The Story Of Guitar Ted: The Social Life Of A Car Mechanic

A Guitar Ted Productions series

Welcome to this series on G-Ted Productions! This series will jump off from the time where the "Race Against Death Tour" ended and will take you up to the beginnings of Trans Iowa in late 2004. This is an eight year period where my life was transformed. You could say it was metamorphosed from the old to something quite new.

This won't have a lot of bicycle stuff in it at times, but it is all essential to the story of "Guitar Ted". This isn't about where the name came from. That's all here.  No, this is about the person. 

As with previous historical series on the blog, images will be a rarity. Cell phones, social media, and digital images were not available to take advantage of in those last days of analog living.  

In today's post we learn about my meager social life and how I ended up having my life changed in a major way.

Social Life Of A Car Mechanic: My first year or so of working at Schuerman’s didn’t leave much time for outside of work socializing, but I did get some time on weekends. Eventually I settled into a schedule that included having every other Saturday off entirely, and when I did work, we got off at 1:00pm. So, Saturday nights became my focus for doing social things. Ryan, my friend from the tour and bike shop days would hang out with me. We often got together, played guitar, and saw local acts play in a place called “Mainly Lou’s”. Sometimes we’d hang out down the street at “Cup Of Joe’s” coffee shop. Between this and my occasional rides with Mark, I really had zero friends or things to do.

Ryan was a budding guitar player at that time and I had an old acoustic Yamaha guitar that I gave him which he restrung left handed. I'd go over and teach him a few things, but just like when he got into cycling, Ryan took off and pretty soon he had an electric guitar and an amp. Anyway, we went on hanging out and then came that day when he asked "The Question". You may recall a few weeks back where I wrote that Ryan had asked me to go to church with him sometime. Well, he asked, and I said yes. We went one Sunday and it was okay, but nothing special. Then he took me to another church the following week where he said I'd feel "uncomfortable". That was a strange thing to say to someone whom you were trying to get into going to a church regularly.

And you know what, he was right. On our way to breakfast that day, he asked if I wanted to go back, and something about it made me want to. I cannot explain it to those who don't understand. I was very uncomfortable, but it was good. Weird, I know....

But this leads to the biggest change in my life. See, I was a divorced guy, and well, I wasn't really in a hurry to get hooked up again, because of the previous marriage ending so oddly and all. Anyway, I saw a young lady there and thought, "She looks way too smart to be with a guy like me." Ha! It's a good thing she didn't think that at all.

It wasn't long afterward that Ryan and I then noticed that a gaggle of gals from church would show up at our usual haunts. I thought it was a very strange coincidence. Otherwise, I was none the wiser. Finally, after about two months of this stalking of me, a mutual acquaintance introduced me to that woman that looked too smart to be seen with me. And.....we hit it off. That would have been the late Winter/early Spring of 1998, and by January of 1999, I was married to Phyllis, or "Mrs Guitar Ted", as I refer to her here on the blog.

In between meeting her and marrying her, I had other social changes. Ryan got married and I pretty much lost touch with him. Ears, who ended up living in my house for a few months in 1998, moved to North Carolina and has been out there ever since. My room mate had to move, of course, since I was getting married. So, besides Mark, who I had been a riding buddy with, everybody I knew previous to meeting Phyllis was gone from my life.

Next: The Beginnings of the Guitar Ted Death Ride Invitational