Guitar Ted's Ride For Jacob: Part 1

Many of you long-time blog readers know I have done a long Summer ride which started out being called the "Death Ride", which then became the "Guitar Ted Death Ride Invitational", and once I went back to doing the ride solo again, it simply became the "GTDR"

I wanted to continue my tradition of "one long day in the saddle" this year, and I have been waiting for the right opportunity to arise for months. Then my son died earlier this month, and this changed a lot of things, obviously. One of those things was how I viewed this effort I wanted to put in on the bike. 

It no longer seemed appropriate to use the death ride thing anymore. Again, fairly obvious why this would be. So, when a gay pride event shut down our ability to be open at the Cedar Valley Bicycle Collective last Saturday, I was motivated to use the opportunity to do this long ride on gravel. The weather, furthermore, was forecast to be as about as perfect as one could hope for in August. Everything was coming together for this big ride. 

I decided to use my Salsa Cycles Fargo Gen I bike for this ride. I did this for a few reasons. One, I love this bike, and it has been with me for quite some time now. Secondly, I wanted to go 100% self-contained, and this bike has a ton of water bottle mounts. Plus it has the Redshift Sports Kitchen Sink handle bar with the corresponding bag which fits it. This allowed for a nice handle bar for riding and storage for food. The top tube bag was then used for repair bits only. This allowed for a set up which did not need a saddle bag or top tube frame bag.

While the bike has heavy wheels and tires, my brief test rides showed me I was going to have a momentum-machine, and coupled with the long, 180mm XT triple crank set, I was going to be okay. (I'll have more to say about this after the ride report.) 

So, the bike was set, the day was set, and all I needed to do was get a few good days of rest and get going as early as I could on Saturday morning. One note - I did ask N.Y. Roll to come along, but he had a previous engagement, so I did this ride solo. 

The route was set about three days ahead of the ride when the forecast solidified. There were to be pretty decent Northwest winds on Saturday August 23rd, and so I went North with the route with an eye to try out some roads I had not been on before. My plan took me to Janesville, Iowa, then to Shell Rock, Iowa, before heading mostly South toward New Hartford, Iowa, and then back East toward Cedar Falls and home again. I did not bother to count the mileage before the ride, leaving no expectations for this, and no mental pressure to 'achieve a goal'. 

I hand wrote cues with only road names, no mileages, as I was using Iowa DOT maps as a guide. Note: I only wrote cues from Janesville to New Hartford as I know the surrounding roads here well enough. Interestingly, this plan caused a couple of issues, which you will read about later. 

To keep this from being a novel-length post, I am breaking up my report into at least three parts. Today is Part 1, tomorrow's post will give you the first half of the ride, and Wednesday's post will bring it to the return back home. Thursday will be a gear review. 

I hope you all enjoy checking out the recap. Thanks again for reading Guitar Ted Productions!