The GTDRI Stories; The 2018 GTDRI - Part 2

"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 mentioned how big groups travel fast last time I posted on this series. Well, that works on gravel as well, even though we stopped a few times before getting to our "lunch stop" 45 miles into the day. 

The previous year, with a smaller group, we got to Traer for our stop at around 11:00am, which was pretty early in my view. But in 2018 we arrived an hour earlier than that! This was kind of crazy, but it wasn't like any of us were getting dropped and left behind either. The group was just traveling efficiently. 

It was a great day in terms of weather as well, which also contributed to the higher speeds. There was hardly any wind, the humidity was held in check, and the temperatures were warm, but not baking hot. That all contributed to one of the - if not the fastest - faster starts of any GTDRI. You'd have thought it was a race!

All smiles at an early stoppage during the GTDRI 2018

Taking in the Level B Roads put more smiles on the faces of the riders.

Unlike the year before, I took a lot of images for this one. I am glad that I did that. This post will share some of those images for the first time. Ironically, I usually use up everything worth sharing in my post-event write-ups, but for some reason I did not do that for this GTDRI

We spent a lot of time here at the place with the weird monuments South of Dysart.

Jeremy Fry, in the red jersey here, caught up to us at the monument site.

My old friend, Jeremy Fry, who has been on several GTDRI's, handled this one as he had some others by starting behind us at a later time, riding like the wind, and then catching us somewhere on the route. I was aware that he would be doing this, but as I took the image above, where Jeremy is literally staring me down, I didn't realize it was him until after I got back from the ride and reviewed my camera roll! 

Another Level B Road before we got to Traer.

I think this was the last Level B before Traer.

Had the 2018 GTDRI ended in Traer that year I think it would have been marked as one of the best rides any of the 25 of us had been on. The weather, the roads, the company - all of it was awesome and so much fun was being had it was silly. 

But it wasn't even quite halfway over yet, and we had gotten to that point within in under four hours even with all the extended stops. It was simply on target to become the best GTDRI ever, even if nothing of note happened after Traer. But....it did. 

Speaking of Traer, as I mentioned in the previous post in this series, it would be the last time any organized ride I put on would visit there. I am glad it was this particular ride that has that honor. There would be more "last times" during this ride which will be marked as we go along. 

Next: The 2018 GTDRI Part 3