Gay Lea Wilson Trail Seg #3 6/14 sm

Segment Three: Gay Lea Wilson Trail

Start	Altoona, IA	N 41:39:28.95 W 93:28:27.71	N-S miles  5.9
End	Pleasant Hill, IA	N 41:39:28.80 W 93:28:27.70	Total miles 7.2 (x2=14.4)

 

The route past Adventure Land

Wednesday’s (9/12/12) ride was a 7.2 mile jaunt that followed the Gay Lea Wilson and Four Mile Creek Rail Trails from Altoona to Pleasant Hill, Iowa. These trails were constructed in the early 1980’s from segments of abandoned railroad tracks, likely at the time owned by Chicago Northwestern Railroad. Today there remains an active rail line run by IAIS---Iowa Interstate Railroad, that parallels the trail. In the early years, the Rock Island line hired a young lawyer, to become president, Abraham Lincoln, for legal help. In addition to the railroads passing through this part of Iowa, a stage coach route line also followed a similar route. In 1840 the Iowa City, Newton, Ft. Des Moines stage coach line operated between these cities.




Marker for the 1840 Stage Coach

At that time the capital of Iowa was in Iowa City. This beautiful building remains today as a landmark for the University of Iowa. It is even more beautiful because the dome was replaced after a November 20, 2001 fire destroyed the cupola.

My first thought was terrorism

 since this was only a few
months after 911

When I heard of the fire, I went to the walk way of the Dental School to see what is shown in the photograph. Flames shooting high and wide around the recently gold covered dome. Coming on the heals of 911 and a phoney racial incident at the dental college, everyone was on theirs toes. It turned out the fire was an accident by the renovation crew and a laboratory fire and a bomb threat were the result of a failing dental student.

When the state capital was moved to Des Moines, the right of way was taken over by the Rock Island Railroad. During the 1857 move, the stage coach carrying the entire state treasury was caught in a blizzard. It took ten oxen teams days to free the coach and get the millions of dollars of state money to Des Moines. It was good the likes of Jesse James were not around to fill their pockets.  

Part of the trail I rode is named after a dedicated trail advocate, Gay Lea Wilson. Usually trails are named for historically significant individuals, events or locations, but as near as I can tell, Gay Lea Wilson is just a person like me that happens to have been a major leader in stimulating donations and getting the trail built. Good for you Gay Lea!

When ride companions, grandson Ian and son Chris were unable to participate in the ride, I decided I would ride one way and then have Chris take me back to my car at the Green Way Park Trailhead in Altoona. However I neglected to bring a cable lock from the car so when I got to the end of the trail, I had no safe way to protect my bike from being stolen. So I called Chris telling him to forget picking me up. The bummer of that decision was that the temperature dropped from 88 to 63 degrees and a northwest wind had come in a roaring. This made my ride back doubly challenging.  To add to the discomfort, it started spiting rain, making it a cold ride for this sissy boy.

The headwinds associated with this ride, caused me to think of other times when wind blasts made for a bit of a challenge. Two such instances involved annual Wadsworth VA periodontal alumni challenge trips. These trips were marketed as male bonding moments for graduates of the periodontal residency program. The idea was to design trips with enough excitement and trauma that our wives would not want to go. This would give the boys free sailing to head to the mountains, oceans and deserts to burn off frustrations of day to day periodontal practice. One such trip was a sailing trip in the British Virgin Islands. Sailing Trip! Where is the danger in that kind of event? Well we made it dangerous by doing bone head things. The biggest bone head move on the Caribbean trip was for Doctor Bruce and me to scheme an idea to steal a huge Texas flag from another boat in our group. The captain of the “Texas Flag Boat” was of course a fellow named Tex. He would fly the “gad awful” thing off the back of his boat. Most of us detested it. So after cocktail hour; more like HOURS; when it was past dusk; Bruce and I sequestered a dingy and stealthily paddled towards Tex’s boat. The more we paddled toward his boat, the farther away we seemed to be. Finally we realized there was a breeze blowing us away from our boat. We were drifting for God’s sake! Compounded by the current, we were drifting away very fast! We shouted “HELP!” When the other guys in our group realized Bruce and I were out in the currents, in the dark, the keelboat had to pull anchor to rescue us. Normally that would not sound like a big deal but not in this case. The keelboats we were sailing are designed for open water and day time sailing, not sailing at night among coral reefs and shoals. One of our guys on the ship used his spot light and hung out over the stern to guide the captain through the gaps in the reef, allowing them to get close enough for Bruce and me to finally get back on our boat. I remember the only way we could fight the wind and current, was for the captain to get down wind so we could drift back to the boat. Needless to say, we never came close to hijacking Tex’s flag and we were “toast” among the captains for the rest of the trip.

Another wind related story involves the same VA Alumni group but this time it was my turn to organize a trip in the Boundary Waters of Minnesota and Canada. One of our overnights was to be at a lodge on the Canadian side. It was roughly the third day of the trip and we were beginning to drag a bit from paddling. Thank goodness I had my son Chris with me because there would not have been any way possible for me to have rowed a canoe across open water against the wind. And, that is exactly what happened.  We all followed our guides out on this lake to cross to the Canadian side. Our sites were set on a particular bump in the horizon. No sooner had we gone a couple hundred yards from the American shores, but a big storm blew in and drove us back to the American shores we had departed from less than an hour ago. By traversing along the shore until the storm moved through, we were able to make it across the lake to the lodge---thank you Chris! Everyone was pooped and pissed, especially at me for arranging such a challenging trip. The good thing was we never got grief from our wives about wanting to join us.