Flashing Lights and Buggies

Did I really say, in last night's blog, that we had been given enough sugary cereal to last til the end of the trip? I exaggerated. We had enough to last until bedtime. 16 boxes of sugar-coated cereal gone before breakfast even thought about getting onto the table. That meant that Bryce actually requested hot cereal (Samurai) for breakfast the day after we stopped for lunch at an Italian restaurant, and all three boys ordered salads. Not one pizza, not one plate of spaghetti!

Today was a relatively short ride, so we slept in, and didn't hit the road until 9:30, an hour and a half later than usual. We managed to change routes several times and miss our rendezvous with Pat, but eventually, we found our target ... the end of Michigan and the beginning of Indiana.

Once there, the magic started to happen. First, another cyclist arrived. He had been a WarmShowers guest of Pat's in early June on his way to attempting a race across America. His bike gave out after a few days, but he lived in Indiana, so joined us for a few miles of this morning's ride. Therefore, when the police escort (yes, police escort, lights flashing, a siren) arrived and started snapping pictures, we ended up with FIVE riders for a change.

Then the real magic started. We arrived at the LaGrange American Legion Hall to find a welcoming party waiting for us, and an enormous planned fundraiser!

Three hundred people for dinner. Local, regional and former national commanders. Visitors from the community and from other Legion communities. Tee shirt sales. A pie auction. Donations. A hotel room to camp in for the night. The key to the city! A tour of the countryside! We started the day with approximately $7000 towards our goal of $10,000 in donations to Operation Comfort Warriors. As we ended the night, we will have to have a meeting to set a new goal, because we easily exceeded our old goal. Thank you, thank you, thank you to all the folks who helped make the fundraiser in LaGrange such an enormous success.

About the only people who didn't contribute were the members of the large Amish community.

Gotta trade in my bike for something with more horsepower.

Oh My Aching Back (and Knees)

Before getting to the theme of tonight's  blog, let's  return for a moment to yesterday's post. I described job pie, but I misheard the recipe. Long-handled campfire implements use for two sided grilled cheese sandwiches are used...two slices of buttered bread, with pie filling grilled in the middle instead of cheese. Add some ice cream and you have one happy camper.

Tonight's campground is 60 miles south of last night. We stopped halfway for a rendezvous with Legion Commander Carl Atkinson and a reporter from the Hastings, MI newspaper, then arrived in camp near Climax, and we're soon invaded by local and regional Legion and Scouting reps. Since we  are between Kalamazoo and Battle Creek, both groups were represented. Since Battle Creek is the home of Kelloggs, we gifted with boxes of snacks and sweet cereals that will keep the boys happy until we get to NYC.

I had to get my knee iced after today's ride...too much wear and tear on all the hills. A couple of days ago, it was my back. It's Inuprofin time! Glad that tomorrow's journey is shortish. And once again, we will stop midway for another press conference! We should be old pros by the time we get to NYC.

At Home in the Midwest

Tonight, we've been invited to share in some "hobo pie," a scoop of rice filled with pie filling. That's what we get for camping in the middle of an RV park that is mostly populated by several RV's that all belong to a church group. There are a lot of people who go camping together for a variety of reasons. And the more people there are, the easier it gets.

Even though our little band of tent campers consists of only five people, I'm constantly amazed at how widely supported we are, and hence how wide our influence reaches. I can't begin to name all the people who have helped right now, but in addition to all of those who have contributed to Operation Comfort Warriors, many contributed directly to our survival on the road. Some folks helped Pat get the van ready, contributed food, contributed a variety of camping supplies, and Pat herself has contributed above and beyond what is called for for most ordinary support drivers.

In addition to the support part of the trip, people have contributed beds for the night, meals, tours of their home towns, media coverage (today, we had a road maintenance worker come over while we were discussing routes, and asked whether we were the group from Oregon, because he'd heard about us on the local Christian radio program), and personal efforts to make our journey more memorable. Let me give you an example. Three days ago, in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, our local contact was a bicyclist named Joe Siebold. Joe had ridden across the country twice ... both the northern and southern routes. He had fallen ill on one trip and ended up in hospital in Bozeman Montana. But he loves cycling, and cyclists. He tried to get us sleeping berths on a submarine by the maritime museum in Manitowoc. When that fell through, he arranged for us to stay in the converted grain silo at Jon and Annette Henry's house. The house was almost literally a playground for teenaged kids, and that was all thanks to Joe, and the Henrys. The next morning, Joe even went out of his way to ride over to see us off, and to get to the ferry terminal in time to wave us off! Joe is the sort of person who makes our trip possible, and memorable. Since our journey is 59 days long, we will probably meet at least 59 people with big hearts like Joe and his wife Carol, like Jon, like Carl Atkinson, the Legion Commander who came out to join us for pizza dinner, and who is catching us along the road tomorrow with a reporter to help further publicize our journey and our cause.

It doesn't happen alone. Four of us are spinning the pedals. One of us is driving the van. But there are literally hundreds of people making our journey possible. We get to enjoy rides like today, when we had several miles along the Grand Rapids road-to-rail trails in 90-degree, 90% humidity weather, but found a swimming pool at the end.

So, time to go grab a bit of hobo pie, put on all my daily salves and ointments, brush my teeth, and go to sleep so that I can put in another 70 mile day tomorrow.

Cell Phone Blog

Tonight, I'm on my cell phone, so a sort post. We rode from Ludington to White Cloud, Michigan, then got a ride to a Legion reception at a nearby hall at Croton. Out front. A large sign welcomed us, and inside we got an ovation, dinner, and an impromptu fundraiser that grew our donations by around $400, putting our Operation Comfort Warriors donations at or beyond $7000.

We also got a tour of the area, including the world's  3rd largest earthen dam at Hardy. Here is my pic from below the dam.

Sorry for the finger in the pic. Samsung has a cheap lens on its Galaxy S2  and it got broken so I have to use the selfish camera  for now. Should have thought of that a few weeks ago when the Buffalo sneaked up on me. I'll  leave you with this sunset, which is much more dramatic than  my camera shows.

By the Sea, by the Sea, by the Beautiful Sea

We had to say good by to Xerxes this morning ... 80 pounds of playful puppy. Before he would let us go, though, he took our hostess Annette's purse, with her cell phone and keys, and hid it in the bushes where he could chew on it later. Fortunately, with a bit of detective work, we found Xerxes' hiding place. Do you think he looks innocent in the picture below?

We had a leisurely morning. The boys slept in until 9:00, then we had a lazy breakfast, packed the car, then went into town to see a bit of Manitowoc. We are even learning how to speak Wisconsinese. The town mentioned above is pronounce "Man-toe-walk" with the emphasis on the first syllable. The big city to our south is called "Muh-walk-ee." And the one to the north is pronounced "Green Bay." That's all you need to know, and you'll fit right in. Seriously, though, Wisconsin was very pleasant, as have been all the States we've visited. But it was time to pack the van and make a special journey ... book store, bike shop, and ferry. Here's our car, fully loaded. Three bikes on back, one inside, all our gear either in the back or on the roof, and we would all be piled inside shortly thereafter.

We actually covered one mile of our journey by car ... the mile from the Henry farm to the shore of Lake Michigan ... and from there, we parked the car and climbed aboard the car ferry, the SS Badger.

The SS Badger then took us across the lake. Otherwise, we would have had to cycle south through Chicago, so we chose the more expedient route.

The watery highway, which they are actually considering naming Highway 10. So, for the purists among the blog readers, we stayed on the highway, I was by my bike (just a couple of decks above it), so I'm still crossing America by my bike. And a 4-hour shortcut seems insignificant when you consider that we have 18 riding days remaining, nine days on, a rest day, then another nine days!

Although you can barely make out Bryce contemplating the coast of western Michigan in the following picture, it is actually a very significant moment. We are crossing from the Central Time Zone into the Eastern Time Zone, completing the crossing of one more State, and, as Pat likes to point out, we have now been on the road for forty days and forty nights, with more than two-thirds of our 59 days on the road behind us. Wow. So far, so good! The time is going by faster than I imagined possible.

We've traded Xerxes for a shy little rescue dog, maybe a Shitzu-miniature poodle mix named Toby, and we've lost an hour of sleep. But we are still rolling along! Hasta ma~nana (sorry, too late at night to figure out how to make an "enya" in blogspot).

Bike(s) Across America

We finally arrived somewhere that has electricity, showers, WiFi, cell phone service, and a good form of alternative transportation (other than a hard bicycle seat, that is).

The road is not always straight, and sometimes is narrow. Sometimes it doesn't go where it's supposed to. We ran into a couple of detours, for example.

In spite of all, we are now in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, on the shores of Lake Michigan. We were met by Joe Siebold, another cross-country cyclist (now retired from super-long rides) and Warm Showers host, at a country pub sort of place, and he then guided us on his bicycle to where we are spending the night ... the super farm owned by Dr. John Henry (orthopedics and sports medicine) and his wife Annette, and their 8-month old Bernese puppy, Xerxes. I don't recommend letting 80 pounds of puppy sit on your lap or nibble on your toes. Anyway, the Henry household is heaven to the three boys. They have TV that lets you watch movies anywhere in the house, including in the old grain silo that they have converted into a three-story overflow living quarters, an x-box, paintball, nerf-ball, a teen-aged son who plays basketball out behind the barn with them, another son who took them out to see a sunken wreck off the coast of Lake Michigan, a jaunt down to try out the finest Wisconsin dairy products (e.g. different flavors of ice cream), a pond with a zip line across it and a kayak, a pool table ... when they wake up in time for a 9:30 am breakfast tomorrow morning, they will think they are in hog heaven!

In spite of our second flat tire in as many days (this time Ryan, who got what looks like a fishhook puncturing his tire just as we were about to arrive at our destination), the riding has been going well for everyone. As I marveled at how well the boys were doing in comparison to how well I'm doing on the road, I began to realize -- it's not all in the legs! Some of it has to do with what we are riding. By way of comparison, I took some pictures of the different bikes we are on. First, here's mine.

 

Mine is a Trek 720, made for touring. It has places to fit panniers, water bottles, luggage racks, etc., and his sturdy gearing to get up hills, even when that means a long slow slog. Also, the frame is designed to be a bit longer between the wheels, making for a nice comfortable riding position that is stable and easy to handle under a variety of road conditions. Also, not clearly visible, the bike has disk brakes rather than rim pincher brakes. Instant stopping is available, even in wet conditions.

 

On the other hand, here is Bryce's bike.

 



Another Trek, but this one has a shorter wheel base, and is a bit lighter than mine. Bryce has somewhat hybridized the bike, putting a road bike tread on the front tire, but a touring tread on the back wheel. The performance between our two bikes seems to be fairly similar, so the two of us end up riding together frequently. I've noticed that my bike rolls better going down a hill or on the flat, but Bryce is quicker going up hills...probably because he has different gearing than I do, and his legs are 53 years younger than mine.

Then there's Ryan's bike, a Giant.

It's a road bike all the way, but it wouldn't really matter. When Ryan's intent on cycling well, he's nearly uncatchable. His strong legs mean that he doesn't need to use the lowest chain ring, and he can pull away from everyone going up hills.

Everyone except Jonathan. The little Giant.

His bike is smaller than everyone else's, which means that his wheels are not interchangeable with the other bikes. The bike is a road bike, and it has a "racing" cassette on the back wheel. The cassette is the part of the wheel with all the gears on it, for those who are not familiar with the bike lingo. What that means is that the bike is lighter, and geared for speed rather than for long-term endurance. The bike would handle well, but for a larger person, it would not be as comfortable going over bumpy roads. Riding it can be jarring. Jonathan is light enough that he doesn't get the full vibration chattering through his arms, so he's usually very quick on the hills, when he wants to be.

The bikes really do make a difference. They dictate riding style, and in some instances, can make someone (i.e. me) look a bit slower than he (I) really is (am).

So, for tomorrow, I'll be changing my riding style, at least for one day. I'll make like Huck Finn or Mark Twain, and take the ferry across the pond instead of riding around the long way. After all, Lake Michigan is mighty big, and it's a long way over to Michigan from here.

The Farmer in the Dell, the Farmer in the Dell

Okay, so I repeated the title twice, just like in the song. That's because I had to combine yesterday's post and today's, since there was no WiFi yesterday.

Thursday, July 23

I expected broad expanses of dairy farms clear across Wisconsin. But after a 90-mile ride at 16 mph, I only saw about a dozen cows, a million ears of corn standing seven or eight feet high by now, and hundreds of rolling hills along the highway. Every hill climbed, leveled out for awhile, then climbed again. My map profile says that we only climbed 1500 feet, but the hills seemed to be much steeper than that. Maybe my legs are getting tired! Understandable, since we’ve traveled 2122 miles since June 18, so that’s in just 35 days. If I can get some good recovery days, or a good wind at my back, maybe I’ll actually arrive in NYC on August 15 in one piece, relatively speaking.

Our route today took us from Bloomer to Merrill, heading due east across Wisconsin. Then we head south-ish until we hit Lake Michigan in Manitowoc, not too far south of Green Bay, three days from now. For tonight, we are camping in the front yard of Warmshowers hosts Roger and Annie Wolf, several miles out in the country near Merrill. They also provided a delicious spaghetti dinner, and Pat got a grand tour of the garden. Then tomorrow morning, we will go into town for a leisurely breakfast, then we will have a short ride tomorrow, and hopefully enough of a WiFi that I can post this blog along with tomorrow’s.

Speaking of going into town … we spent last night near Chippewa Falls, several miles south of Bloomer. To get there, we had to add 11 miles to our schedule, and this morning we would have had to retrace that same extra 11 miles. So instead, we loaded everything onto the support vehicle … Jonathan’s bike on top, the other three on the rack, and everyone squeezed into the car for the 11 mile journey into Bloomer. Then we unloaded the bikes and set off from there, up and down the rolling hills for the entire 90 miles. We stopped for lunch in a town that happened to have a community swimming pool, so Ryan and Bryce cooled off in the pool for about half an hour before deciding that there were way too many screaming kids. So they changed back into their cycling gear, and we completed the last two hours of our ride. The boys were going to polish off their ride with a trip into Bloomer, but then discovered a Monopoly board, plus an X-box. So one guess what they are doing! X-box, instead of even setting up their tents.

What else can they do? No WiFi, and poor cell phone reception.

I’ll add to this blog tomorrow before posting it, since we have a short day, supposedly a good WiFi / electricity / showers situation, and did I mention, a short day? Funny, to most people, 38 miles would seem like a gargantuan task, but we’ve just done two days in a row of nearly 90 miles. It doesn’t seem like we’ve been riding at all unless we at least do a metric century (around 62 miles).

Friday, July 24

After a long ride yesterday, uphill, downhill, up again and down, and what seemed like mostly uphill, today we had it easy. Only three or four long uphill stretches, and we didn’t have to worry about the downhills because there weren’t many. We were saving them all for tomorrow, when we have a friendly downhill route profile. Today’s route was only 40 miles long, which somewhat made up for the long climbs and some head wind. We are getting near enough that we are getting weather effects from the Great Lakes, as well as beginning to run into more and more Greenbay Packers fans. 

Tonight, however, the Antigo Red Robins are hosting a baseball tournament. We are camped in a city park right next to the baseball field, and we were told that there is nowhere else available in town, so we anticipate a noisy evening, and what looks to be a rather inadequate campsite. There is no electricity (electricity was promised), there is no picnic table (a picnic table was expected as a bit of a routine amenity), and there is no nearby parking because the City of Anitgo does not allow cars to park near tents because of safety and liability issues, presumably. There are hot showers, however, and there is WiFi. So we’re half way to civilization! We can probably buy some quiet time by having dinner out, and we can grab breakfast on the road, sufficient to propel us on our way to 82 miles of downhill road, and maybe (hope hope) a tailwind.

Kept seeing road signs today that read “Dead End.” They didn’t need to remind me. My bicycle seat was giving me a very similar message every time I went over a bump.