In 2010 and 2011, Wittmack, who is now 34, completed the incredible “World Triathlon” he designed for himself.  He swam the Thames River through England and continued right on across the English Channel.  Then he rode a bicycle 7,700 miles from France to India, and followed that up by running through Nepal.  And finally, in early May last spring, he climbed 29,035-foot Mount Everest.  It was the second time he’d climbed Everest, the first having been in 2003.

Delivering his 50-minute speech while using eye-popping videos and photographs, Wittmack said he is often asked how someone who is from the flat land of Iowa would decide to undertake such a challenge — especially the mountain-climbing part of it. 

“One thing I’m going to tell you tonight is about how Iowa is a perfect place for someone like me to start off,” he said.  He said all the varied opportunities he had here in his boyhood expanded his horizons. “Actually, I was 14 years old when I came up with the idea for the World Triathlon,” he said. “I was young enough to dream big, but smart enough not to tell anybody about it.”
 

Adventurer, Mount Everest climber and bicyclist Charlie Wittmack, left, is shown here at the fifth annual membership banquet of the Raccoon River Valley Trail Association, where he was guest speaker on Saturday, Feb. 18. He is shown here before his presentation with some old cycling friends Tom Schoelerman, of West Des Moines, and Phil and Cyrena Buschmann, of Sigourney.

But he began training and planning, even at that young age for the fantastic adventures he’s been having ever since.  “Expeditions slowly change our lives,” he said.  He recounted how, at 17 in 1995, he became the mechanic for 308 cyclists who pedaled across America on the “Iowa 150 Bike Ride: A Sesquicentennial Expedition,” helping promote the then-upcoming celebration of 150 years of statehood.  Several of the cyclists who were with him on that event were in attendance Saturday night.

Wittmack told how he nearly died on Mount Everest in 2003, when the weather while he was climbing “was the worst ever in recorded history on the mountain.”  During his recent World Triathlon, his climb of Mount Everest was actually “a breeze” in perfect weather conditions, he noted.  But he had two other near-death experiences before he got to Nepal.  The first was when he was hit by a car the day after he completed a 2,300-mile bicycle ride across the desert in Kzakistan.  The other was in Kyrgyzstan, where after riding his bike more than 120 miles per day for three consecutive days, climbing more than 10,000 feet of mountains to a pass at 18,000 feet, he fell off his bike and blacked out suffering from pulmonary and cerebral edema.  The combination of physical effort at such an altitude made his brain swell dangerously, and his Russian support team probably saved him by getting him off the road and into a room where he could sleep and begin to recover.

He healed up enough to return to Iowa in December, 2011, and underwent a total physical and psychological work-up at Des Moines University. “I came home thinking my body was broken and I was probably done for finishing the World Tri,” Wittmack said. “The big surprise was that, after all the extreme exercise I’d done, I was actually in better physical shape than ever.”  He said after a few weeks of rest, “my wife Catie kicked me out the door and sent me back to Nepal to complete my mission,” he said.

He said it was exhilarating when he realized during his Everest training, the weather was undergoing a very rare moderation.  There came a moment, he said, when it seemed so perfect that he said to himself, “You know what, I’m going to go for this!”  He did and he reached the summit.  He “sat in the snow and reflected on it all,” he said.  Then he set-up and started a video camera and did a hilarious taping of himself solving a Rubik’s Cube puzzle, which he carried in his mountaineering suit, right there on the summit of Everest.  After 45 minutes up there, celebrating alone, he started his quick descent.

Wittmack, an attorney, is now doing advocacy for “Above and Beyond Cancer,” a non-profit organization in Des Moines founded by oncologist Dr. Richard Deming to encourage cancer patients to live-out their dreams, no matter their cancer challenges.  Deming took a group of cancer survivors to the Everest Base Camp last spring, to meet Wittmack there.  And Deming and Wittmack in January led another group of cancer survivors on a climb of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania in eastern Africa.

RRVT Association president Carla Offenburger said the full-measure of the success of this year’s banquet became clear on Sunday when he totaled the receipts.  She noted that besides income from live and silent auctions held Saturday night, the association benefitted from $4,740 in cash donations received from businesses, organizations and individuals in the weeks before the banquet.  That figure includes the sponsorship of Wittmack’s presentation by WDM Farms, LLC, of Panora, which made its donation “in honor of Timber Creek Therapies,” a program for people with special physical challenges that operates between Panora and Guthrie Center.

Offenburger said she expects that, with the $21,179 figure for total income, “our estimated expenses will probably bring the net proceeds down to about $17,000..”  All the figures are records for the association’s big annual event.

In her remarks to the crowd, she said that 2012 “will be a banner year for the trail,” with completion planned on the new 33-mile “North Loop,” which will bring total mileage to 89.

“But we have more challenges ahead, too,” Offenburger continued.  “It has become clear that we are being challenged by funding, as far as maintaining or increasing levels of government support for trail maintenance and enhancements. In two of the three counties that own and operate the Raccoon River Valley Trail, the budgets of our conservation boards have been reduced substantially. In Dallas County by 30 percent — and this is the county that will be operating and maintaining the majority of the new loop.  This puts the RRVT Association, and all of our members, and all of you in this room tonight, in a challenging position.  We need to focus on increasing our advocacy for trail support within our counties.  We need to be vocal with our county supervisors, city councils and other officials.  We need to start pushing back (when funding is threatened).  Each of these three counties has a valuable asset in the trail, a piece of economic development infrastructure that is probably worth in excess of $20 million.  It needs to be maintained and enhanced this year – and in all years to come.”

You can learn more about the banquet in the photographs and captions just below here.

Karen Sievers, right, a board member of the Raccoon River Valley Trail Association, is shown here supervising the check-in table at the association’s banquet. Nearly 240 people attended, packing the Lake Panorama National Resort and Conference Center banquet room.

Here’s what the table settings looked like for the banquet.

RRVT Association board members Jon Doll (left) and Jim Miller are shown here selling a raffle ticket at the banquet. They sold 80 squares for $20 each, with three winners – one for a bicycle donated by Hiawatha Bicycle Company, of Perry; another for a $300 gift card at Scheels sporting goods in West Des Moines, and another for a $200 gift card at Scheels. The raffle was a sell-out.

Two cycling pals from Jefferson who were attending the RRVT Association banquet were Steve Haupert, left, and Jerry Peckumn.

Des Moines-area friends at the RRVT Association banquet included Kent and Lou Ann Sandburg (left) and Karen and Wes Ritchie.

Charlie Wittmack is shown here during a chat with Cindy Jensen, left, a member of the board of the RRVT Association, and her friend Gigi Nelson of Alta.

When it came time for dinner, our regular auctioneer had not yet arrived at the RRVT Association banquet, and we wanted to auction off the right to be the first table to go through the food line. So KCCI-TV news anchor Kevin Cooney, a trail user who is a member of the association and a former speaker at the banquet, volunteered to do the auctioneering, and he sold the first-in-line spot for $100 to Mark Vukovich and Char Vukovich, of Panora, and their tablemates. Mark Vukovich is on the board of the RRVT Association. With Cooney are two other RRVT Association board members Jon Doll and Jim Miller.

Chef Mike Harris, of the Lake Panorama National Resort and Conference Center, is shown here at the serving line for the banquet meal, which featured prime rib, chicken and all the trimmings.

One of the really fun events during the RRVT Association banquet is the “Heads or Tails Raffle,” which costs $5 to enter and had about 120 people playing. You choose to designate “heads” or “tails” by the way you place your hands on your body, then a coin is flipped. If you’re right, you continue on; if you’re wrong, you sit down. At this year’s banquet, the final three participants are shown here on the last flip of the coin. Carol Hillman, of Des Moines, picked “tails” while the two men picked “heads,” and she won. The winner splits the total take with the RRVT Association, and Hillman’s share was about $300. The man on the right is Ted Stephens, of Des Moines, and we’re still working on the name of the man on the left.

Carla Offenburger, president of the RRVT Association, is shown addressing the big crowd about how 2012 is going to be “a banner year but at the same time a challenging year” for all users of the RRVT. The new 33-mile “north loop” of the trail is to be completed this year, bringing total mileage to 89, but the budgets of the county conservation boards that own and operate the trail are being squeezed.

The RRVT Association contracted with Markey’s Rental & Staging for professional audio visual support for the banquet, to make sure we’d be able to have high-quality presentation of Charlie Wittmack’s photos and videos from his World Triathlon and Mount Everest adventures. Markey’s tech Craig Kaufman is shown here making sure the computers operated perfectly – and they did. Wittmack’s pictures were projected on two 8-foot-square screens, so all in the audience of nearly 240 could see them well.

13 Charlie Wittmack during Speech

Charlie Wittmack’s presentation was not only inspiring, it was a high-tech wonder. You can see here that as he spoke, he controlled the showing of photos and videos from the iPad he held in his hands.

14 Chad Daugherty Leads Auction

Chad Daugherty, of Daugherty Auction Service based in Adel, is shown here crying the auction during the RRVT Association banquet. He not only made it fun, he also bought a couple items himself. Standing on the left is Mike Wallace, the Dallas County Conservation director and a member of the association’s board of directors.

15 Greene Bean Coffee Package

Among fun items up for auction – either live or silent – was this attractive display of “Greene Beans and Bicycle Bling” from the Greene Bean Coffee Co., which does its own roasting in Jefferson.

15 Brian Duffy Original

Artist and cyclist Brian Duffy, of West Des Moines, a speaker at an earlier RRVT Association banquet, again donated an original work of art that features the trail. Duffy said he’s been intrigued how using vintage vehicles (like bicycles), trail users can go explore areas where no one has been for years (like abandoned railroad rights-of-way which have become the corridors for recreational trails). He also noted that, as always, he included a raccoon in his drawing for the RRVT Association, “but you have to look for it.”

17 Gift Certificates For Trail Dining

Another fun item on the silent auction was the “Feasting Along the Trail” package, featuring gift certificates at a lot of the locally-owned restaurants located in RRVT towns.

18 Guthrie Consy Bird Houses

The staff of the Guthrie County Conservation board makes these bird houses which have become popular with people who like to draw song birds to their yards – and they’re also located along the RRVT in that county. The birdhouses are always a popular auction item, too.

19 Stained Glass Art Piece

This beautiful foot-square original work in stained glass was donated for the auction by Jefferson artist Tammie Sobkowiak.

20 Skillet At Auction

Another fun auction item, as in past years, was this iron skillet made at the Progressive Foundry in Perry and donated by the Vankirk family.

21 Kayak For Auction

This beautiful, 9-foot kayak was auctioned and brought $550. That is RRVT Association president Carla Offenburger walking near it during the set-up for the banquet.

22 Iron Bell Art Piece

Another popular piece of art that was auctioned was this iron bell by Scott Deaver at “Art in Iron” studio in Dallas Center.

23 Templeton Rye Auction Item

The single auction item that brought in the most money was a “Templeton Rye” package that featured two jugs of the famous booze from the town in Carroll County, a wood barrel used in the distilling, a flask, shot glasses, T-shirts and other accessories. It brought $600.

24 Jim Miller & Pork Loins

RRVT Association board member Jim Miller is shown here displaying the pork loins, donated by Tyson Fresh Meats of Perry, that were auctioned. Ten of the loins were sold for $40 apiece.

25 Lenzes At Check-Out

Two of the volunteers who make the RRVT Association auction go so well are Kathy and Alan Lenz, partners in Lenz Auction Clerking, based in Perry. Their experience and efficiency make the cash-out procedure go much easier. In the background, you can see RRVT Association president Carla Offenburger, who was using the new “Square” with her iPad to handle credit card payments.

The 34-year-old attorney will be on hand to tell the story of how he covered more than 8,000 miles from England to the summit of Mount Everest on the triathlon that he designed for himself.  In July of 2010, he swam the Thames River through England and continued right on across the English Channel.  Then he rode a bicycle 7,700 miles from France to India, and followed that up by running through Nepal.  And finally, in early May last spring, he climbed 29,035-foot Mount Everest.  It was the second time he’d climbed Everest, the first having been in 2003.

It’s an adventure that has now been dramatically told on TV by ESPN, with video and interviews the network captured along the way.

And Wittmack will tell the story himself here Saturday night at the banquet and fundraising auction at the Lake Panorama National Resort Conference Center.  His photos and video will be projected as he speaks on two 8-foot-square screens to make them clearly visible to all in the banquet room.

Only a few of the $40 tickets for the event remain. If you still want to try to get one, you need to call RRVT headquarters immediately at 515-386-5488.

Wittmack’s program is being generously underwritten by WDM Farms, LLC, of Panora, in honor of Timber Creek Therapies.  That unique program, which operates at facilities between Panora and Guthrie Center, offers equine-assisted and aquatic therapies for physically-challenged patients, as well as speech-language therapy.  You can read more about it by clicking here.

It’s a fitting sponsorship because in the aftermath of his World Triathlon, Wittmack has committed himself to helping others.  He gave up the daily practice of law with the Davis Brown Law Firm in Des Moines, and now serves as executive director of “Above & Beyond Cancer.”  That is a Des Moines-based organization that seeks to create inspirational adventures for cancer survivors and others, headed by Dr. Richard Deming, who is medical director of the Mercy Cancer Center in Des Moines. 

The 56-year-old Deming and Wittmack put together a group of 14 cancer survivors and 15 caregivers for an extremely challenging trek to the 17,500-foot-high Mount Everest Base Camp in Nepal in April 2010.  And last month, they led a group of 37 people, 17 of them cancer survivors, to the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro in the African nation of Tanzania.

Deming, who spoke recently to the annual convention of the Iowa Newspaper Association, said those two “Above & Beyond Cancer” adventures fit with what Wittmack has wanted to do after his World Triathlon.

“Charlie conceived of this World Tri not just to prove he’s the studliest Iowan, which he is,” the doctor said, “but rather to inspire people to dream big and live out your dreams.” 

Deming was a substitute speaker for Wittmack in front of the newspaper association on Feb. 3, because Wittmack had to make a hurried trip to Charlotte, North Carolina, where his wife Cate gave birth to a baby boy, Jack.  The Wittmacks, with son James, 3, live in Charlotte now because that is Cate’s hometown, and her family is still there with lots of support while Charlie is traveling and speaking so extensively.

Two huge Charlie Wittmack fans who will be in the audience Saturday night at the RRVT Association banquet are Phil & Cyrena Buschmann, of Sigourney in southeast Iowa.  They’ve known Wittmack since 1995, when as a high school senior, he served as the mechanic for 308 people who rode bicycles across the U.S. on the “Iowa 150 Bike Ride – A Sesquicentennial Expedition.”  The Buschmanns were among the riders on that 100-day, 5,048-mile trip across the nation.  That’s what led them to sign up last spring to join with a dozen people to make an April trek to the Everest Base Camp, in a separate adventure from the one for the cancer survivors.

Cyrena Buschmann, a 60-year-old retired elementary school teacher, wrote from the Everest Base Camp about an inspiring moment on the ninth day of their 10-day trek up to the Everest Base Camp.   They had not yet seen Wittmack, who’d been elsewhere in the Everest region, training.  Their escort Bikal Adhikari, a Nepali who is a great friend and former climbing partner of Wittmack, told the group “we were really going to have some fun this afternoon,” Buschmann wrote.  “How surprised we were when Charlie Wittmack walked in an hour later!  It was an emotional moment for me.  He looks absolutely fabulous and is in great shape for the summit.”

So how does Buschmann assess Wittmack now, 17 years and a whole lot of adventures after she first got to know him?

“I think he’s one of the most caring, generous people I’ve ever met,” she said this week.  “He has so much faith in people.  And he is such a motivator.  He’s pretty phenomenal at that.  At our ages, Phil and I would have never thought about doing that trek, because we were the oldest people in our group, except that Charlie convinced us we could do it.  He’s got a great message out there for people now.”

The social hour for Saturday night’s banquet begins at 6 p.m.  Silent auctions and raffles will begin then, in support of the RRVT Association, the volunteer organization that does the marketing and promotion of the trail in west central Iowa.  At 7 p.m., a full dinner will be served, followed by Wittmack’s presentation.  And then Daugherty Auction Service, of Adel, will conduct the live auction of 14 unique items.

Among those items, in honor of Wittmack’s appearance, will be two outfits for hiking or trekking, including packs and poles, put together by the RRVT Association.

But also up for auction will be a “Giant Roam 2 Bike” bicycle from Bike World; original RRVT artwork by cartoonist Brian Duffy of West Des Moines; a 12-foot kayak from the Greene County Environmental Habitat Corporation; an original stained glass work by artist Tammie Sobkowiak of Jefferson; a dog sled ride on the RRVT when snow conditions are right; a fabulous dinner for eight at the farm home of Allan and Carole Sieck of Rippey; a week-long stay in a condo at the Lake of the Ozarks, provided by Matt Marckmann of Morgan Stanley Smith Barney in West Des Moines; another week at a condo in either Frisco, Colorado, or Scottsdale, Arizona, provided by Mark & Char Vukovich of Lake Panorama; a trailside “Cooper Cookout” with barbecue, all the trimmings and Greene County’s best homemade pies, for up to 24 people, provided and hosted by Carla & Chuck Offenburger of Cooper;  long cuts of pork tenderloins from Tyson Fresh Meats in Perry; a “Readers’ Delight” package from the RRVT Association including a Kindle Fire with case, and a Templeton Rye package including a whiskey barrel , two jugs of the famous Templeton Rye and accessories provided by the RRVT Association.

When the RRVT Association puts together special packages for the auction, it does so with cash donations from banquet sponsors.  There are 22 of those this year, and they will all be recognized at the banquet.

Meanwhile, there are more than 50 items that will be up for bid in the silent auction, and those span a wide range of values and interests.  They include artwork, overnight stays, recreational opportunities, meals, theater tickets, sports apparel, and special lunches & tours with celebrities.  The latter include CEO Jeff Stroburg at the huge West Central Cooperative in Ralston; Iowa State Cyclone radio broadcasters John Walters and Eric Heft, and KCCI-TV news anchors Kevin & Mollie Cooney.

Charlie Wittmack, attorney, veteran bicyclist, global adventurer and cancer-fighter, said his "World Tri" was "fun, hard and humbling."

Wittmack in 2010 and 2011 completed an almost incredible “World Triathlon” covering more than 8,000 miles from England to the summit of Mount Everest.  He swam the Thames River through England and continued right on across the English Channel, then rode a bicycle 7,700 miles to India, then ran through Nepal, and finally, in early May, climbed 29,035-foot Mount Everest.  It was his second time he’d climbed Everest, the first having been in 2003.

“That year, doing all that, was a fun year, you know?” Wittmack said in a recent interview.  “But at the same time, it was so hard.  And it was an incredibly humbling experience.  Every aspect of it seemed to be for some greater purpose.”

One of those purposes now is sharing his story with audiences across the nation and around the world, with his speeches, photos and video.

And that’s what he’ll be doing on Saturday night, February 18, when he speaks at the RRVT Association banquet, which will be held at the Lake Panorama National Resort Conference Center, located just north of the trail town of Panora.

That event includes a social hour, big dinner and fundraising auctions that support the work of the trail association.  That is the non-profit group that does the marketing and promotion of the RRVT, the paved trail that now stretches 69.5 miles in west central Iowa.  An additional 20 miles of paved trail is scheduled for completion in 2012.

Tickets for the banquet are $40 and are available now to members of the RRVT Association.  You can buy memberships in the association online, in the “RRVT Store” on this Internet site, and be qualified to buy banquet tickets right now, too.  If you buy or renew your association memberships now, you will also receive your trail user permits for the 2012 year.

Banquet tickets will go on sale for the general public on January 6.

Capacity for this event at the conference center will be about 300.

“We’re thrilled that Charlie has agreed to come share his story with us at the banquet,” said Carla Offenburger, of Cooper, president of the RRVT Association.  “He’s been riding our trail from when it first opened back in 1989.  Then my husband Chuck and I got to know him real well in 1995, when we were organizing the Iowa 150 Bike Ride across the U.S., and we hired Charlie – who was then a senior in high school – to be the mechanic for the 308 cyclists on that 100-day ride.  Over that summer, we learned what a fun character he is, but we could also see that there was a lot of bold adventure in him, too.  We all called him ‘Wrench’ that summer when he was our mechanic.”

The Offenburgers and Wittmack stayed in touch over the years and, after Wittmack first climbed Mount Everest in 2003, Carla Offenburger brought him to Buena Vista University in Storm Lake in a lecture series she was coordinating then.

“His story and photos were amazing then,” Offenburger said, “and of course, what he did that year hardly compares to what he did on the World Tri in the past two years.”

Wittmack, the grandson of a former Iowa governor, Norman Erbe, grew up in Des Moines. He graduated from Roosevelt High School.  He worked at the Barr Bike & Fitness shop in West Des Moines during his high school years.  Following his summer as a mechanic on the Iowa 150 ride, he enrolled at the University of Iowa, began mountain climbing and earned his undergraduate degree in 2001.  That’s when he started training for his first Everest ascent, although he didn’t tell family and friends he was thinking about doing that for a long time.

He also decided to look into an interest he’d long had in practicing law.  To test that, he took a job as a paralegal in the summer of 2001 at a law firm in Washington, D.C., he met another paralegal Catherine Scharf, a native of Charlotte, North Carolina, and a recent graduate of Villanova University.  They fell in love and eventually married.  Their son James is now 3 ½ and Cate is pregnant with a second child, due February 10.

After Charlie’s first climb of Everest, he enrolled in law school at the University of Iowa and graduated in 2006.  He then went to work as a trial lawyer and lobbyist with the Davis Brown Law Firm in Des Moines.  He continues to be “of counsel” with that firm, although this fall he took a full-time job as executive director of the new, Des Moines-based “Above & Beyond Cancer” program.  That was founded by Des Moines oncologist Dr. Richard Deming, who has become a close friend of the Wittmacks.

Charlie and Cate became sensitized and involved in the battle against cancer when she was diagnosed with thyroid cancer in 2008.  She has recovered from that, but both of them continue to be dedicated to improving life, treatment and recovery experiences for cancer patients everywhere.

Charlie and Dr. Deming have built a partnership for Above & Beyond Cancer with the American Cancer Society.  They put together an “Everest experience” in the spring of 2011 that took 14 cancer survivors and 15 caregivers to Nepal – with all of their expenses paid by Deming’s organization – to do a trek to the Everest Base Camp.  Wittmack spent a lot of time with the group around his own six-day climb to the summit of Everest.

They are now putting together another group of cancer survivors and caregivers to climb Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania in Africa.

Meantime, life is hectic for Charlie Wittmack.

“I’m traveling pretty much all the time, doing a whole lot of speaking and working on a book on the World Tri,” he said.  “Since Catie is pregnant, we decided for her to live for now in North Carolina because she’s got a good network of support there from family, and I’m back and forth all the time.  We no longer have our home in Des Moines – you remember, we sold it to raise money for the World Tri – but I have an apartment.  Seems like I’m almost never in it, though.”

He said that it has been difficult physically to wind down from the tremendous level of fitness he built himself up to for the World Tri.

“Of course, I took some time off from training and exercise after I got home from Everest,” he said. “But, you know, when you’re used to exercising 8 to 10 hours a day, it’s hard to scale it back.  At first, it was hard to sleep if I wasn’t working out 4 to 6 hours a day.  But gradually I dropped it back to an hour or two a day, and that’s where I am now.”

We’ll learn a lot more about it on February 18 at the RRVT Association banquet.

Guest speakers in past years at the banquet have been cartoonist Brian Duffy, TV news anchor Kevin Cooney and former First Lady of Iowa Christie Vilsack – all of them veteran cyclists and longtime users of the RRVT.

When we told Wittmack that the former speakers had a good enough time at the banquet that they’ve been coming back to successive ones as ticket-buying attendees, he said, “Well, those are three of my own favorite people in Iowa, so I’ll probably be the same way.”

More details about the banquet and the auction items will be published in coming weeks on this Internet site.

 

Wittmack, on part of his 7,700-mile bicycle ride across Europe into India. “I spent 18 days in sand in Kazakhstan,” he said.

The bicycling part of his “World Triathlon,” said Wittmack “was a nightmare.” He went through eight bicycles.

Wittmack is shown here on the summit of Mount Everest in May of 2011. He also climbed to 29,035-foot summit of Everest in 2003. (All photos are from the Wittmack collection.)

“No TIGER grant,” Mike Wallace, the Dallas County Conservation director, wrote in a short note to other county officials.  “It was worth trying, though.”

U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced in Washington, D.C.,  that 46 transportation projects in 33 states and Puerto Rico will receive a total of $511 million in TIGER funding, but none of those projects are in Iowa.  “TIGER” stands for  “Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery.”

When Dallas County officials decided in mid October to apply for the grant, they had only days to complete an application and solicit letters of support from other interested communities, businesses and organizations.  More than 130 of those letters were gathered in about three days’ time.

“We’re told this is a very competitive grant program,” Wallace in October, as he was completing the paperwork.  “There will be applications for a lot of good projects around the country, but we think we’re making a pretty good case for our project.”

The Dallas County “connector” trail was envisioned as being built between Perry and Bouton, in conjunction with the paving of what is now a gravel road between those two towns.  Perry is located at what could be described as the northeast “corner” of the Raccoon River Valley Trail, which will be 89 miles long once a new “north loop” is completed in 2012.  From Bouton,  the trail was to be built on the right-of-way of an already-paved county road that goes on east from Bouton to Woodward.  The town of Woodward is the west trailhead of the High Trestle Trail, which is 25 miles long, stretches to Ankeny and includes the 13-story-high trestle bridge between Woodward and Madrid.

The trail was going to be built in the rights-of-way of both roads, but not on the shoulders right next to the road surface.  Rather, the trail ‘s path was gong to be on the sides of ditches or on fencelines, so there would be separation between the paved road and the paved trail.

It is presumed that now, with those project plans still in hand, officials will continue looking for other funding possibilities.

The plans are being developed and coordinated by the local Cyclists Of Greene bike club.  Their first announcement about the event was timed for this late-January weekend, when thousands of cycling enthusiasts are gathering in Des Moines for the Iowa Bicycle Summit, and for the big party Saturday night when the route of this summer’s RAGBRAI route is being announced.

The new festival is being promoted as “a celebration of the bicycle and those who ride it,” according to Craig Berry, who is president of the club and is also mayor of Jefferson. The City Council approved the plans at its meeting earlier this week.  Berry said “the council is very much in favor of this event and will be encouraging all citizens and bicyclists in Jefferson, Greene County and Iowa to attend.”

It will be family-oriented, with activities for all ages going on from about 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., all around the courthouse square and stretching east to the Jefferson Depot and Raccoon River Valley Trailhead.  All events will generally be with a bicycle theme, but they will be put together with the idea of appealing to the general public as well as bicyclists. 

Plans include a late-morning or midday parade, featuring RAGBRAI team buses from all over Iowa, a couple of bands, people of all ages riding decorated bicycles, some highly unusual bikes, and more. 

After the parade, there will be a “custom bike show” around the square, just like there have been “custom car shows” there, including team buses. And the crowd at the festival will be invited to paint a RAGBRAI team bus, too. 

The festival will include a juried “bicycle-themed art show,” with artists from across the Midwest invited to enter work that will be for sale and also will remain on display for a few weeks after the festival.

There will also be escorted “bicycle tours of Jefferson,” pedaling to see our notable landmarks.  And there will be competitions and contests involving bicycles, like a “fastest tire-changing contest.”  Another event will be a “bicycle apparel fashion show.”

Local food vendors are being invited to serve on the square, but visitors will be encouraged to use all local restaurants, too.  There will be no beverage garden or street dance, at least this year.

The Greene County Board of Supervisors has approved use of the courthouse grounds and the atrium of the building.   

One activity in the courthouse will be a series of brief “bicycle seminars,” hosted by Chuck Offenburger, with such topics as the Raccoon River Valley Trail, other Iowa trails, RAGBRAI with that event’s director T.J. Juskiewicz, Iowa’s bicycle clubs, the Greene County Conservation recreation facilities & programs, and cartoonist & cyclist Brian Duffy has tentatively confirmed doing a program on his own bicycle artwork.

For more information, you can contact Mayor Berry or John & Ces Brunow at the All Ability Cycles shop on the square in Jefferson, or via the Facebook page for “Iowa Bicycle Festival.”  An Internet site will be launched soon for the festival.