TNG: born of a broken bike

Northfield's beloved Tuesday Night Gravel - beginnings

It happened on a Friday in September 2011. I was cooked from a heavy week at work and decided to get away for a nice bike ride after lunch. I expect the wind was from the south that day because I ended up stopping into Milltown Cycles - at that time owned by our friend Ben Witt.¹ It can be a bit of a toss up whether we stop at the coffee shop or the bike shop on break - ideally you have time to get both things! I was snooping through the new bikes on display and for some reason Ben had a look at my bright red road bike - an eleven year old steel Salsa La Raza.

sorry for the low res - I have shockingly few photos of this much loved bike setup

Out of the blue Ben asked me if I could get a ride home that afternoon because he would not let me continue on this bike. He’d spotted a small crack in the steerer tube and was concerned what might happen to the rider should that fail completely.

Now this bike had never been in any kind of accident - not to my knowledge anyway - but it was my number one bike and probably had accumulated thirty thousand miles or more at this point over the many summers of riding. I did ship it once for a vacation in California - could it be the damage occurred during those transfers? It doesn’t matter really - we called in a local frame builder and he confirmed Ben’s suspicion. Now the question was what to do about it.

While steel frames are fully repairable there would be some cost and timing issues for me to deal with. Fall in Minnesota is a fantastic season and I certainly didn’t look forward to missing my usual outings with the the Cannon Valley Velo Club. In those days a reliable cadre of eight or ten riders would show up every Saturday for road rides of all kinds. Even though it was well used and not the latest componentry my inclination was to get the red bike repaired - but what to do during the interim?

Complicating matters - one of those new builds in Ben’s shop caught my eye and imagination on the very day the other one went off to be fixed. This would be a delicate issue to discuss at home. In 2011 both our kids were in college and though we were managing the tuition load so far we were understandably uneasy about burning too much cash for playthings. Our cycling season was hanging in the balance! My spouse is nothing if not understanding when it comes to me and bikes - she knows these silly things do a world of good not just for my physical fitness but my mental outlook too. So there it was - the La Raza went off to Mike Pofahl for fixing. And my bridge bike to keep me busy in the meantime was another Salsa - and another steel one too. Behold the Vaya!²

How to express to readers just how radical this step seemed at the time? I was a long time road man - close to thirty years riding the skinny tires all over the area - as long as the roads were paved! This new rig came with 35c tires and could handle gravel or even some single track. A completely new network of roads opened up to me - it was nothing short of an epiphany! And now of course everyone knows those roads are less traveled and so much quieter and lovelier than most any stretch of pavement around here. I could still hang with the Saturday guys - the gravel ready bikes turn out to be decent on pavement with the right tire setup. But the joy of exploring new paths here in the same area I’d lived so long was pulling me away from the roadies - at least for awhile.

we suddenly started finding roads like these!

So you see how the broken bike led to me trying gravel in the fall of 2011 - but what about Tuesday Night Gravel? Simple really. The only thing missing from this joyous and dirty rambling around the country were my friends. Cyclists are generally a solitary lot and they don’t mind long hours alone on the road. But don’t be fooled by that - we are human too - having some company is just another way to enjoy the ride. Here again Ben Witt played a part - filling in the social part of the equation he would occasionally call a shop ride after work. Sometimes these were based in Faribault and other times we’d meet up in Northfield. I loved them - but I wanted more. And by 2012 a few of my friends were now gravel curious too. In the beginning they would fix up an old road bike or mountain bike to make do on gravel. Some of these builds were a little scary honestly. Over time these morphed into newer and sleeker rigs and more and more people found the same sense of exhilaration I try to convey here.

So I started a weekly evening ride. It wasn’t on Tuesdays originally. The 2012 diary says we did mostly Wednesday but also some Thursdays. Tuesday came around I think to avoid a standing pingpong match attended by some of the faithful in our group. It is interesting (to me anyway) that there is a Venn Diagram where cyclist and ping pong enthusiast exist together - and there are quite a few of them in our town!

From four or five riders in the early years we now sometimes see forty or even fifty riders on a nice Tuesday night. And instead of one group there are often now two or three groups heading out at different speeds or distances. I love the community of cyclists that has grown here and as we are looking back on Season 13 of TNG I want to thank all of you for joining in. We’ll see you out there soon!

1. Ben now runs a different but equally excellent shop - Heath Creek Cycles. Milltown Cycles is still there in the same location - today run by Todd Trembley - longtime head coach for the Cannon Valley Composite MTB team.

2. We all know this was not destined to be a bridge bike - more like a gateway drug!