Dec 07

Dubuque Southwest Arterial update

Posted on Friday, December 7, 2018, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

Between this story from KWWL and a video from the city of Dubuque, we can see that the Southwest Arterial is making progress. The related project on US 20, an intersection with the new Menards frontage road and Old Highway Road, realigns the point where original 20 departs from existing 20, heading toward Centralia. The video says that intersection opened shortly after Thanksgiving.

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Dec 06

Casey’s popping up in more Iowa towns

Posted on Thursday, December 6, 2018, at 10:00 AM by Jeff


May 7, 2018: Just inside the city limits of Lone Tree is a brand new Casey’s. This photo was taken for my IA 405 page.

Iowa’s homegrown gas station chain, Casey’s, is marking its 50th anniversary this year. In the run-up to the anniversary, new locations appeared in the minority of Iowa towns with a population between 1000 and 5000 that didn’t have one already:

The Ida Grove location is notable for a couple of reasons. First, it narrows the list of county seats without one to four — Elkader, Keosauqua, Logan, and Primghar — among the smallest in Iowa. Second, according to my research, that leaves Windsor Heights as the only city in Iowa with a population above 2000 without one — and that barely counts as there’s one at 1st Street and Grand Avenue over the city line in West Des Moines.

With that spate of openings, there’s one more pertinent data point (to me, anyway) — Traer is now the fourth-largest city in Iowa without a Casey’s. Traer already has two gas stations, used to have three, and has its pizza needs filled via Pizza Palace, so I understand the chain’s non-presence.

I have taken many, many trips around Iowa where Casey’s is the only place to eat for dozens of miles on my route. I just can’t stop there any time I go home.

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Dec 05

A glutton for punishment contemplates another helping

Posted on Wednesday, December 5, 2018, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

The Iowa State women are playing at Iowa tonight, and I must decide whether to return to the Carver-Hawkeye House of Horrors. Yes, I engaged in this internal debate four years ago too.

In the 11 games in Iowa City in the Fennelly era, ISU has won three, the last in 2006. Save for those magical seasons of 1997-2001, the era seriously slants toward the home team, and then last year, Iowa took one in Hilton Coliseum for the first time since 1989.

Last year, I splurged on a ticket to watch the men’s team play in Iowa City, only to witness another losing effort. “Hey Cyclones, your mom called … you left your game at home,” a student’s sign taunted, and she was right. I am now 0-for-5 in games there.

The Iowa women could be even better this year. Being expected to come in second behind Brenda Frese and having the Big Ten preseason player of the year in Megan Gustafson is nothing to sneeze at. Iowa State, meanwhile, is expected only to finish sixth in the Big 12.

But things are looking up for the Cyclones women’s team. Bridget Carleton is really, really good! We have 2018 Miss Iowa Basketball Ashley Joens who’s from Iowa City and would love some bragging rights! Meredith Burkhall has recovered from a scary health issue! The poster looks pretty darn good EXCEPT FOR THE GRAY ON GRAY TYPE STOP DOING THAT.

I know the odds, yet the siren song is so strong…

You’re going, aren’t you?

*Sigh* Go Cyclones.

UPDATE: The lesson, as always, is don’t get in a 10-point hole in the first quarter. Also, do you really need five to ten seconds of music waiting for an inbounds?

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Dec 04

The US 20 reroute that wasn’t

Posted on Tuesday, December 4, 2018, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

The 1931 Iowa highway map includes an explosion of highway numbers across the state, in what I call the First Great Commissioning. Many of the routes that died in either 1980 or 2003 trace their history to this time. But one does not: IA 196. It was absent from the map because the Highway Commission expected it to be a spur to Williams from a changed US 20. As the Webster City Daily Freeman-Journal reported September 3, 1930:

It is reported a saving estimated at $300,000 can be made by running straight east from No. 20 as now paved, short distance south of Williams. It is also cited the new route will enable the commission to cut out two railroad crossings and the construction and maintenance of two bridges.

But it never happened, because the people of Alden and Williams rose up in protest. They had been assured that 20 would run through their towns, the FJ said. They successfully prevented changing 20 to run east from Blairsburg to US 65. It would not be until 1991, as part of plans to four-lane 20 across Iowa, that Alden would lose its place along the federal route. The non-change also meant a lovely arch bridge would be built across the Iowa River in Iowa Falls.

The IA 196 designation, instead, was placed in Sac County in 1935 when US 71 was routed to run south of Early, only to be replaced by 71 eight decades later.

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Dec 03

IA 100 ceremony coverage

Posted on Monday, December 3, 2018, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

I admit, I wasn’t there, but with the weather the way it was I can’t say I’m too disappointed in missing out.

KCRG has a story about the IA 100 ribbon cutting and ceremonial ride/walk along the new segment. The end of the story says the DOT won’t open the road to traffic until “later this winter” and signs were not on US 30 as of last week.

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Nov 30

Iowa State-Drake preview

Posted on Friday, November 30, 2018, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

Tomorrow, doe-eyed innocents will be sacrificed to the cheers of crowds wearing camo and blaze orange.

It’s also the first day of deer season. I suspect a lot of hunters who are also ISU fans aren’t happy about the game being moved from the perfectly decent time of 1 PM to 11 AM.

Iowa State’s last game against Drake was in 1985, when the Bulldogs announced their withdrawal from I-AA scholarship football. The Cyclones lost.

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Nov 29

Post-Thanksgiving work on Ames flyover bridge

Posted on Thursday, November 29, 2018, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

The Iowa DOT is doing nighttime closures of US 30 at I-35 to place beams overhead for the new flyover ramp, Radio Iowa reports. As both IPR and an earlier blog post note, this was supposed to be done by now but won’t be complete until next summer.

Significant construction after Thanksgiving in Iowa is pretty rare, especially anything that isn’t a wrap-up. Consider, for example, these notices of construction on US 63 in Waterloo and the Viking Road exit in Cedar Falls getting their wintertime traffic alignments, plus IA 17 opening between Goldfield and Eagle Grove on Nov. 21.

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Nov 28

Iowa State’s latest football game in Ames

Posted on Wednesday, November 28, 2018, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

Iowa State has never played football in January. (The latest, chronologically? The New Year’s Eve 2009 Insight Bowl that had a night kickoff in Tempe.) And Iowa State has never played a regular-season game in the state of Iowa in December — until now.

Most of that is due to decades of the season typically ending the Saturday before Thanksgiving. The Iowa media guide has a great list of “games on this date” that I wish the ISU media guide would copy, but here’s what I’ve found:

  • The latest games ever played in Ames were November 29, 2014, against West Virginia, followed by November 27, 2004, against Missouri (yes, one of THOSE games against Missouri).
  • Games at Drake, in Des Moines, on November 30 in 1905, 1907, and 1916 — so this one will be a cute callback.
  • In the early 1970s, ISU’s last game of the regular season was at San Diego State, which meant warmer weather on December 1, 1973, and December 2, 1972, both losses.
  • December 3, 2011, at Kansas State. Did it end painfully? Of course it did.
  • The latest games on ISU’s football calendar are both December 6, and both in Texas — a 1930 loss at Rice and a 2014 loss at TCU.

So Iowa State is 0-5 in the regular season in December on the road, but undefeated in December at home. Let’s keep it that way — and playing some Christmas music would be a perfectly fine idea.

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Nov 27

IA 100 ribbon cutting Saturday

Posted on Tuesday, November 27, 2018, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

2018 will get the completion of not one, but two major Iowa highway projects that were decades in the making.

The completed IA 100 beltway around western Cedar Rapids will have a celebration Saturday, the Gazette reports. There will be a ribbon-cutting and a chance for the public to walk/ride the new segment (though, presumably, not the ramps to/from US 30, which as of Thanksgiving night did not yet have IA 100 signs). The road could open to traffic next Monday.

It’s a capstone that deserves a party … that I will have trouble attending because I have to work.

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Nov 26

2018 Iowa high school football playoff brackets

Posted on Monday, November 26, 2018, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

Given the Iowa High School Athletic Association’s tinkering with the postseason football format again, I thought, Maybe they’ll figure out how to put complete brackets on the website. I’m pretty sure this used to happen, even if it was either organized by class or in a text-only style, but a redesign a while back nuked a decade’s worth of links.

The entire postseason with scores and results is here. That’s good — except for the part where the championship scores, as of this writing, have not been inserted. But it doesn’t do any differentiation between home and away, nor does it group the classes together. There are pages with brackets by pod, separated by class (here’s Class A), but the images don’t include the second-round winners in the images, nor do we get a Grand Unified Bracket.

The IGHSAU’s website, although also not great to navigate, does have brackets if you know where to look. That’s what I’m looking for, and for football, well, I guess it’s up to me.

So I made playoff brackets. Here’s a PDF with all classes, and standalone images: 8, A, 1A, 2A, 3A, 4A. I did this for 2014 and 2015 as well, but gave up on 2016 and 2017 because I didn’t want to do 32 teams per class again while also not knowing the precise district order of finish.

It’s as quick and dirty as one can do while still providing all pertinent information: RPI, home/away, and the scores.

If you like this, could you drop me an e-mail? (See sidebar.) It doesn’t take that much time, but it does take some, and if other people find this useful I’ll be more inclined to continue.

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