GTDRI Stories: The Fallout Post GTDRI v4

Climbing a big hill during the 2009 GTDRI

 "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!

I'm not sure how I ended up where I ended up in 2009, but as I look back on that year, I was crazy busy. I'm a fair bit down the road from those times, but I can still remember how stressed out I was and when I look back now, it is no wonder!

A week after the 2009 GTDRI I did a big Fargo Adventure Ride. Then about a month later I was in the final "Good Life Gravel Adventure" gravel race, which was the precursor for Gravel Worlds. The very next day I went on a big, 400+ mile round trip to check out Potter's Pasture near Gothenburg, Nebraska. Then I followed that up with immediately driving back from Lincoln to Waterloo, Iowa. THEN a week or so later I had flown out to Salt Lake City for a Fisher Bikes press camp. Then a month later I was at Interbike. 

Yeah, while many may think that sounds exciting and that might be the life for them, I knew it was way too hectic and crazy for myself. Of course, I was fully stuck in on a lot of things, but I started carving off stuff late in 2009 and made plans to divest myself of more responsibilities in the coming years. How did the Guitar Ted Death Ride Invitational survive this? Well, that has to do with another reason I was wanting to back down on all the other stuff I had going on.

First: I had fallen in love with gravel riding. It was my true passion. I think that everyone knows that now, in 2022, but in 2009? Things were vastly different then in terms of my persona and how people viewed me. 

Reconning the site for the 2009 Big Wheeled Ballyhoo.

I was the 29"er Guy in 2009. At that point, I was one of the big promoters of the wheel size and ran a website dedicated to the 29"er mountain bike. That's how I got invited to all the Press Camps, why I went to Sea Otter, Interbike, and was the promoter of the Big Wheeled Ballyhoo in 2007-2009. 

Gravel riding? Well, people might have connected me with that goofy ultra-endurance race called Trans Iowa, then in its fifth year, but that was an event still way under the radar, and not many folks even knew about gravel yet then.

But that was where my heart was at, it was all about gravel riding and racing. That's why in 2009 I started Gravel Grinder News as a way to kind of vent off those feelings for gravel.  On top of all the other stuff, starting a site about gravel events was probably not what most folks would have advised me to do. But I would have dropped everything else to keep doing the gravel stuff in a heartbeat. 

That's why I kept the flame burning for the GTDRI in those days. It was what I was really wanting to do- ride gravel - and that was why this ride kept going. That, and the calls for the same route to be done again in 2010 were enough for me to capitulate and make my life easier and run the same route as 2009. 

Next: More About That Route.