The GTDRI Stories: Where Did This Come From? Part 1

Gravel grindin' in January 2006

"The GTDRI Stories" is a series telling the history, untold tales, and showing the sights from the run of Guitar Ted Death Ride Invitationals. This series will run on Sundays. Thanks for reading!

The "Guitar Ted Death Ride Invitational". Quite the name, eh? It was an outgrowth of something I used to do back in the late 1990's and early 2000's. Back before anyone knew about me. Back before 29"ers, gravel bikes, or the Internets popularity. Back when I was a mechanic in an auto repair shop.

I did cover this once before on the blog about ten years ago. But this story has a lot to do with the GTDRI. In fact, you could say it was the GTDRI. 

Back in the late 1990's, I was still single, and I worked in a shop fixing cars which was pretty intense. I had to work five days a week from 7:00am till 5:30pm, maybe 6:00pm, if we were lucky and had a light schedule. There were no "breaks". You came in, worked till 8:00 or 8:30am, the boss bought you breakfast at McDonald's, you scarfed it down, and went hell bent for leather till lunch. You got 15 minutes to eat, and sit down! Then it was hammer and tongs until 5:30pm when it was time to start cleaning up and putting tools away. Every other week this included a 7:00am to 1:00pm shift on Saturday. 

It was hard work. Really hard work, and I sometimes would come home, close the door, and collapse on the floor. I'd wake up hours later and crawl up to bed with no supper. I was simply far too tired to deal with it.

This cut into my cycling. As in- I didn't ride at all! I had several bicycles at this point which came along with my time working at my first bicycle repair job. But that shop went under, and this car repair job came along and it was good money. It just was not conducive to doing much of anything else. So, to get in at least one ride of decent length, I planned on doing something.

That "something" was a weekend when I had a Saturday off, and the weather was forecast to be good, and I would have all day to ride. One day. Ride until I couldn't ride anymore. Pack in all the time and miles I could. It was Life or Death. I had to do it. Ride until I bonked, I didn't care really. 

And those rides, usually only done once a year, in Summer, were dubbed my "Death Ride" efforts. Once I rode to New Hampton to a family reunion, and got a ride back home. Once I just rode until I got stuck out on a gravel road and flatted and ended up coming back, making that a short day. (Darn skinny tires anyway!) I remember one of those rides I bonked so hard that I stopped in Jesup, Iowa and scarfed down the tastiest bag of chips I think I've ever had. They were so good I made it home, at least! 

My early "Death Rides" were all done on road bikes on pavement.

The earliest "Death Rides" were all done on paved back roads. I used an Aegis carbon road bike I had at first. Then after I got hired on at my second bike shop job, I acquired a Colnago steel road bike, and I did at least a few "Death Rides" on that roadie as well.

The whole concept of 'riding gravel roads' was not a foreign one to me. I had done some cool rides out of Swisher, Iowa in 1990-1991 when I lived there. I used an old Mongoose Sycamore MTB and rode to Amana Colony and back several times back then, all on gravel. But by the late 90's I had sort of forgotten about that. It took meeting Jeff Kerkove, and hearing about his mile-munching gravel training rides, before I had the light bulb go off again and I remembered how much fun that was.

 Of course, using a traditional 'road bike', was pretty frustrating on gravel. It was not going to be fun, and you had the very high risk of pinch-flatting tires on what was then considered 'wide' for road bikes at 23mm. Mountain bikes were the answer then for gravel. Jeff's outings and training rides he organized on gravel were certainly enlightening and an influence on me. 

The original "Death Rides" started in 1997. I know I was still doing those up until the early 2000's. During 2000, I did an abbreviated three days of RAGBRAI on the Aegis, which accounted for my "Death Ride" that year. 2002 saw me doing my RAGBRAI mechanic stint with the Europa Cycles gang on the RAGBRAI route, so I brought my Colnago out for that and rode most of that route. Same thing with 2003, but that was cut short when I had to come home on Thursday of that week as my son was being born about two weeks premature. 

I may have skipped 2004 , since I was already back working at the bike shop, had more time off, and I was doing a lot more single track. But I was exploring this gravel thing by then as well. Initially, these were just rides emulating Jeff's 'gravel training' rides, and they weren't meant to become a "thing". But, of course, it did......
 

So, with this backdrop in mind, I'll continue on this story about the name next week.