Rear View 2021: Spring

 

An early Spring header from '21 which appeared on the blog.

Hello! it's time again to review the year on Guitar Ted Productions. The "Rear View" has been a staple of the blog since almost the very beginning. This year there will be five Rear View posts looking back on Winter's End, Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter's Beginning. I'll also have a post looking ahead at 2022 near the end of the month. Enjoy the look back and thanks for reading Guitar Ted Productions!

March kicked in right away with surprisingly great gravel road riding weather and conditions. I was out and about quite a bit in early March as I did not have to be at work yet for Spring tune-ups. Bicycle sales were not really a thing since, well- supply chain issues. And we're still dealing with that! That said, review stuff had shown up and I was out testing it all in March. The expected 'slop-season' turned out to be a bit of a bust as Winter snow disappeared into the roads without much of an issue. Dry conditions ensued and by the end of March, I was already fearing that the roads were too dry. 

While there was plenty of snow, it never made the roads very sloppy and Spring riding kicked off right away.

 The B.O.G. Series took up a lot of space on the blog along with the regular Trans Iowa Stories series which was covering the ill-fated Trans Iowa v11 at this point. All the early month riding meant that I also had plenty of ride imagery to share as I went from "Winter Views" to "Country Views" pretty quickly. Anniversaries were noted for my last event route recon for the nixed C.O.G. 100 and for the pandemic start. I also got my first vaccination shot in March and finished up with the second one in April. 

I was doing a lot of ride testing. Here I was checking out some 650B Panaracer Gravel King SK+ tires.

Mid-March saw me go back to work on a regular basis, so ride posts became less of a thing going forward. April marked the missing out on the Renegade Gent's event, since it was postponed, and later on I watched from afar the third running of Iowa Wind and Rock, the successor to Trans Iowa. By the first part of April I had taken a deeper interest in local history. I found a book I had been trying to tack down which told about the human pathways in this area since the Native American times up until the dawning of the 20th Century. It is a book called "Crossings of the Cedar" and it is an excellent look at how paths have morphed into wagon routes, then train routes, and ultimately were turned into automobile routes. The book has informed the way I look at this area while riding to a great degree. 

In April I started another "Lube-Off" with two new lubes for me. This went on into early May and so did the "B.O.G. Series" which finally wrapped up in May. The Trans Iowa Stories moved on into the telling of the Trans Iowa v12 story as well. Otherwise it was a time where I made some plans, but ultimately most of what I planned never happened while some other stuff unplanned for actually occurred. 

I shared my PCL jersey collection in April here on the blog.

 I got a couple of new Pirate Cycling League jerseys and this prompted a look at my collection of PCL jerseys which I have been getting off and on throughout the years since 2010. In other news related to Gravel Worlds, the event RD's were told that they had cleared health related hurdles which were pandemic related and would have an event in August in some shape or form. So, that meant I was going to Gravel Worlds for an event, at the least, in 2021. 

Due to issues I had with the blog template, this header never got used on the blog.

By the time mid-May hit it was feeling a lot more like Summer. I also had to take stock of where I was at with riding, Life, and with the website work. I noted that my son was about to graduate from high school. I noted that I hadn't ridden a 50 mile ride yet up to that point in the year. I also hinted at something else: "Plus there is a situation out there that I may have to deal with which would put all riding on pause for an indefinite amount of time." I admitted then that this was rather cryptic.

But now I can say that this was a foreshadowing of what would happen later in the Fall. I knew my mother was in decline and that it wouldn't be long until she would be dying. I just didn't know when, and that really impacted any sort of plans for riding. I was even considering not going to Gravel Worlds pretty strongly at that point. But I did, eventually, and while I felt pretty guilty about even doing that, it really didn't have any impact on the situation with my Mother. But that certainly weighed on my mind all throughout the Summer.

Speaking of Summer, that will be the subject of the Rear View 2021 next week.