1200 Miles & a Cup O' Dirt & a little Mississippi Mud!

Take the year long challenge of completing a dozen or half a dozen dirty centuries and join the fun in December! Everybody who completes this challenge will be rewarded with a custom hand-made stoneware mug as well as be in a drawing for other prizes. Read the FAQ for details, and welcome to the fun!

I've increased the fun to give some more folks a shot at the cup - a bit 'watered down' - We'll have the 1200 Mile Cup O' Dirt and a 600 Mile Cup O' Mississippi Mud and new in 2008 is the 1/2 Liter O' Dirt - earned by completing 12 metric centuries in the year! A special award will be presented to anyone completing either a dirty century or metric century in each month of the year.

Thursday, July 31, 2008

One-A-Month Club

A recent (07/30/08) note from Steve Fuller:

100.01 miles. Went with Tom Anderson through Granger, Woodward and to
Ogden and back, with a side trip over towards Dallas Center and a bit
of pavement to finish it all off. Ride time of 6:48:change. Saw fox,
deer, and a lot of small frogs. - Steve "Mr Famous RAGBRAI Guy" Fuller

Sounds like Steve and Tom are still looking for that awesome One-A-Month Club prize at the end of the year. Whatever that is... Hey Sumpter - how about throwing in a few "Bikeiowa" Calenders for the kids??? Or maybe I should be asking Rick Paulous... were those from Bikeiowa.com or Bikeiowa.org? I'm so confused.

Anyway - congratulations on keeping up the streak!

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

RAGBRAI, Leadville and Lance.

While Big Johny and Kat were riding gravel, racking up metric centuries - I quote, from July 24th:

Dave -
Kat, Mike Johnson, Chris Congdon, Paul Meyermann, Pete B. and myself went
over to Colesburg and did their epic gravel race course twice - 80 miles
of Leadville test - we all passed with colors.
I'm having trouble keeping track of the other guys rides, but Kat and I
should have 11 now.
Thanks,
John

And then this from July 27th:

Dave - Welcome back from the Ragu. Can't hardly beat it for a vacation
- riding your bike with 1000's of others in celebration of our sport. I
hope the weather was good and all went well for you and yours.
Kat and I have another - and last 100 - before our trip to the top of
the world. That makes 12 for each of us. Thanks for doing this.
See you at the coffee shop
John

To John and Kat I say - congratulations! I'll buy you a cup of coffee in Leadville! You should be VERY well prepared with all those miles! We'll see you next Thursday! - Dave

Meanwhile there was a little ride across the state - on pavement (alas) but a fun ride none-the-less. Fuller, not wanting to take the easy way out - or across - packed up the kitchen sink and rode fully loaded out to Mo Valley and then across the dang state - and picked up a little press on his way. While he did get plenty of miles in - they WERE on pavement - and he's still got to get out on dirt to maintain his membership in the ONE-A-MONTH club - Good luck Fuller! Click below for his article!


Fuller isn't the only one that crossed the state last week (ha) - the Mable's were at it too - hauling not gear, but kids. A nice wheel came by at just the right speed on Tuesday... as Lance passed buy our train. With just the right slope of road (in otherwords - none) and the right wind conditions - it allowed us to hop on his wheel. I wasn't quite sure it was him at first - he has hairy legs (gasp!) but the look from a guy riding with him told me that my intuition was correct - Never at a loss for words, I gave him a little smack talk - then was treated to "The Look". Know I know what Ulrich felt like. That being said - we went with him for another 6 miles or so. He was kind enough to make sure we hung to his wheel and even went back to chat with Dee and the kids.

Lance mentioned our rig at his speech at the Styx concert - and we appeared in a Duffy cartoon on Thursday - what fun! No doubt we'll all remember the day we rode with Lance!

Well - on to Leadville! We'll hope there are about 8 Cup entries after the little 100 mile race on the 9th - Stay tuned!

Tuesday, July 08, 2008

A few late June and early July additions!

If my math is correct - I'm giving away a couple more Cups this year- This marks our first Full Cup O' Dirt awarded this year to Dennis Grelk - and by July, no less! Impressive - that dude likes to ride! He's half way to a Half Liter O' Dirt too -let's see if he earns that as well! He could have a matching set - one for the office and one for the home!

It looks like Norbert has earned a Cup O' Mississippi Mud - The year is only half empty (or is it half-full - you decide!). Will Norbert continue on to earn a full Cup O' Dirt? Only time will tell!

From Dennis Grelk:

June edition: (he's in the one-a-month club, you know...)
"I wandered around long enough to get a century yesterday. (6/29/08)

The flood waters are receding, but they still have hold of my normal routes so I tried wondering around in Missouri a little. I don't know how those people find their way around, none of the gravel roads are marked! No street signs, no dead end signs, gravel roads pass for driveways, driveways pass for gravel roads. It was a really interesting ride on some really remote roads, but I sure made a lot of little loops.

Pics 009-024 here are from the ride"

July edition:
"Thought while I was trying to get through your spam filter I may as well add another dirty century to the list. Here's my kickoff century for July."

Pete Ylvisaker - seems though he's been recruiting! We'll add Big Al to the list!
"Hey Dave,

I put in 62 miles (almost exactly) with the single speed on Linn County gravel roads July 4... and another 45miles of gravelicious single speed riding this morning. Best riding weather in months. Anyway, chalk me up for another 100k. And if you'd be so kind, add one more rider to the list. Al "Big Al" Schmidt joined me for Friday's 100k."
A pic from Pete:

And from Norbert Koenigsfeld:

"Went for a ride yesterday and it ended up being a century...at mile 89 I crashed but was able to finsh...stupid me for crashing...hit a hole in the road."