The GTDRI Stories: The Eighth GTDRI

 

The 2013 GTDRI was a monster developed by the Slender Fungus

"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!

This was a difficult day on the bike for me. I had been frazzled by the preceding Odin's Revenge event a month earlier and I never really recovered from that. Then I did not get a good night's sleep and I woke up really early to make the start across the river and just down the road from Sabula a few miles at a converted rural church. 

I had unwittingly brought the wrong bicycle to boot as I had no idea what the difficulty level of the terrain would be and the Black Mountain Cycles Monstercross wasn't really an ideal handling bike for those Jackson County roads. Additionally I had a poor tire choice to make things even more dicey handling. Uggh! But it wasn't all bad! 

Once we got to the Jackson County Iowa Tourism building, the aforementioned converted church, we gathered in the dim twilight of morning and as I gazed out I kept seeing little bluish lights and cars descending upon the gravel parking lot. The surprise "rider" this time? Well, it was all those who came to swell our numbers to something over 20 riders. Jeremy Fry, in his usual fashion, showed up late to eventually swell our numbers to 24 riders. It would be the largest gathering of GTDRI riders for many years. I was overwhelmed by the response! 

The gathering horde at the Jackson County Iowa Tourism Center

My nemesis rises above the Eastern hills.

The first bit was straight West, more or less, and featured a couple doozies for climbs, but there was plenty of time to recover on the flats, and it was still cool and damp. So overheating wasn't an issue.....yet! We had to stop a few times to gather the strung out line of riders with differing skill and fitness levels. Fortunately everyone was chill about that. 

At the summit of this very steep climb we were treated to this view looking back East.

At Maquoketa the group split between short and long course riders.

Looking back on this day I should have swallowed my pride and went with the short course riders. But.....I didn't. Thinking that I needed to represent, since the ride was "my ride", I went with the longer option group and suffered the consequences of my poor fitness at the time. 

Admittedly, I underestimated this course as well. Eastern Iowa has some of the hardest riding anywhere I've been. The hills are steep, unrelenting, and the downhills are not straight shots, making bike handling skills a premium asset to have. I was simply overwhelmed by all of it, and then it was hot and humid to boot. 

You don't soon forget kindnesses the likes of what was shown to me by Michael Lemburger

Bailing out with Chris Paulsen. Again- I do not forget the kindness shown by him that day.

I ended up frying myself and making an abrupt left turn to follow another rider who was bailing out early named Chris Paulsen. He and his wife were local veterinarians who lived not far from Bellevue, Iowa.  Chris showed me a great deal of patience and a great deal of kindness that day. He took me into his home, fed me, and gave me a ride back to my truck where I bid he and his wife farewell and headed back home

My ride was fairly unremarkable. I maybe got in what? 75 miles or so? Half of what the long haul group did. I've heard stories about their last half of the ride. It sounded epic, but that is their tale to tell. I wasn't there for it.

I felt pretty down about it all, not being able to "show up" for the entirety of "my ride", but I got over it eventually. At the time though, I wasn't very proud of my efforts and I felt like I had let a lot of people down. 

On to the next one.....

The GTDRI Stories: The Eighth GTDRI

 

The 2013 GTDRI was a monster developed by the Slender Fungus

"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!

This was a difficult day on the bike for me. I had been frazzled by the preceding Odin's Revenge event a month earlier and I never really recovered from that. Then I did not get a good night's sleep and I woke up really early to make the start across the river and just down the road from Sabula a few miles at a converted rural church. 

I had unwittingly brought the wrong bicycle to boot as I had no idea what the difficulty level of the terrain would be and the Black Mountain Cycles Monstercross wasn't really an ideal handling bike for those Jackson County roads. Additionally I had a poor tire choice to make things even more dicey handling. Uggh! But it wasn't all bad! 

Once we got to the Jackson County Iowa Tourism building, the aforementioned converted church, we gathered in the dim twilight of morning and as I gazed out I kept seeing little bluish lights and cars descending upon the gravel parking lot. The surprise "rider" this time? Well, it was all those who came to swell our numbers to something over 20 riders. Jeremy Fry, in his usual fashion, showed up late to eventually swell our numbers to 24 riders. It would be the largest gathering of GTDRI riders for many years. I was overwhelmed by the response! 

The gathering horde at the Jackson County Iowa Tourism Center

My nemesis rises above the Eastern hills.

The first bit was straight West, more or less, and featured a couple doozies for climbs, but there was plenty of time to recover on the flats, and it was still cool and damp. So overheating wasn't an issue.....yet! We had to stop a few times to gather the strung out line of riders with differing skill and fitness levels. Fortunately everyone was chill about that. 

At the summit of this very steep climb we were treated to this view looking back East.

At Maquoketa the group split between short and long course riders.

Looking back on this day I should have swallowed my pride and went with the short course riders. But.....I didn't. Thinking that I needed to represent, since the ride was "my ride", I went with the longer option group and suffered the consequences of my poor fitness at the time. 

Admittedly, I underestimated this course as well. Eastern Iowa has some of the hardest riding anywhere I've been. The hills are steep, unrelenting, and the downhills are not straight shots, making bike handling skills a premium asset to have. I was simply overwhelmed by all of it, and then it was hot and humid to boot. 

You don't soon forget kindnesses the likes of what was shown to me by Michael Lemburger

Bailing out with Chris Paulsen. Again- I do not forget the kindness shown by him that day.

I ended up frying myself and making an abrupt left turn to follow another rider who was bailing out early named Chris Paulsen. He and his wife were local veterinarians who lived not far from Bellevue, Iowa.  Chris showed me a great deal of patience and a great deal of kindness that day. He took me into his home, fed me, and gave me a ride back to my truck where I bid he and his wife farewell and headed back home

My ride was fairly unremarkable. I maybe got in what? 75 miles or so? Half of what the long haul group did. I've heard stories about their last half of the ride. It sounded epic, but that is their tale to tell. I wasn't there for it.

I felt pretty down about it all, not being able to "show up" for the entirety of "my ride", but I got over it eventually. At the time though, I wasn't very proud of my efforts and I felt like I had let a lot of people down. 

On to the next one.....

Tis The Season

From the 1st day of Trans Iowa v10

 Once again, the ol' Facebook machine has been pumping memories back into the timelines of several folks concerning Trans Iowa, and obviously I get a lot of that as well. The last week of April will always be "that time" for me as long as I'm able to remember. 

It won't always be social media, and it hasn't been that, which will, and does remind me of those times. It is the way the Sun hits, the sounds of Robins and Cardinals in the trees, and the crisp evening air that brings me right back to those days when I was bounding around Iowa in an old beat up Honda, or a Volkswagon, or maybe a Subaru. Sometimes by myself. Other times with cherished friends. Of course, I still have that old Toyota truck, so I get reminded of Trans Iowa every time I sit in that thing. But it is really the season, this time of year, that gets me nostalgic, and maybe even a bit misty-eyed when those old memories come back to haunt me. 

The weather too. Wind, rain, wild temperature swings, and maybe even a whiff of snow. (Remembering the start of Trans Iowa v4 in Decorah there.) Sometimes I think about what the weather was at certain junctures of Trans Iowa. We rode some storms out! We had some beautiful weather as well. Springtime in Iowa. What can I say? 

Somewhere North of Mason City, Iowa during the night of Trans Iowa v1

Personally I experience a lot of emotions when I think about the hours and hours that I spent alone in the country, especially at night, over the course of Trans Iowa's run. No one knows about those times, and probably no one else really cares, but for me? Those were some very memorable times. 

I remember how hard those times were to get through. I remember being really "alone", cut-off from the world, and wondering what the heck I was doing out there anyway. I had a lot of time to think things through. It was good. It was not fun at times, but it was good. 

Matt Gersib serenading me on his ukulele during Trans Iowa v12 near Melbourne, Iowa.

 But there were awesome times spent with companions during the nights on certain Trans Iowa events. David Pals was invaluable as a companion on some of those long, cold nights. Matt Gersib too. He was a life-saver, and I shared my last Trans Iowa overnight with him, which will always be one of my chief memories of doing that event. We saw the good and the bad and we still get along with each other through it all. Gotta say that means a lot to me. These are the things that get to me when I start remembering things at this time of the year. 

From T.I.v8. Image taker unknown.

Then I think about all the mini-chaotic situations we probably caused over the course of 14 years. Mainly at convenience stores. Riders would come in at all-hours, muddy, dirty, sweaty, with weird clothing on, and looking half-dead. Wandering aisles for who-knows-what grub to fuel the next one hundred miles. On gravel? What?!! Yeah.... I missed most of that, but I've heard the stories. 

And of course, the people and their love for Trans Iowa mean a lot as well.

 I did hear a lot about what the riders thought about the ol' event. I have to admit that it is amazing to me that the love shown the event, and to me, has been amazing. It still is amazing to me. Of course, I appreciate it greatly, and this time of year brings that back to mind again as well. 

A comment on Trans Iowa and its influence sent to me in 2020

What's weird is - at least it seems weird to me - is how Trans Iowa still inspires people to this day. People that weren't ever in the event even. They sometimes get a hold of me just to say that T.I. did something to them that inspired. It's uncanny to me that some weirdo event on gravel in Iowa that I was a part of did anything inspirational after it was over. I mean, I figured it would get forgotten almost immediately. 

And when that happened, well I would just as well have been a ghost as well. But nothing could have been further from the truth, even though I was at peace with fading away, people aren't letting that happen. 

The whole Gravel Cycling Hall of Fame deal now has pretty much ensured that I am remembered by at least a few folks, so I may as well give up the idea that I was going to become "just another guy" in this life of gravel riding. Ha! And that's fine with me. It's nothing I can do anything about anyway. Not that I would, but....you know! 

A tribute to Bill Pontious, who was a Trans Iowa rider that died unexpectedly in 2014.

 I cannot live through the last week of April anymore without thinking of those who were part of Trans Iowa that are no longer with us. I feel privileged  to have met these folks via Trans Iowa, honored that they chose to ride in my event, and sorry that they lost their lives too soon. Bill Pontious, Paul Black, Joel Dyke, Kyle Platts, and Joe Mann - Thank you and God Speed! 

So yeah.... This week! Almost all the Trans Iowa events, save for T.I.v5 which was held the first weekend in May that year, are packed into this last week of April. That's a lot of memories coming home to roost at this point for me. It can be overwhelming. Almost to the point that I want to shut it all out. But that would be an unproductive attempt at blocking out things that, really, should be celebrated and considered. 

So, forgive me this one post to help me tie a bow on this last week of April. I needed to write this probably more than anyone out there needed to read it, so thank you! 

I hope you all have a great weekend!

Tis The Season

From the 1st day of Trans Iowa v10

 Once again, the ol' Facebook machine has been pumping memories back into the timelines of several folks concerning Trans Iowa, and obviously I get a lot of that as well. The last week of April will always be "that time" for me as long as I'm able to remember. 

It won't always be social media, and it hasn't been that, which will, and does remind me of those times. It is the way the Sun hits, the sounds of Robins and Cardinals in the trees, and the crisp evening air that brings me right back to those days when I was bounding around Iowa in an old beat up Honda, or a Volkswagon, or maybe a Subaru. Sometimes by myself. Other times with cherished friends. Of course, I still have that old Toyota truck, so I get reminded of Trans Iowa every time I sit in that thing. But it is really the season, this time of year, that gets me nostalgic, and maybe even a bit misty-eyed when those old memories come back to haunt me. 

The weather too. Wind, rain, wild temperature swings, and maybe even a whiff of snow. (Remembering the start of Trans Iowa v4 in Decorah there.) Sometimes I think about what the weather was at certain junctures of Trans Iowa. We rode some storms out! We had some beautiful weather as well. Springtime in Iowa. What can I say? 

Somewhere North of Mason City, Iowa during the night of Trans Iowa v1

Personally I experience a lot of emotions when I think about the hours and hours that I spent alone in the country, especially at night, over the course of Trans Iowa's run. No one knows about those times, and probably no one else really cares, but for me? Those were some very memorable times. 

I remember how hard those times were to get through. I remember being really "alone", cut-off from the world, and wondering what the heck I was doing out there anyway. I had a lot of time to think things through. It was good. It was not fun at times, but it was good. 

Matt Gersib serenading me on his ukulele during Trans Iowa v12 near Melbourne, Iowa.

 But there were awesome times spent with companions during the nights on certain Trans Iowa events. David Pals was invaluable as a companion on some of those long, cold nights. Matt Gersib too. He was a life-saver, and I shared my last Trans Iowa overnight with him, which will always be one of my chief memories of doing that event. We saw the good and the bad and we still get along with each other through it all. Gotta say that means a lot to me. These are the things that get to me when I start remembering things at this time of the year. 

From T.I.v8. Image taker unknown.

Then I think about all the mini-chaotic situations we probably caused over the course of 14 years. Mainly at convenience stores. Riders would come in at all-hours, muddy, dirty, sweaty, with weird clothing on, and looking half-dead. Wandering aisles for who-knows-what grub to fuel the next one hundred miles. On gravel? What?!! Yeah.... I missed most of that, but I've heard the stories. 

And of course, the people and their love for Trans Iowa mean a lot as well.

 I did hear a lot about what the riders thought about the ol' event. I have to admit that it is amazing to me that the love shown the event, and to me, has been amazing. It still is amazing to me. Of course, I appreciate it greatly, and this time of year brings that back to mind again as well. 

A comment on Trans Iowa and its influence sent to me in 2020

What's weird is - at least it seems weird to me - is how Trans Iowa still inspires people to this day. People that weren't ever in the event even. They sometimes get a hold of me just to say that T.I. did something to them that inspired. It's uncanny to me that some weirdo event on gravel in Iowa that I was a part of did anything inspirational after it was over. I mean, I figured it would get forgotten almost immediately. 

And when that happened, well I would just as well have been a ghost as well. But nothing could have been further from the truth, even though I was at peace with fading away, people aren't letting that happen. 

The whole Gravel Cycling Hall of Fame deal now has pretty much ensured that I am remembered by at least a few folks, so I may as well give up the idea that I was going to become "just another guy" in this life of gravel riding. Ha! And that's fine with me. It's nothing I can do anything about anyway. Not that I would, but....you know! 

A tribute to Bill Pontious, who was a Trans Iowa rider that died unexpectedly in 2014.

 I cannot live through the last week of April anymore without thinking of those who were part of Trans Iowa that are no longer with us. I feel privileged  to have met these folks via Trans Iowa, honored that they chose to ride in my event, and sorry that they lost their lives too soon. Bill Pontious, Paul Black, Joel Dyke, Kyle Platts, and Joe Mann - Thank you and God Speed! 

So yeah.... This week! Almost all the Trans Iowa events, save for T.I.v5 which was held the first weekend in May that year, are packed into this last week of April. That's a lot of memories coming home to roost at this point for me. It can be overwhelming. Almost to the point that I want to shut it all out. But that would be an unproductive attempt at blocking out things that, really, should be celebrated and considered. 

So, forgive me this one post to help me tie a bow on this last week of April. I needed to write this probably more than anyone out there needed to read it, so thank you! 

I hope you all have a great weekend!

Friday News And Views

Jones Bicycles Debuts 29" X 3.25" Crux Tires:

Back when fat bikes were getting hot there were rumors that a 29" fat bike tire might get produced. That wasn't really a very soild thought though, since mold making machines were barely able to crank out 2.5" width 29"er tires at that point and the over-all diameter of such a tire as a 29' X 3.25" tire would easily exceed anything that could make a tire at that point. 

That said, tire companies that weren't necessarily the biggest dogs in the performance bicycle marketplace started doing odder sized tires just to gain a foothold in the market. (See reference to an example below) Vee Tire and Duro Tires are two brands that, while you may not know it, make tons of bicycle tires for lower end bikes and other brands. They just do not have their name front and center when it comes to tires made under their company name. 

You've likely heard about Vee Tire, and you may have used them on a bike, but they are not a "Maxxis" or "Kenda" in the marketplace. Duro is almost unheard of in the performance tire market for bicycles, although they have made popular DH tires in the past. 

So, it wasn't too surprising then when Vee Tire made there Bulldozer model into a 29" X 3.25" tire, which then Jones Bikes adopted as their featured tire on many of their Jones Bikes builds for bikepacking. Now Jones has worked with Duro Tires to bring another, tubeless ready 29" X 3.25" tire in the Crux model. You can check them out here. 

Ultima Multipath Long Range (Image courtesy of Ultima)

Interesting Molded Composite HPC :

Electrified two wheeled contraptions are a dime a dozen, so when I see one that I actually am interested in, you can bet that there is a good reason why. This bike by Ultima from France is just such an example.

It features technology borrowed from automobile manufacturing and uses an injection molded composite technique to create a unique, monocoque, single-piece structure for the frame and the fork is made in much the same way. I've chosen to highlight Ultima's "Long Range" version of their bike to show here because it has the most radical fork design and is meant for all-roads/terrain. 

Essentially a trekking bike, the Ultima Long range has a single-sided fork, ala a Lefty, with a unique parallelogram linkage suspension, which as far as I can discern is based on a "blade", or leaf spring design. (I could be wrong, but the website isn't 100% clear without me doing more digging)
 

The disc brake arrangement is kind of interesting. It would allow for the rider to remove the front wheel without removing the caliper, but since the caliper is basically upside down, I cannot imagine that debris would not want to collect in the pad area, not to mention moisture. 

But besides this odd design choice, it is a very interesting bicycle. Typically any injection molded type designs in the past have not been successful due to breakage or a lack of stiffness which led to poor user experiences. Examples of this that you may have heard of are GT mountain bikes from the early 2000's and Ross, who were resurrected briefly in the early 2000's and used an injection molded hard tail frame for a few models. 

Ultima is using recycled plastic in this frame and fork and their goal is to use 100% recycled plastic for the French produced frame and fork by 2025. Hopefully they can pull it off, but time will tell. 

The bike weighs a claimed 45lbs plus a little and costs well North of 4K, which in light of many offerings on the market is not bad at all. It's just going to come down to how this frame and fork technology holds up under daily usage.

Drunken Rhino (Image courtesy of Nextie)

Drunken Rhinos & Mammoths: What?!

The world of fat bikes just got a little fatter recently  when Nextie, the Far East carbon rim manufacturer, announced that they have made a 128mm wide carbon fat bike rim with a 120mm internal rim width. Following is a bit of the announcement as seen on Facebook:

"We thought the Xiphias 105mm rim had been compatible enough for the biggest tires currently on the market. But according to the needs of one of our loyal customer fans, who is a fat-bike enthusiast, the Xiphias 105mm is still not wide enough, especially for the ground with very thick snow. Wider rims are much more beneficial. So we decided to design and to develop the world's widest carbon bicycle rim - the Drunken Rhinoceros 128mm. Even though it's an extremely niche product, it's our duty to push the boundaries of carbon fiber cycling if one product could meet the needs of our wide range of customers from all the world."

The identity of the "loyal customer" wasn't hard to figure out for me. That would be Mike Curiak, who is solely responsible for this product's existence. He typically has been the driving force behind fat biking in "trail-less", ungroomed areas where there have been less people and more solitude. You can see Mike's bike he tested these on and read more about how to get the rims here. 

In the Facebook comments on Nextie's announcement a link was made available to a bike that probably has the widest Over Lock Dimension (OLD) of any production bicycle that I am aware of. The Mammoth Empire, apparently available from the Philippines, has an over 200mm bolt-on rear hub. 

Snip from a YouTube video on the Mammoth Empire fat bike

Okay, so you've got these huge rear traingle widths, a big, wide carbon fiber rim, and what tire? Well, actually, the big tire came first. That would be the Vee Tire Snowshoe 2XL at 5.05" in width, and it is at least that wide. I've seen side by side comparisons with the Bud and Lou Surly 4.8"ers and the Vee 2XL is noticeably bigger. 

But......could we be on the verge of seeing something even wider come out? 

Thanks for reading Guitar Ted Productions! Have a great weekend!

Friday News And Views

Jones Bicycles Debuts 29" X 3.25" Crux Tires:

Back when fat bikes were getting hot there were rumors that a 29" fat bike tire might get produced. That wasn't really a very soild thought though, since mold making machines were barely able to crank out 2.5" width 29"er tires at that point and the over-all diameter of such a tire as a 29' X 3.25" tire would easily exceed anything that could make a tire at that point. 

That said, tire companies that weren't necessarily the biggest dogs in the performance bicycle marketplace started doing odder sized tires just to gain a foothold in the market. (See reference to an example below) Vee Tire and Duro Tires are two brands that, while you may not know it, make tons of bicycle tires for lower end bikes and other brands. They just do not have their name front and center when it comes to tires made under their company name. 

You've likely heard about Vee Tire, and you may have used them on a bike, but they are not a "Maxxis" or "Kenda" in the marketplace. Duro is almost unheard of in the performance tire market for bicycles, although they have made popular DH tires in the past. 

So, it wasn't too surprising then when Vee Tire made there Bulldozer model into a 29" X 3.25" tire, which then Jones Bikes adopted as their featured tire on many of their Jones Bikes builds for bikepacking. Now Jones has worked with Duro Tires to bring another, tubeless ready 29" X 3.25" tire in the Crux model. You can check them out here. 

Ultima Multipath Long Range (Image courtesy of Ultima)

Interesting Molded Composite HPC :

Electrified two wheeled contraptions are a dime a dozen, so when I see one that I actually am interested in, you can bet that there is a good reason why. This bike by Ultima from France is just such an example.

It features technology borrowed from automobile manufacturing and uses an injection molded composite technique to create a unique, monocoque, single-piece structure for the frame and the fork is made in much the same way. I've chosen to highlight Ultima's "Long Range" version of their bike to show here because it has the most radical fork design and is meant for all-roads/terrain. 

Essentially a trekking bike, the Ultima Long range has a single-sided fork, ala a Lefty, with a unique parallelogram linkage suspension, which as far as I can discern is based on a "blade", or leaf spring design. (I could be wrong, but the website isn't 100% clear without me doing more digging)
 

The disc brake arrangement is kind of interesting. It would allow for the rider to remove the front wheel without removing the caliper, but since the caliper is basically upside down, I cannot imagine that debris would not want to collect in the pad area, not to mention moisture. 

But besides this odd design choice, it is a very interesting bicycle. Typically any injection molded type designs in the past have not been successful due to breakage or a lack of stiffness which led to poor user experiences. Examples of this that you may have heard of are GT mountain bikes from the early 2000's and Ross, who were resurrected briefly in the early 2000's and used an injection molded hard tail frame for a few models. 

Ultima is using recycled plastic in this frame and fork and their goal is to use 100% recycled plastic for the French produced frame and fork by 2025. Hopefully they can pull it off, but time will tell. 

The bike weighs a claimed 45lbs plus a little and costs well North of 4K, which in light of many offerings on the market is not bad at all. It's just going to come down to how this frame and fork technology holds up under daily usage.

Drunken Rhino (Image courtesy of Nextie)

Drunken Rhinos & Mammoths: What?!

The world of fat bikes just got a little fatter recently  when Nextie, the Far East carbon rim manufacturer, announced that they have made a 128mm wide carbon fat bike rim with a 120mm internal rim width. Following is a bit of the announcement as seen on Facebook:

"We thought the Xiphias 105mm rim had been compatible enough for the biggest tires currently on the market. But according to the needs of one of our loyal customer fans, who is a fat-bike enthusiast, the Xiphias 105mm is still not wide enough, especially for the ground with very thick snow. Wider rims are much more beneficial. So we decided to design and to develop the world's widest carbon bicycle rim - the Drunken Rhinoceros 128mm. Even though it's an extremely niche product, it's our duty to push the boundaries of carbon fiber cycling if one product could meet the needs of our wide range of customers from all the world."

The identity of the "loyal customer" wasn't hard to figure out for me. That would be Mike Curiak, who is solely responsible for this product's existence. He typically has been the driving force behind fat biking in "trail-less", ungroomed areas where there have been less people and more solitude. You can see Mike's bike he tested these on and read more about how to get the rims here. 

In the Facebook comments on Nextie's announcement a link was made available to a bike that probably has the widest Over Lock Dimension (OLD) of any production bicycle that I am aware of. The Mammoth Empire, apparently available from the Philippines, has an over 200mm bolt-on rear hub. 

Snip from a YouTube video on the Mammoth Empire fat bike

Okay, so you've got these huge rear traingle widths, a big, wide carbon fiber rim, and what tire? Well, actually, the big tire came first. That would be the Vee Tire Snowshoe 2XL at 5.05" in width, and it is at least that wide. I've seen side by side comparisons with the Bud and Lou Surly 4.8"ers and the Vee 2XL is noticeably bigger. 

But......could we be on the verge of seeing something even wider come out? 

Thanks for reading Guitar Ted Productions! Have a great weekend!

Country Views: Looped

Escape Route: MLK Bike Path

Late April weather can be all over the place, but this year April has been shying away from the warmer side of things. We had a dose of Winter over the weekend and Monday I was too busy to get out, so Tuesday had to be the next chance which fit into a nice, Sunny window of weather. 

I was kind of happy that it was on the cool side though, because I just got my Pirate Cycling League 15th Anniversary wind jacket. So, at least the weather stayed cool enough long enough into April that I had a chance to use it. 

This ride would head Northeast as that was the direction that the wind was coming from. While the weatherpeople were saying the wind would be a mere breeze, it was in fact a pretty stiff wind. The flags were standing straight out, and that made the going a bit tougher. But wind isn't an unknown around here, so I was fine riding into it. Besides, the tailwind back home would be nice!

A county maintainer made much of my ride a bit more, shall we say, "interesting"?

I rode out straight into the teeth of the wind on Martin Luther King Jr Boulevard which just so happens to run at a diagonal out of town to the Northeast. That gets you out to the industrial area where Tyson's meat packing plant dominates the landscape. There are semi-tractor trailer rigs all over out there. A side benefit of this is that the county made the road shoulders as wide as a lane of traffic to accommodate these rigs as they often pile up out along the road waiting to get in to load and unload cargo. A gravel bike then can navigate this easily and not be in the roadway where traffic can be speeding by at 60mph at times. 

This brings me to Newell and a right turn to the East to get me outta that craziness and out into the country. On this ride I immediately came across a county maintainer who had scraped a big pile of gravel, dirt, and grass in a long pile right down the center of the gravel road. 

Nice doggie! This one stayed in the yard, at least.

This John Deere was pulling a huge disc rig, although with all the dust you cannot really see it.

The maintainer had been down both sides of the roadway and due to that, Newell was covered in a loose layer of dust and gravel. Good thing then that I rode the pink MCD with those 700 X 45mm Pirelli Cinturato M tires on it. Those things just made the road ride like it was perfectly normal. 

Some fields are really green with this cover crop, which I believe is rye grass.

But most fields were either brown or being worked up for planting. That's Pilot Grove Road in the distance.

The navigational plan was to head to Poyner Creek bridge, have a rest for a minute, then come back to Pilot Grove Road, head North, and then back West on Big Rock Road. In my head, the distance from Newell to Big Rock was two miles. In reality, it is three miles. 

The dust was kicked up pretty badly by the UPS truck up the road here.

Looking back at Pilot Grove Road. This is where I made a wrong turn.

So, I ended up turning on East Donald Street instead and I thought I was on Airline Highway. If I had been on Airline I was going to go a mile West, turn on what would have been Ordway Road, went one more mile North, and then left on Big Rock. Instead, I ended up in Dewar, Iowa!

I knew I was off-track when things weren't looking familiar, like this barn.

Going back the way I came out!

Once I saw Dewar, I knew that all ways out of town ahead were pavement. So, I opted for the left turn, which would take me right back to Newell and gravel back into town again. So, that worked out and I got a nice two hour ride in from the house. 

Not the loop I had in mind, but it was nice to see East Donald Street's gravel section again after two years. I may have to add that into the regular rotation of routes I do from now on.