Gravel HoF Inductee Ride for Mark

Guitar Ted, I think 2021 July Saturday ride.

        So if you are reading from outside of the glorious Cedar Valley you may not understand how close I live to Guitar Ted.  I am less than a 5 minute bike ride away from his front porch.  So it is fairly easy for me to coordinate a ride from time to time with him.  Oddly enough I think I am the only person outside of Tony in the area that askes Mark to ride.  I think a lot of people have a built up image of the "Gravel God" and his opinions on their rides.  In reality, I think he is just happy to share some gravel ribbon with others.  Often I have found he is more interested in the same things I am.  I think we both enjoy, bridges, old churches, and cemeteries.  And yes, we both have a thing for barns.  I wont dive in to barns, but occasionally you see some Iowa State developed round barns that are gorgeous, and occasionally I see a Western New York style barn that gets me excited.  Yes, I miss being 8 years old and throwing hay bails around and building forts and sneezing my head off from the allergies.  To conclude this paragraph, Mark, likes to see what other people find interesting in gravel.  And often he has some weird nugget of history to toss in.  

     Saturday I helped Mark with a Bike Rodeo his church was putting on for the community.  It happened that another member of the bike collective was there, and she is new to the area.  We were informing her of her options in the area to ride and Mark made a request.  He wants to ride the same Vinton route we did last year.  I looked at him and said no, there were things I did not like about that route, he retorted, it was perfect.  I disagree with him on one half mile section we had a lack luster interaction with a cattle truck.  

   Mark and I chatted and Sunday June 19th is the tentative date.  He does not have Guitar duty that weekend.  Mark, works Mondays, Wednesday, and Saturdays, so trying to be flexible to his work schedule is ideal.  In short what works for some does not work for others.

     I have changed the route a lot, but it has the best highlights from the previous version.  With that said, I would encourage 40mm or wider tires.  The route has a double track 2 mile section.  I still need to recon that section to understand if I should re-route.  The route I have mapped out is 61.83 miles and 3,004feet of climb.  The course will start out rail trail flat (hint) then slowly roll into knee bender climbs and then mellow out for the last 1/3 of the ride after a long steady climb out of the river valley.

Cliff Notes:

- June 19th: 

- River Side Park, Vinton, Iowa 

- Time TBD (window is 8am or 9am start) 

- Mile 42 C-Stop Center Point

- Expect a 6.5hr ride time. (AKA the intent is to ride at Mark's pace, whatever it is)

- Route to be publish via Strava in June

- Post Ride Activity: Has to be spontaneous, because that is how Mark is.