Smile, and say "Cheese!"

For any “cheesehead” fans in the audience, we officially entered the Dairy State at midday, right on schedule. Actually, we were slightly ahead of schedule thanks to a fortuitous meeting with the mayor of Milaca, Minnesota while we were setting up camp in the Milaca city park. We were searching for a water spigot, and it turned out that the standpipe on the outside of the toilets had been vandalized. The mayor happened by in his truck and asked what we needed, then offered to take Bryce up to his house to fill all our water containers, since the park did not have any drinking water, and it was one week before the town’s bluegrass festival. On the way back from the mayor’s, Bryce asked about the route we were planning on following for today’s ride. The mayor had a simpler route, one that saved us ten miles, gave us wide shoulders and good pavement, along with a bit of a tail wind, and got us to St. Croix Falls, Wisconsin an hour sooner than we had budgeted. So we were actually ahead of schedule!

Because we are in a Park campground, we have no WiFi, so I’ll combine two days of blogging into one post. Tomorrow is a rest day anyway, then we have five days to cross Wisconsin, arriving at the shore of Lake Michigan in Manitowoc after five days of riding, then we will catch a ferry across the lake. The middle of our schedule seems to be heavy on days in campgrounds, then later on we will have a bit more time staying with warmshowers hosts.

Since we don’t have to go anywhere today, it’s a good day to talk about “how” we go, rather than “where” we go and stay. Every evening, Pat and Bryce and I look at the next day’s scheduled ride, including how many miles, what sort of terrain to expect, weather forecasts, etc., then set a target time to be on the road – usually by 8:00 am – then work our schedule backwards from there. I just naturally wake up at around 5:00, and Pat is usually up by 5:30. We stir about, increasing the volume until the boys wake up around 6:30, aiming for a 7:15 breakfast. By 7:30, most of the personal gear is packed up and in the car (everything has a designated place so it fits together more or less like a jigsaw, without a lot of spare space), and last of all, the heaviest of the kitchen stuff goes in. That means the coolers and the food boxes and water containers, so that Pat can clean up the smaller stuff after we are on the road. Us riders apply our chamois butter (lubricant to prevent saddle pressure sores) and sunscreen, to our bicycle ABCs (Air in the tires, Brakes working well, Chain and Crank set working), blinking strobe lights and tail lights on (this is all in theory. Some days we are more successful at getting everyone ready to roll, and other days we look like a bedraggled band of irregulars wondering why we are heading down the road). But within minutes of 8:00, or whatever hour we have appointed ourselves, we are on the road. It amazes me every day that we actually get rolling at the time we have assigned ourselves.

Once on the road, the theory is that we ride as a team. That means an easy warm-up period, then single file either on the shoulder, or as near to it as we can safely ride, and of course keeping everyone in sight. We all have mirrors, so we can see front and back. If someone near the back of the pack sees a car or a truck coming from behind, especially on the lightly traveled roads we try to follow, the yell “Car Back” so that everyone can be extra cautious while the traffic goes by. That part works pretty well. It is the “single file” and “keeping everyone in sight” that sometimes does not work so well.

Since there are four of us, and since I’m the adult on the road and I am responsible for keeping everyone safe, I end up watching out for whoever is the weakest rider, and that varies from day to day. One day this week, Bryce and Ryan decided to test each other, and they took off, racing to get to our next designated break stop. Jonathan started to follow, and I plugged along at the back. Soon, I decided that I should maybe catch up with Jonathan a bit, so I used a bigger gear, and soon caught him, then once I had gotten in front of him, I slowed down a bit. I slowed down, and down and down, and still Jonathan was falling further behind me. So I rode at a slow touring pace, stopping occasionally to make sure that Jonathan was still in touch. It was a day that I would have enjoyed riding fast, and there was a bit of a tail wind, but my responsibility was to make sure the last person got to the end of the ride as safely as the first person. When we got to where Pat had stopped, the two fast riders complained that they’d been waiting for half an hour for us to catch up. Well, we are a team, and the team doesn’t arrive until the last person has arrived. In this particular illustration, Jonathan was just bored and didn’t feel like riding fast. After a short break, he was away so fast I couldn’t begin to keep up with him.

On other days, Ryan and Jonathan will charge ahead, and Bryce and I will ride together, or occasionally, all three of the boys will charge ahead, and I’ll end up losing sight of them. It’s for times like that, that I wear a “Road ID” bracelet. If someone finds me collapsed beside the road, they will know who I am, where I’m from, my emergency contact info, my insurance carriers, and the group I’m affiliated with, Bike Trip America. Nothing works perfectly. Some days we ride as a team (yesterday was a good case in point, where we rode for most of the day in a close group at a pace that was good for everyone), and other days, I just have to surrender to the road, and recognize that there are three 16-year-old boys having a good time and/or pushing each other’s limits, and I’m just the old guy that they have to drag along. Either way, it’s fine as long as we are all safe, happy, and riding relatively strongly.

Overall, Pat came up with a good way to summarize the four of us as individuals. Ryan is super strong, a real athlete who sometimes loses focus and becomes a bit impetuous, but has a big heart. He's the first one to show appreciation, and has sharp insights sometimes. He saw the St. Croix river, and said that if he had named the river, he would have called it the Root Beer River. A tour guide later said that the water in the river looks like root beer, because of the tamarack tree roots lining the river. Good insight, there, Ryan. 

Jonathan is a determined kid, very bright, and surprisingly strong and energetic. He usually rides right on Ryan’s rear wheel, even when Ryan decides to zoom past us and leave us in the dust going up a big hill. Jonathan is his shadow. And during a break one day, Jonathan was contemplating the dilemma of representing worm holes as a piece of folded paper, because how could you possibly use a two-dimensional metaphor to conceptualize a multidimensional multiverse?

Bryce, who organized the trip itinerary down to the smallest detail, is somewhat torn between being the team leader and being one of the boys. He takes ownership in the success of the overall journey, but sometimes gets involved in the careless horseplay that occurs at the end of the day. He recognizes the dilemma, though, and characterizes it as wishing he were an adult already. He likes the “being responsible” part, but knows that he has to finish going through the “being a teenager” before he can be a fully-fledged adult. When he rides, Bryce always bobs his head and shoulders up and down, as if silently beating out a cadence in his head. He also studies the maps on his Garmin GPS to make minor and sometimes major route adjustments. I think all of us riders have questioned his navigation at times, but he always manages to bring us to our overnight location without too much hassle (ignoring Umatilla, where it's true, Garmin was at fault for failing to tell us that there were two streets on opposite sides of town with the same name). 

And me … I plug away, always trying to keep up with the others. This is Pat’s description, as seen from the support car. She always seems to drive past while we’re going up a hill, and that’s when I just put it in low gear and maintain an easy cadence. I know my legs won’t recover from too much lactic acid, and by this point in the trip, I’ve gone from being the most experienced rider to being the one with the oldest (and weakest) pair of legs. Nothing I can do about that, aside from hinting that we should ride more closely as a team. That way, I can grab hold of someone’s seat post and have them pull me up the steep hills!

I’m thoroughly enjoying the shifting dynamics of the ride, and enjoying watching the evolving personalities of the three boys. It makes a great trip even greater.

Now, to enjoy the remainder of my day off. We will take a boat excursion along the St. Croix Falls river, then explore the town a bit. Tomorrow, it will be another early morning start, another campground to explore, more dairy farms perhaps, and perhaps a more cohesive team dynamic. At the very least, we will all arrive at our next camp site in better shape than we are today each of us growing as individuals in our own ways, as well as growing stronger as a team. 

By the way, this afternoon, we switched from our bikes. The boys decided to paddle down the St. Croix river. Maybe we'll pick them up in New Orleans? Meanwhile, the paddle wheel river tour was enough for Pat and me.