Retrospective Series On The GTDRI

That's MG's leg and a beer from the '08 GTDRI.

 With the announcement Tuesday that I have retired from events productions I have come up with a new idea for a series for the blog here. This also has something to do with the fact that at some point in 2021 I will reach the end of my current series on the blog, "Trans Iowa Stories". What I do with that series in terms of a future project like a book, well, I don't know. It would have to be edited like crazy down to a distilled format for consumption and then reformatted into coherent chapters and........uggh! A LOT of work, but we'll see. I'm not ever going to rule that out, but before I tackled Trans Iowa in book form I'd likely try my hand at another, not so difficult story to tell. Maybe one like the story about my self-supported touring days, which I already have on the site here as a series I did....twice! 

But all that aside, the point is that the "The Guitar Ted Death Ride Invitational" is a story that not many know about, but I think it would make for an interesting series on the blog here. Of course, each running of it had a report afterward, but I haven't ever really dug into this event and told the behind-the-scenes stuff and some elements of this event are pretty important to me and others. Not least of which would be the time in 2014 when I and another rider were struck by a drunk driver in a pick-up truck as we were walking our bikes along the side of a gravel road. But there are other, less dramatic but no less interesting tales to be told as well. 

Looking at how far I've come along with "Trans Iowa Stories" during 2020, I see I had covered about five-ish Trans Iowa events in 12 months. So, with four events and a final reviewing of Trans Iowa to go, I wouldn't expect to see anything about the Guitar Ted Death Ride Invitational as a series until later into 2021. However; I probably will be researching this old event as the days go by preparing to launch that idea when the time is right. 

So, this is maybe a teaser too far in advance, but this idea has been on my mind of late and so I thought I would share this. It is a series which, I hope, will fit into my new outlook on all things gravel. Well, not really 'new', but maybe "more focused on" (?) for 2021 and beyond. Some of what I am referring to will be dealt with in my opening posts for 2021. Stay tuned for that.....