Forecast

Quick Update

Those of you on the roster should have received an email containing cue sheets, route files, and other miscellaneous details.  If you haven't received this email, please let me know.

For those of you still on the fence, the forecast is looking good and fun times will be had.

2012 Roster

The 2012 roster has been posted in the sidebar and will continue to be updated as more people join up.  If I missed your name, let me know in the comments below and I'll add you to the roster.

Start Time, Other Details

Nom nom nom...

First off, this year the Moonshine will start at 6pm.  I was hoping to start at 7pm in order to have the entire ride run at night, but the only town on the route with a proper convenience store (Casey's in this case) is 50 miles in and the they're only open until 11pm.  Last year we cut it close, rolling in within 20 minutes of closing.  Since this is the only real place to get food or drink on the route (Sutliff doesn't count) I wanted to make sure everyone would get a chance to hit it before they closed.  That means we'll be running the first hour or so at dusk/sunset, which will get us through most of the B roads under daylight.  Honestly, that's not a bad thing.  Most of them have seen recent maintenance but all it takes is one good rain, a loaded 4x4 and a case of Busch light to turn a dirt highway back to a rutted sketchfest.  Ambient light helps with that.

Speaking of sketch, there is a bridge late in the ride that will eat a wheel like it's been laced with double butted french fries (see pic above).  Oh, by the way... It sits right at the bottom of a fast descent.  Last year we laid plywood down one side of of the bridge to give riders a safe surface to cross on, provided they lined it up right.  This year there will be even more plywood covering even more of the bridge.  To give you a proper heads up, the location of the bridge will be marked on the cue sheets.

About the cue sheets, I'll be posting them within the next week along with GPS/TCX files for you folks with the magic GPS boxes.  More on that later.

Finally, for post ride festivities I have been given permission to borrow a projector from work so we'll be showing various bike videos and movies on the side of my garage.  One film that has been confirmed is 300 Miles of Gravel, which is a documentary covering the 2011 running of Trans Iowa.  I have some other films in mind, but we'll probably take requests that night.