Archive for August, 2009

Cassandra Brustkern, 8, of La Porte City encourages Opal, a mini Rex, to run a rabbit hopping course at the home of Joan Knoebel in rural La Porte City July 17. (Jim Slosiarek)

Training a rabbit to hop competitively is harder than it sounds.

Rabbits may hop instinctively, said Joan Knoebel of La Porte City, but trying to get one to follow a course and jump over obstacles of varying heights is another story altogether.

“Rabbits like to zigzag, they don’t hop in a straight line,” Knoebel said.

Over the last year, however, Knoebel, her daughter, Cassandra Brustkern, 8, and nephew, Bradley Ryan, 11, have trained or are training some two dozen rabbits first to walk on a leash with a harness and then to follow a straight jumping course, hopping over poles stacked from one to five high or higher.

Once Brustkern and Ryan got used to getting their rabbits to hop, they started teaching others, going to schools and 4-H meetings to get other kids interested in the event as well. Rabbit hopping was an event at the Black Hawk County Fair this year.

Training initially begins with getting the rabbits accustomed to the leash and to being lead. The rabbit is then gradually taught to follow the trainer’s lead and stay on course.

Eventually the rabbit is introduced to the obstacles.

Ryan said he likes the rabbit hopping competition more than showing because he gets to work with his rabbits more.

“They’re not just in a cage looking good, we get to interact with them more,” he said.

“You get to actually spend time with your rabbits,” Brustkern said. “It’s fun to just let them out and work with them.”

The humans have learned about as much as the rabbits: It’s against the rules to nudge a rabbit with your foot if he won’t hop over the bars. The person on lead must stand or run to the side of the course, not in the course behind the rabbit.

And you have to be careful about who your rabbit is competing against.

“We’ve learned not to do bucks and does together,” Knoebel said, “because the bucks get really stupid when there are does around.”

Rabbit hopping as a competition started in Sweden in the 1970s and is growing in popularity in both Europe and the United States. Knoebel said most of the American popularity comes on the east and west coasts, but that she is working with a friend in Colorado to bring the sport to the Midwest.

– Molly Rossiter

The Buchanan Mansion, a 125-year-old brick house near Tipton that weighs more than 300 tons, started rolling down the road Monday morning, Aug. 10, 2009. The structure, being moved by Jeremy Patterson House Moving, averaged half a mile per hour. (Chris Mackler/The Gazette)

The moment of truth came at 6 Monday night when the 300-ton brick mansion made a right-angled uphill turn off Cedar County Road X30 onto the muddy Green Road.

Would the behemoth Buchanan Mansion, a Cedar County landmark for 125 years, remain upright or slide into the ditch?

Before more than 100 curious onlookers, the 20 crew members of Jeremy Patterson House Moving scrambled beneath the mansion for an hour, adjusting chains, sliding steel plates and wedges beneath some of the 140 tires holding up the house, and moved it forward inch by inch until it was finally off the road safely.

“This has never been done before,” said Jeremy Patterson, owner of the Washington, Iowa-based moving company that accomplished the feat.

“Heavier buildings have been moved for shorter distances, but no one has ever tried to move an old 300-ton brick mansion more than five miles,” he said.

Patterson, who was wearing a heart monitor after the recent blockage of one of his carotid arteries, delegated steering the 400-ton self-propelled rig — the beams, dollies, diesel engines and other moving equipment weighed more than 100 tons — to Jamen Buckingham of Bernville, Pa.

Walking backward in front of the house, Buckingham steered it with a remote-controlled joystick, making constant corrections to keep the 36-foot-wide rig on course. He also controlled the power to the six dollies with driving wheels that impelled the rig forward.
Alliant Energy crews took down 16 sets of utility lines to enable the rig’s passage.

The move could not have taken place had there been any bridges along the route, Patterson said.

Linda Weaver of Tipton, who with her husband, Randy, intends to make the mansion the center of their startup winery, said a weeklong weather delay made the move more stressful than it otherwise might have been.

Asked the cost of the move, she gave the same answer Patterson gave to The Learning Channel, which filmed the spectacle for broadcast later this year: “Two tractors, a goat and a little red hen.”

Teri Jo Griebat, who lived in the mansion for a decade until earlier this year, said the 16-room mansion was built in 1883 by Alexander Buchanan. Members of her family lived in it since her grandfather Clarence Miller bought it in 1938, she said.

Griebat said a $2,300 utility bill in January convinced her that new accommodations were in order. She said she is delighted it will be preserved in its new location on Green Road by the Weavers.

Later this week, the house will be settled into place atop wooden cribs, and its new foundation will be built beneath it, Linda Weaver said. It will likely be two years before the Weavers move into the mansion and start making wine there, she said.

– Orlan Love, The Gazette

Part of the historic Sutliff Bridge over the Cedar River in northeast Johnson County collapsed June 13, 2008, from flooding. Johnson County supervisors are considering whether to rebuild the 1898 structure. (Jim Slosiarek/The Gazette)

SUTLIFF — A lot of people have Sutliff Bridge stories — grand Memorial Day celebrations, weddings, having a drink on its wood planks.

Whether the bridge will be around to inspire new stories is unknown.

Last year’s flood washed away one-third of the bridge, which opened in 1898 over the Cedar River in the northeast corner of Johnson County. Now the county’s supervisors are considering whether it’s worth spending an estimated $1.4 million to restore it.

The bridge may have little functional use — it was closed to vehicles in 1981 — but supporters tout its historical and sentimental value. Before the flood, it was 827 feet long and one of the few Parker truss bridges left in Iowa.

“I don’t cry very easily, but tears did come to my eyes because I know it meant so much to the people (who) lived in that area because it was a treasure, you might say,” Janice Hunter, 86, said of hearing about the flood damage to the bridge.

She lives in Iowa City but grew up a few miles from the bridge. She remembers movies occasionally being shown near it, and the scare her children got when its planks rattled under the family car.

The structure also has some good stories of its own. Consider:

• In 1999, a ceremony was held in honor of the bridge being placed on the National Register of Historic Places. The thing is, it was put on the register the year before, unbeknown to local people.
• In 1984, to keep the bridge from possibly being torn down, the non-profit Sutliff Bridge Authority signed a long-term lease with the county for $1 to assume oversight of the bridge.
• For 20 years, Sutliff Bridge was the centerpiece of a beloved 5K run that Runner’s World magazine, at the race director’s prodding, had once dubbed the “worst road race in America.”

Johnson County has resumed control of the bridge to get funding for it. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has said it will pay 90 percent of the estimated $1.4 million in flood-related damage. The state would pick up the rest of the tab.

It’s not yet known what would happen to the remaining bridge structure if the county decides not to restore it. An evaluation under way will consider all options, from restoration to demolition, county Engineer Greg Parker said.

Supervisors say they have heard from a lot of people who want Sutliff Bridge rebuilt, but they’ve also heard from some who question spending that much taxpayer money on it.

“I think people are very conscious of (federal) spending and the deficit,” Supervisor Sally Stutsman said.

Supervisor Larry Meyers, who sits on a county committee studying the Sutliff issue, said he’d like to see it rebuilt, but he has a threshold for what’s worth it. The FEMA estimate, he said, is just about that number.

Supervisor Rod Sullivan has no doubt he wants it restored. He grew up a mile east of the bridge and said it felt like a death in the family when the floodwaters washed part of it away.

“It does mean something for the people of Johnson County,” he said.

The bridge now looks like someone took a giant saw and clumsily cut off its eastern third, with the planks and the railing on the remaining span bent just before dropping 20 feet to the now-calm Cedar River.

It’s a sight that, a year later, still bothers Randy Howell every morning when he opens Baxa’s Sutliff Store & Tavern, the business he runs on the east side of the bridge.

“You sit there, and it’s gone now and it has been, and it rips your heart out,” said Howell, 45.

Bridge advocates say they understand that repairs may be expensive but note that there are pots of recovery dollars available for such work. For example, FEMA is expected to pay most of the $25 million needed to restore the Paramount Theatre in Cedar Rapids.

Having the bridge back would be a big boost to the area, said Randy Brannaman, 56. He’s president of the Sutliff Bridge Authority and has lived near the structure his entire life.

“It is not an eyesore, but it’s sure a hole in all our hearts,” he said.

His group has nearly $30,000 in an account for the bridge. He said others have said they’d donate money to help get it rebuilt.

A report from an engineering firm evaluating Sutliff Bridge is expected soon. The county will see what it says and go from there, Meyers said.

The State Historic Preservation Office will provide technical assistance if the bridge is rebuilt, spokesman Jeff Morgan said.

FEMA spokesman Vince Clark said via e-mail that, after the engineering assessment, the county will submit a plan to FEMA for review. The agency will “seek ways to avoid, minimize or mitigate adverse effects” on the historic integrity of the bridge, he said.