Matthew Kocsis

I was going through my movies a few weeks ago and I saw Field of Dreams; I couldn’t help but watch a few favorite parts. Last year on RAGBRAI XXXV we camped in Dyersville, however we never made it up to the field, so I decided that I wanted to go this summer. Driving, however, wouldn’t cut it.

The trip to the field is about 55 miles from Marion, it will probably be closer to 60 once I take into account some backroads needed to stay alive on a bicycle. In the summer of 2005 I did 3 back to back weekends: 55 miles, 100 miles, and 158 miles, so I knew I could make the 110-120 mile trip, I just needed a little training.

Last Saturday I decided I’d like to see a little more of Iowa between Marion and US 20, so I set out on an 82 mile loop at about 10am (I needed to wait for storms to pass). It was a great day for biking, cool and almost rainy in the morning and then sunny but still in the 70s all afternoon. My route took me 6.5 hours (which is still slower than my 12h 36m finish of the 158 mile RAIN 2005), and even as it got hard at the end I was having a good time. I got attacked (physically) by two of those black and red birds this time, so I might have to grab a new helmet next year (one that isn’t back and red).

My Route: Marion – Alburnett – Central City – Coggon – Robinson – Monti – Quasqueton (halfway point) – Rowley – Urbana – Center Point – Robins – Marion. Unfortunately, Routes 13 (Central City to Coggon) and 150 (Rowley – Urbana) were busy 2-lane state routes, so I’ll have to avoid them next time.

Route

Next Saturday I plan on heading up to Dyersville via: Marion – Anamosa – Buck Creek – Delhi – Delaware – Earlville – Dyersville, and I’ll try to return: Dyersville – Earlville – Delaware – Buck Creek – Prarieburg – Central City – Alburnett – Marion. We’ll see if I have to call someone to rescue me.

Route There (65.6 Miles)

Route Back (63.9 Miles)

Also, while I was out on Saturday, my new GPS unit came. John recommended this unit to me, so I purchased a Qstarz BT-Q1000P GPS logger. It can act as an external unit for a PC or a Pocket PC, or just run in log mode and store data points (it’s not a navigation device). I tested it last night running around my neighborhood and it performed exceptionally. Plotting the coordinates on Google Earth, it even displayed me running on the correct side of the road. I’ll put it to use on this next bike trip to get some real statistics.

Future Sounds of the City / Flood the Fund

Saturday June 28, 2008 – Cabo Bar and Grill, 2730 Edgewood Road SW, Cedar Rapids IA (West end of Westdale Mall Complex, corner of Williams and Wiley)

My friends and I are sponsoring a benefit event this Saturday. We’re hoping to get as many people to come as possible. AEGON is matching donations, so everything we make will have double the impact. Donations go to the Greater Cedar Rapids Community Foundation. Please forward this information to anyone you know who is able to make it out.

Minimum $10 donation requested. Free drink provided by CABO bar and Grill.

 Event is All Ages until 9pm, then 21+ only.

1:00 pm – 5:00 pm: Indoor Art Auction
–Gayla Drake Paul live performance

6:00 pm – 10:00 pm: Outdoor live band performances
–Uniphonix – 6:00pm – 7:00pm
–Harmonic Order – 7:20pm – 9:20pm
–Freak Label – 8:45pm – 9:45pm

9:00 pm – 1:45 am: Indoor live DJ performances
–dj embe – 9:00pm – 9:45pm
-Mike “All Nite” Long – 9:45pm – 10:30pm
-TraxXxstaR – 10:30pm – 11:15pm
-Dj Lash – 11:15pm – 12:00am
-Tom Robinson – 12:00am – 12:45am
-Level Matrix – 12:45am – 1:30am

Special Thanks to:
-Cabo Bar and Grill
-Cedar Rapids Art Community
–AEGON
–New Bohemian Music & Arts Festival

I’ve been getting a lot of calls/emails/IMs from family and friends about how the floods are effecting me in the Cedar Rapids area, so here’s some info in case anyone checks here first.

My place in Marion is fine, we’re far enough from the Cedar River that we’re not affected by its rise to +31 feet. Unfortunately, some of my friends in Palo, IA and possibly more near Downtown Cedar rapids are, given that over 1,000 blocks were under water on Friday (check out the map in This article). On Thursday, heavy rain in the morning caused some flash flooding that came within a few hundred feet of my place, however I’m high enough that it was not an issue. Pictures will be posted soon of the flooding in Marion on June 12, 2008.

As it seems like we have too much water, the opposite is also true. Having lost close to 3/4 of its capacity (now back up to 50% according to This report from KCRG news), Everyone has been asked to limit water use to drinking; no laundry, flushing toilets, showers, washing hands… I live in Marion which has a different water system, however they have now connected the Marion system to the Cedar Rapids system to try to maintain pressure (Advisory from City of Marion). We’ll see how this plays out in the next few days.

Here are some pictures that I’ve taken during the last few days. Iowa flood of 2008.

Below is a comparison of how high the waters were on Friday, June 13, 2008. The “Non-Flood” picture was taken sometime after 1985.

(image courtesy of http://www.jithy.com/favorite.htm)

(image courtesy of www.gazetteonline.com)

It’s been a little while since I’ve taken some time to go biking (the Iowa weather recently hasn’t helped convince me either), however it’s been nice recently so I decided to take a quick trip up north. It turned out to be a bit longer than I initially planned, but I covered just shy of 50 miles in a bit less than 4 hours. Only one bike-chasing dog and a few motorcyclists that seemed to forget how bikes (all types) deserve an entire lane when being passed. The wind was about 13kt at 290 (ENE), which was nice once I started heading south from Walker.

My Route (will be updated once gmaps pedometers stops crashing)

My place – Alburnett – Troy Mills – Walker – Center Point – Robbins – Past my place to a friend’s – My place

I just got back from the 2008 Rube Goldberg National Contest, and this year was no exception: the machines were impressive. My friends Adam and John also sent me a link to a cool article about the contest on Gizmodo. Included is a fun video which includes an interview with me at the 2008 Purdue regional competition in February. Here’s the video:

2008 Rube Goldberg Contest

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8DjQ2DXs7s]

It’s all gone Pete Tong, the Winter Music Conference and Ultra Music Festival are over, but the soundtrack is still playing in my head.

I just got back from WMC/UMF 08, and all I can say is “wow”. It’s going to take a few weeks to fully appreciate what I was able to see and hear, but right now I can say that it was one of the most amazing trips of my life. Between the actual festival, the beach, and the nightclubs I saw more DJs than I ever thought possible in a 5 day span. I have pictures posted under WMC 2008.

DJs: Mar-T, Erick Morillo, Tiesto, The Bravery, Junkie XL, Robbie Rivera, The Crystal Method, BT, Rabbit in the Moon, Ferry Corsten, Armin van Buuren, Pete Tong, Underworld, Paul van Dyk, Fedde Le Grand, MOBY, David Guetta, Carl Cox, Layo & Bushwacka!, Sasha, John Digweed, Dirty South, Sander Kleinenberg, and Hybrid. That only counts the ones I could ID.

Overall I’d say my favorite set at UMF was Hybrid, mainly because that’s the electronic music I grew up on. The best live set of the week went to Tiesto at Mansion. I’ve never heard anything so awesome before. As my friend Dheer says, “Tiesto must have a separate bag that’s labeled ‘For Club Use Only’ “.

It’s Grand Canyon Time! Actually, it just was Grand Canyon time. I just got back from an amazing trip out west, involving driving to Moline, flying to Atlanta and then Denver, and then driving to the canyon. It was worth it though, I got to see Utah on the way out and since Brian has a hybrid it wasn’t that expensive.

As usual, I took a ton of pictures… 3.5Gb to be exact. I’ve posted them all online here: Grand Canyon 2008

Day 1 (March 21, 2008): Drive from Denver CO to Grand Canyon Village, AZ. We passed through Grand Junction and then took a detour just past Cisco UT on the Dinosaur Diamond Prehistoric Highway (UT 128). I have no idea why it’s called that, but it’s on google maps. After that we went to Arches National Park, drove through Monument Valley, and then onto the Canyon. I got some great south rim photos in the middle of the night courtesy of the moon.

Day 2 (March 22, 2008): On Saturday we hiked from the South Rim to Phantom Ranch via the South Kaibab Trail. We camped that night at the Bright Angel Campground right near Phantom Ranch. All night we could hear the Bright Angel river which was just 10 meters from our campsite. It was amazing.

Day 3 (March 23, 2008): For Easter we got up and ate… camp food. After a great night’s rest and sleeping in, we packed up and headed up the Bright Angel Trail to Indian Gardens which is halfway to the South Rim (only in horizontal distance, it’s less than 1/3 of the vertical distance up!) . From there we set up camp and headed out Tonto Trail to Plateau Point.

Day 4 (March 24, 2008): Brian and I had a long drive ahead of us, so we woke up early and were on the trail by 6:50 am. We hiked up the rest of the Bright Angel trail and arrived at the Grand Canyon Village at the south rim at 8:57 (Brian was a few steps ahead of me due to my constant picture taking, some slow tourists on an icy spot, and because he’s in much better shape than I am). Overall we were happy with our 2h7m ascent. We bought maps, made it to the car and drove back to Denver stopping by Moe’s in Glenwood Springs for dinner.

On day 5 I went to REI for some equipment purchases and then Brian and I went to the DIA to catch flights out (he was heading to California for business). It was amazing trip and it really reminded me that I need to get that backpack out more often!

It’s that time of year and I haven’t carved a pumpkin for quite some time. Paula organized it (however I was the only one to show up), but we still had fun. After searching for a good pumpkin carving pattern, we finally found a good picture of Bender from Futurama. A little editing, a sharpie, and an hour of carving and here’s the result!

After work today I drove down to Palisades-Kepler State Park. It was great to get out and walk through the woods for a while. Overall it’s not terribly large but I’m pretty impressed – Some nice cliffs and trails. I took some pictures and posted them here: Palisades-Kepler State Park

So it’s been a while since I’ve updated my website. That’s a combination of 2 things: I’ve been busy/lazy; I haven’t done anything worth noting. Here are some recent updates:

Pictures from RAGBRAI XXXV are posted online.

Next week I head to the Great American Beer Festival! One of my college roommates, Brian, just moved to Denver, so I’ll be visiting him, my Grandparents (probably Aunt, Uncle, and Cousins also), and trying beer from all over the country! I will be bringing back pictures.

Today I discovered that Iowa actually does have places to go hiking… I was just looking in the wrong place. Iowa’s State Forests are the places, all this time I’ve been looking at the parks. I am hoping to make it up to Yellow River State Forest later in October. It’s been since August since I did any hiking, so I can’t wait.