowas by that point in 2009 and I realized that if I didn't start documenting things I was going to lose stuff and forget a lot more. In fact, T.I.v1 documents were nearly lost and it was only through trying to get things correct for the history that I found the stuff in the end. By the way, I have a folder, or notebook with all the documents as they were put away after each running of a Trans Iowa. So, there are scraps of notes, maps, dead ends for routes, and more secret stuff I still haven't decided to release at this point.

I also realized that stuff that had appeared on Jeff's blog, (I wasn't blogging yet in late 2004), may end up getting lost, so I copy and pasted that to a hard drive and I do have that stuff as well. I probably should print it to paper at some point, anyway.....

So, I had been working on all of this back in 2008, with "Gravel Grinder News" getting formatted, and the History site for Trans Iowa being done simultaneously after my kids were put down for bed at night. Between that, my day job, and doing the 29"er site, it ended up taking months to get to the point where T.I.v4 had finally been added and I could release the site to public view.

Upon publishing the site, a few Trans Iowa nut jobs took a look, but this site went largely unnoticed for years, and honestly it still isn't looked at very often. On a good day it gets five views and can go for three days at a crack with no activity. But, it is there if you care to look, and since I like history, I am happy that it is there.

Minus Ten Review- 49

From the inaugural Trans Iowa- Jeff Kerkove. (Photographer unknown)

Ten years ago here I was floating the idea about doing a historical archive for Trans Iowa events. The real story here is that I was already in the midst of putting that together. I wasn't going to release it though unless I got feedback that it was something folks wanted.

This all came at a time when I was doing some rearranging behind the scenes. First, I was in the throes of possibly not doing anything with "Twenty Nine Inches" or the "Crooked Cog Network", which was started by Tim Grahl and which he was, or had already, walked away from.

Things behind the scenes at those Grahl owned sites were in total chaos. No one knew what was going on and Grahl was unresponsive to our requests for information. I ended up getting a few short replies regarding a possibility of my buying the site "Twenty Nine Inches", but after I refused to pay anything, the site was ceded over to me sometime in the beginning of 2009.

Then there was the "Gravel Grinder News" calendar, which I had hosted on Blogger, and I was considering changing that to something else. Originally the site was the Trans Iowa site, as I nixed plans for a new Guitar Ted Productions site which I was going to move over to Wordpress. That site became the Trans Iowa History site in the end. The GGN site had "transiowahistory.blogspot.com" as its' address, (or something along those lines, I cannot find that now), and that was kind of not ideal. I had intended all along to do a proper GGN addressed site, and eventually, in 2013, it became a reality.

But anyway- the Trans Iowa History site got a big thumbs up and it still exists. But you'll notice the address is "guitarted1961" and now you know why. Well, that story and I had no clue what I was doing! I've learned a trick or two in ten years, but back then, it should be pointed out that I had only been writing and doing stuff on the internet for three years. 

 

Minus Ten Review- 49

From the inaugural Trans Iowa- Jeff Kerkove. (Photographer unknown)

Ten years ago here I was floating the idea about doing a historical archive for Trans Iowa events. The real story here is that I was already in the midst of putting that together. I wasn't going to release it though unless I got feedback that it was something folks wanted.

This all came at a time when I was doing some rearranging behind the scenes. First, I was in the throes of possibly not doing anything with "Twenty Nine Inches" or the "Crooked Cog Network", which was started by Tim Grahl and which he was, or had already, walked away from.

Things behind the scenes at those Grahl owned sites were in total chaos. No one knew what was going on and Grahl was unresponsive to our requests for information. I ended up getting a few short replies regarding a possibility of my buying the site "Twenty Nine Inches", but after I refused to pay anything, the site was ceded over to me sometime in the beginning of 2009.

Then there was the "Gravel Grinder News" calendar, which I had hosted on Blogger, and I was considering changing that to something else. Originally the site was the Trans Iowa site, as I nixed plans for a new Guitar Ted Productions site which I was going to move over to Wordpress. That site became the Trans Iowa History site in the end. The GGN site had "transiowahistory.blogspot.com" as its' address, (or something along those lines, I cannot find that now), and that was kind of not ideal. I had intended all along to do a proper GGN addressed site, and eventually, in 2013, it became a reality.

But anyway- the Trans Iowa History site got a big thumbs up and it still exists. But you'll notice the address is "guitarted1961" and now you know why. Well, that story and I had no clue what I was doing! I've learned a trick or two in ten years, but back then, it should be pointed out that I had only been writing and doing stuff on the internet for three years.