The Northfield Connection

 In celebration of the twentieth year of this blog, I have a few tales to tell. This post is one of them. This series will occur off and on throughout this anniversary year, I hope to illuminate some behind-the-scenes stories and highlights from the blog during this time. Enjoy!

 The year 2011 was a big one, as many were, but on the blog there was a theme that ran from one end of 2011 to the other. That would be my appearances in Northfield, Minnesota. I made several trips Northward during that year, and such was the influence of those trips that there were some serious conversations being held at the Guitar Ted Headquarters about possibly moving North. 

A "mutt bike" built for screwing around inside Mike's Bikes.

There was the trip for Frostbike. By now an annual trip that I looked forward to with great anticipation. The best part being the visiting with locals at Mike's Bikes with Ben Witt, Marty Larson, and some other locals who rotated through the years including Stuart and John, not to mention Mike himself. 

Those were some times! Shenanigans and tomfoolery of the highest degree were accomplished within those walls at Mike's and sometimes outside of them as well. 

Then there was the criterium at Northfield that I went up to help Ben with. We got in a fun gravel ride to the chapel and I got to hang out with Ben's father, Mark, and drive his classic Mustang convertible, plus ride around in a split window 63 Vette. 

There was the trip to Northfield again on Labor Day weekend which was another cool hang and on this occasion I built my wheels for the Snow dog and went on an urban/country combo ride that was a blast. 

The June gravel grinder to the chapel outside of Northfield.

Through it all I was feeling drawn into the Northfield community and friends like Ben and Marty who lived there did nothing to dissuade this. In fact, Ben kept trying to speak it into existence. It was an attractive thought and even Mrs. Guitar Ted was entertaining thoughts of moving to Northfield at one point. 

However; it was not to be. There were a lot of reasons for that, one being that Mrs. Guitar Ted was finishing up her Master's degree and another being that I would have to find new employment. That might be a problem since then I most likely would have had to have given up Trans Iowa, doing my side gig as a reviewer, and it would have impacted my ability to be there for my kids when they went to school and when they got out of school. Financially all of that also did not add up for us either.

Ben Witt clears some rails with his Mukluk fat bike in 2011.

Could we have moved anyway, made it work somehow, and had a different but still awesome life? No doubt, we could have, but at what cost? I don't know. Comfort is the enemy of adventure, but maybe we were wise to stick around in Iowa. 

All I know is that this blog would have been radically different had I moved and who knows if I would even still be writing it today? Life takes you in strange curves and turns sometimes, but in this instance, it was but a dream. Fun to have considered it, but a dream nonetheless.