The GTDRI Stories: The Fourth One

A track showing the 2009 GTDRI route as sent to me later by one of the riders.

 "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 fourth Guitar Ted Death Ride Invitational day dawned cool and overcast. As we started to get ready to go, two cars pulled up. One was Jeremy Fry, a rider I had heard about at that time, but that I did not know very well. This was the first time we had really interacted and it would prove to be a fruitful friendship over the years. Especially concerning Trans Iowa. 

The other rider, Doug Eilderts, I had known from his patronizing of the bike shop I worked at, but he was a bit of a surprise as well because his main focus was road riding and he hadn't ever really given gravel a try. 

(L-R) Steve Fuller, David Pals, Doug Eilderts. The first 25 miles were pretty flat.

The first bit ran right up against the Turkey River in many places.

This would end up being my first big successful ride on the Fargo Gen I. I used it at the DK200 earlier the month before, but a head cold, high winds up to 40mph, and heat well into the 90's pretty much killed that effort at the first checkpoint for me. Heat and wind would not be an issue at all for the fourth GTDRI.

(L-R) Eilderts, Craig Severson, Fuller. This was just east of Elkader on the route here.

 

The views from the tops of the hills on this route are spectacular.

It was a good thing that I had a lot of gears and that the day was as cool and overcast as it was. The hills after Elkader were unrelenting and were strung together in such a way that you got little to no relief. But the sights made a nice distraction to the suffering.

A couple of stories from the section between Garber and Strawberry Point were great memories. First, on a brutal climb on Hawk Road, there was an old farm house that looked like it hadn't been updated since before WWII. Outside there was an ancient man,who had a full, snowy white beard, denim overalls, and a blue denim shirt on. He was "supervising" his equally ancient wife as she was using a motorized push mower to cut the grass on their hilly farmstead. The mere sight of this was amusing and kind of disgusting all in the same moment. 

Then there were the two Amish boys, both in denim overalls and denim shirts, barefoot, cutting grass in the ditch using a manual, reel type push mower. The grass was so high that one boy was standing on the frame of the mower while the other was ramming the mower ahead, inches at a time. The futility and charm factors were off the charts. 

The famous Fantail Road climb. Someone recorded 18% gradient on this climb.

A stop in Strawberry Point for a late lunch.

The way the route worked out we were too early for a lunch break in Elkader and a little too late for lunch in Strawberry Point. Fortunately for our group, we found a local grocer who had an outdoor grill going which was selling burgers for a fundraiser. The man running the grill had just enough leftover meat to satisfy the needs of our group. That was really great, plus, we had the experience of using the restroom in the grocery store. Essentially, it was what you'd think of as the "employee's rest room", and it was in the midst of the back room of the store, making for some awkward cyclist to employee interactions! 

Let's talk about the bicycles here. This was still "pre-gravel" as far as the cycling industry was concerned. So, you still saw a variety of bicycles on rides like this. In the foreground in the image above is David Pals tricked out single speed Cross Check. Next is my Fargo. Then the bike behind that was my On One Inbred 29"er, but I sold it to Craig Severson, who used it and was the only rider on the day that never walked a climb. The other bikes are not shown, but Jeremy and Doug were on cyclo-cross bikes. Steve was using a Salsa Cycles La Cruz disc bike. A sort of mash-up between a cyclo cross bike, a 29"er, and a gravel bike.

More fantastic views after we left Strawberry Point.

Jeremy Fry loading up on calories at the convenience store in Wadena, Iowa.

After Strawberry Point the hills gave no quarter. We slugged it out, passing through Volga, Iowa after a fantastic down hill run. Then it was onward to Wadena, Iowa, and a final chance to resupply on water and food. Not long after we climbed up out of Wadena I noted that we were about to hit the 100 mile mark for the day. I stated that we all were going to stop to celebrate that fete with a pull from the flask I had been carrying along just for this sort of thing. At a non-descript point on a gravel road, we stopped and performed the deed of recognizing our achievement and then we remounted soon afterward to knock out the final 17 miles of the route.

Steve Fuller takes a pull on the flask at our 100 mile mark.

Gotta document that!

Eventually we made the turn into the Echo Valley State Park and climbed up the steep drive to reach our vehicles. I was pretty happy with this version of the GTDRI. There were many reasons for this, not least of which was that I made the entire 117 mile route on a new bike that I was really excited about. 

The route was spectacular. Even to this day, I have to admit that this version of the Guitar Ted Death Ride Invitational was the best in terms of scenery and roads. I also can use the fact that many people- those who were on the ride, and those who saw the images that you see here- wanted me to do the exact same route again the following year as a way to point that out. I can also point to the fact that a version of this route was used four times for this event. I think that says a lot for this route's popularity, toughness, and for the experience in riding it. 

Even though the other three attempts at this route were fun in their own ways, there was something special about the 2009 version. Everything went just the way you'd want it to. It was really about as good as it could get. 

Next: The Fall-Out