Beyond the Ride

   Since my last post I have been off on vacation.  The Guitar Ted HoF ride occurred, and was a success.  I define success as one other person showing up.  I am not in to huge numbers and huge social media following.  I am not one to make something bigger than it is, of the best of the best.  I just  want simplicity, put a date, time, location out and see what occurs.  Mark did a great recap of the ride, and I am sure if you are reading this blog.  You probably read Mark's and you read his re-cap.       Since then, Mark and I have launched another podcast, I believe episode #96, by end of the month I hope we have #99 recorded, but that is if we have viable stuff to chat about.  That should cover Riding Gravel Radio Ranch podcast .  So far, I need to be more crisp on my responses and thoughts.  You are getting my hot takes on what Guitar Ted (Mark) brings up.  I do not see his sheets or notes p...

Cliff Notes: - June 19th:  - River Side Park, Vinton, Iowa  - Time 9am start  - Mile 24 C-Stop Center Point - Expect a group ride time of 6.5hrs total. - Post Ride Social: Tootsie Ice cream/Hamburger stand on the NW side of Vinton. - Group Size Unknown: At Least 3 of us.  But I have heard rumblings, so car pool if possible.  I am speculating about 30 -50 people. - No facebook post or event to follow about this.  If there is, it is someone else celebrating Mark and that is cool too and I recommend doing both rides. Today's Post: After talking with Mark (Guitar Ted) it is apparent to me I am re-configuring the route to be more like the original route.  With that said I took some liberties to keep it a large group capable route.  Two areas of awareness is the roll out out of Vinton north, and the roll into Center Point to a Caseys at Mile 24.  Mile 24 will be the last C-stop on the route, so top off.  Plan on a 45 minute pause for people to...

  Cliff Notes: - June 19th:  - River Side Park, Vinton, Iowa  - Time 9am start  - Mile 42 C-Stop Center Point - Expect a group ride time of 6.5hrs total. - Route to be publish via Strava in June. - Post Ride Social: Tootsie Ice cream/Hamburger stand on the NW side of Vinton.     I keep re-positing the same information because someone will ask for it, it also keeps it simple and reinforces the major points.  As I previously said in the first post, this day was picked based upon Mark's availability.  Yes it is on a Sunday and Yes it is fathers day.         A bit more about the ride, it is a social ride with a spirited pace.  In short it will not be a race of any sort.  If you are into that, then this ride is not for you.  This ride is also not a party pace ride, nor is it a drop rode. If you had to ask me for a pace for this ride to target for I would say 12.3456789MPH.  I have a few stops planned a long ...

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...

     I was reading Guitar Teds Blog about Risk Assessments.  It got me thinking about how people ride their bikes.  I am sure many ways exist on how to ride your bike improperly.  One that stands out in my mind is riding against traffic.  Outside of that, I can not think of many universally agreed upon ways to ride your bike wrong.       What got my noodle going is the helmet issue we still have.  Full disclosure I have done fat bike races without a helmet.  I am a fan of make your own decisions and be willing to pay the consequences when payment comes due.  That is life, look and understand what you are taking on.  Understand the consequences if things get weird.  And when things get weird, have a plan to address the weirdness.     I lived in Alaska for 3 years while in the Army.  I spent my summers in the outback hiking and camping.  Often I would carry a .45 handgun in the o...

       An observation of a market that is contradictory of sorts.  Cycling Businesses like to push the narrative of the green and earth safe sport of cycling.  In recent months I have had a quandary of sorts.  I am on the Cedar Valley Bike Collective board.  And I have taken upon myself to source a way or method of disposing of unusable bikes and components in a responsible manner.     We had a change over in staff at the shop and we have uncovered some past practices that are less than ideal.  As I have dove into the basement of the Collective I have found boxes of used tires tucked away, and inner tubes strewn about.  I have also gone through numerous bikes that have been cannibalized and had parts re-purposed elsewhere.  Those bikes are barely rolling frames.     During my adventure of sorting through the inventory, I realized we had a lot of unusable bikes fit for the road.  How ever some ...

    It has been a quite winter and instead of telling my opinions, how about we try talking about things I am doing.  I bought a geared All City Nature Ace (Boy).  For those of you who have history with All City line up, it is the progressively renamed Macho Man platform.  My intent was was to take a Macho Man frame and make it a Nature Boy.  This is the gist of the build concept.  I wanted the rear-derailleur hanger option for future use.     I handed over the ownership of my 54cm Santa Cruz to my girl friend.  Then, I got the green light to acquire another gravel bike for myself.  I debated on frames an availability.  Then one day I placed a All-City Nature Ace SS frameset on order.  The Local Bike Shop called me up in December and updated me on delivery and even said to cut my losses now as delivery pushed back to a unknown delivery date.   With the unknown delivery I cut my losses and began searching for a frame....

  Post #25: At 5:25am I picked up Guitar Ted.  He was on his porch waiting for the Subie to pull up.  Tammy was already driving down to Vinton.  We loaded Guitar Ted's bike, and we left for Vinton, about a 30 minute drive south of Waterloo on HWY 218.       We arrived in Vinton and parked, we assembled the group, and rolled out about 6:20am.  As we headed north from Vinton, the river and wet lands were emitting a cold fog in the air.  As the sun rose in the morning sky, it dissipated.  We motored out on 5 miles of pavement till we finely hit the gravel.       We went north just above Urbana then worked our way to Center Point.  We passed Cox Cemetery and followed the river on top of a ridge till we descended and we transitioned Missouri  crossing.       I did get a lot of my Veloveiwer squares poked on this ride.  I did a few intentional pokes, while GT and Tammy waited for...

  Post #21:  Tomorrow July 31st we roll out of Prairie Grove Park at 8am.  The park has a bathroom and a water spicket (I grew up saying spicket, not spout, I also say Crik and not Creek).  We may have showers to contend with in the early morning hours, but they appear to taper off at 5am.  These roads are dry, so I do not expect a mess.   Revisiting the route, there are no Level B-roads except for Petrie.  We can easily re-route around that if need be.       In other news this ride is officially a international known event.  Thanks to a internationally known blog Guitar Ted Productions .  We made his blog a few times, it is not like he lives a few blocks away from me.  But hey if I was not obnoxious about something, people would think I would have a fever.       So come on out.  If it does rain, i only expect that to make the ride go faster.  If it does not, I expect the ride to be...

  Post #19: It began with a simple exchange of text messages between Guitar Ted and Myself, as it once was pre-CoVID.  "Hey, wanna ride?", and we discussed the ride details.  It is generally easy to get Mark to go on a ride, if I promise two things, a route with roads I have never done and a doughnut stop in La Porte City.       Sometimes on our rides I get the sense I have explored more gravel roads around the counties surrounding Blackhawk County.  I know this sounds absurd but there are times when Mark's camera is out non-stop on a ride.  Mark has an on-going joke that he keeps going on taking pictures of barns.  He took a lot of pictures on Saturday.       We left town under the cover of overcast skies.  It had that late summer/early fall feeling of an Indian Summer heat wave.  The major difference was the corn was still up and ready for harvest.  That overcast came and went through the ri...