Michael Morain. Photo: Duane Tinkey When my dad was growing up in Jefferson in the 1960s, as the surfing fad caught on, he and his friends learned the words to the Beach Boys’ “Surfin’ USA” and wore “Hang Ten” T-shirts just like other kids across the country. He wondered how high the Rac coon River would have to rise to get a good surf on it. We may soon find out. The team behind the ICON Water Trails plans to install a “waveshaper” near the confluence of the Raccoon and Des Moines rivers, so surfers and wannabes can ride the waves right here in Iowa. Apparently, operators can adjust the motorized flipper/fin thingy — I’m sure that’s the technical term — to create a steady crest no matter how much the river shrinks or swells. That’s just one of 10 things we can look forward to in the year ahead (see here). Last year, our annual list included the east side’s Fourmile Mountain Bike Park and Ankeny’s “glow trail,” spangled with a multitude of synthetic phosphorescent pebbles. And the year before that: new bridges, more trails and the reopening of the Val Air Ballroom. In January, when we look forward and back, we tend to think about time in one-year chunks. What happened? What’s next? But there are always bigger cycles to consider. The longer you live in a place, the more clearly you see the deeper shifts — how cities reinvent themselves, how ideas that once seemed far-fetched finally find their moment. It’s been 10 years, for example, since the young Republic of Kosovo opened a consulate on Court Avenue (see here) and 250 years since our own republic got its start. This summer, if we time it right, maybe we can watch the fireworks from our surfboards. ...read more read less