A Lake is Not an Ocean

I've met several people around here who compare the Great Lakes to oceans; I will certainly grant them that they are quite large (a sincere understatement, to be sure), but I suspect that anyone who makes such claims has never actually seen an ocean, or at least, not the Pacific, or at least, not the Pacific of the Northwest. It is quite true that the Lakes are unbelievably massive expanses of water that you can't see across, but as far as I can tell, that is where the resemblance ends. An ocean demands your attention from the minute it enters your senses, and indeed, it enters them all; the taste of salt on your lips, the smell of decaying seaweed, the mist of spray on your skin, the constant din of the ebbing and flowing waves, the sheer magnitude of sprawling sea from horizon to horizon. It shapes the land and ecosystems for miles inland; scarcely the bystander, it creates the weather. An ocean is something to be feared and respected if you have any sense at all; never before have I sat humbler than on a beach on the Olympic Peninsula. Lake Michigan, by contrast, approaches you with an unassuming splendor, to the point where you can miss it behind some trees if you don't know it's there. I feel incredibly lucky to have ridden along its shores for several days, but there was never, not for so much as a second, confusion in my mind as to what lay before me.

Lake Michigan: not an ocean.

The U.P. was not quite what I was expecting for pristine wilderness, at least where I was. I get the impression that the inland and northern areas are more untouched, but they are not really accessible by bicycle or car, and I'm okay with that; that's how it should be, really. I expect I'll get back there someday and explore Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore by backpack.

Traveling through the U.P., though, was well worth it, in that it enabled me to explore the northwest of Michigan proper. Following the Lake Michigan shoreline, I traveled down the Tunnel of Trees scenic byway, a narrow (and largely-abandoned, post-Labor Day) road that meandered through hills and forest. The forests were filled with squirrels blacker than night, certainly blacker than they have any business of being, and giant puffballs, a mushroom larger than a basketball (that I later found out to be both edible and delicious).

Giant puffballs (note the quarter for size reference).

I then hopped on a bike path that circumnavigated Little Traverse Bay (and apparently has done so since before the invention of automobiles). Traverse City led to Cadillac which led to a 100-mile rails-to-trails that took me all the way to Grand Rapids, through Lansing, through Hell, and finally to Ann Arbor. I've taken a rest day here, exploring the town and campus, visiting my dear friend Sarah (a transplant from Seattle who inexplicably decided to return to her native Midwest), and even taking in the new Harry Potter movie. Ann Arbor, in as many words, is way too hip for its own good, but it seems like a plenty nice enough place. I'm going to see what its dumpsters have to offer tonight, and then it's back on the road tomorrow.

Contrary to popular belief, it's actually paved with asphalt.

Looking at a map, it's crazy to realize that I don't have all that much farther to go before I get to Boston. Again, that's not necessarily the end of my trip, but anything after that is just icing on the cake. 1,000 more miles is looking like it ain't no thing (and that's not me bragging, I promise).

The Food Chapter

Number of miles: 4,013
Estimated average number of Calories consumed per day: 3,850
Number of times I've eaten meat on this trip: 6
Number of times I've had to resort to shopping at Wal-Mart: 0
Number of times I've resorted to stealing from Wal-Mart: 1

I'm sitting in a restaurant, empty plate in front of me, mildly sad that my meal disappeared so quickly. I don't think I remembered to chew. I eye the couple eating next to me, and note the woman lightly picking at her plate. Yes! Conditions are perfect, the only trick is working the timing between when they're done but before the waitress comes back. I wait until I see her pick up her purse. At that cue, I lean over and politely ask a question I already know the answer to: "Excuse me, are you finished eating that?"

Up until just a few weeks ago, it would've been accurate for me to say that I'm always hungry. Surprisingly enough, though, I've recently noticed a slight decrease in food consumption. Maybe my body is reaching some sort of equilibrium of efficiency.

Given the sheer amount of energy that one must consume in order to counterbalance the amount spent on a trip like this, it's very easy for food to become the focus of attention all the time. I constantly daydream about meals that I can't have (oh god, my kingdom for a Paseo sandwich); I think about what I'm going to eat next, what I can afford to buy, how to maximize calorie per dollar ratio whole still maintaining some semblance of nutritional content. Unfortunately, real food is also extremely hard to find while on the road. I don't know when was the last time you tried to do your grocery shopping at a gas station or mom 'n' pop hole in the wall, but almost everything readily available is processed beyond belief (and no, it really doesn't have to be this way). So, I do the best I can within these constraints and my relative lack of a kitchen, and sometimes just have to rely on the fact that whatever crap I put into my body right now will be sweat out within a couple of hours.

I'm carrying a little pop-can camp stove that I use to cook my dinners, and to that end, I always try and keep well stocked in the staples: olive oil, salt, chipotle powder, lime, onion, and garlic at a minimum. I usually have some vegetables to add to this, most often tomatoes, zucchini, avocado and carrots (yes, I know some of these are fruits). All that is needed now is a can of the best thing to ever happen to canned food, and the possibilities are endless (and yet, somehow still end up coming out the same every time anyway). It might be a bit extravagant to carry all of this around, but it makes such a big difference in quality of life to have something resembling real food every night; besides, I burned myself out on macaroni and cheese six weeks ago.

Some other staples: tortillas (in place of bread), nut butter, some type of jam, cheese, dried fruit, nuts, cereal, and any fresh fruit and vegetables when and wherever possible. Some things never get old; I could probably eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich every day for the rest of my life and die happy. Likewise, dried pineapple and crystallized ginger will never go out of fashion. Other things get old fast: good as it is, I don't think I'm going to be able to eat Indian food again for a while.

Dinner in the works.

I rarely go out to eat, but when I do, it's either for something local that I'll never be able to have somewhere else, or for something fatty and deep-fried as possible. The local food can be kind of iffy sometimes (I stayed away from the Rocky Mountain oysters), great others, uninspiring and repetitive others. (I swear on my life that all people eat in northern Michigan is smoked fish, fudge, maple syrup, wild rice, ice cream and pasties.)

One of the hardest things has been missing out on the benefits of a garden, though I've still been able to do some foraging along the way. Right now there are apples everywhere, little native blackberries if you keep your eyes open, even mushrooms if you know what you're doing (I successfully identified and ate my first ever mushrooms just yesterday, the robust laetiporus). There are often little farmers' stands selling whatever is in season, and even tables set near the roadside of rural houses, piled with free extras.

My biggest craving has been for any kind of fermented food: yogurt or kefir, sauerkraut and kim chi, beer (of course), kombucha, I haven't been able to get enough of any of these. More than anything, though, I crave more of an investment with my food. I dream of spending long hours in a kitchen sweating over tedious projects: baking bread, making sushi, pies with lattice tops. When I'm done with this trip, I expect I'll spend a few days living in a kitchen to make up for perpetual snacking that has become so routine. In the meantime, though, let's hear it for handfuls of dry cereal!

Companionship, solitude and loneliness

In writing this blag, I have consistently shared my experiences in the first-person singular, because this blag is meant to be just that: a first hand account of my experiences and interactions with the world at large as I pedal my fool self through it (with me pretending all the while that people care what I think). There have been times, though, where it has been a stretch to maintain this singular account of my journey, because in truth, I often am not cycling alone. I have ridden with friends (both new and old), lovers, strangers and acquaintances, other cyclists out for a dayride or in it for the long haul, a priest, children, turkeys and more. My path has intersected many a time with that of another traveler, all the better when we happen to be headed in the same direction for a spell. It gives us all an opportunity to share and contrast information, stories, warnings, and I've often learned something invaluable, such as the existence of a spectacular bike path that parallels the route I was planning to take.

My most recent traveling companion was Shannan, a friend from Seattle who has spent the summer (more of it than me, actually) on a bike trip of her own. We had the good fortune to rendevous in South Dakota, and the better fortune to be headed in the same direction for a spell. She recently ended her trip back in Stevens Point (alas, graduate school beckoned). I mention her specifically because I found her story to be inspiring (certainly more so than mine), given that she had never ridden a bike much more than around the city before hopping on and pedaling for a good 3,500 miles or so. Good job, kiddo.

Shannan was headed to Stevens Point for a friend's wedding, which I was fortunate enough to be invited to last minute (literally the day before), when it turned out I'd be in the neighborhood at the right time. I was planning on going to the wedding ridiculously underdressed in my Chacos, a longsleeve plaid shirt and a $1.50 pair of Goodwill jeans I had just bought for the cold. (They were both dirty, rumpled and smelled of campfire.) In fact, the groom himself lent me a decent change of clothes to wear. All I did was fashion a highly unfashionable belt from the shoulder straps of my saddlebags, and I was ready to go to the first Catholic mass of my life (at least, that I'm aware of).

The wedding itself was very, um, Catholic, to say the least. But! It was also very Wisconsin-y; at the reception, the bride and groom were playing a game of corn hole before a toast was even made. The opulence of the reception, the four-course dinner and free-flowing booze, the music and the shaking of my behind and the fancy hotel room (albeit shared with five other people, and me on the floor) all stand in such stark contrast to the minimalism and simplicity of biking that it was a bit jarring to my system. It was fun, and great to be welcomed by such warm and inviting people, but also good to be back on the road the next day.

It's getting late in the season now, though, and I'm seeing fewer and fewer people on the road in non-car form; I'll probably be riding alone from here on out. I haven't seen another cyclist for a week, and I haven't even had so much as a conversation with someone in three days (to be fair, I haven't seen many people at all), excepting a cop last night who asked me if I was planning on sleeping where I was. I enjoy the solitude, but the loneliness that can often accompany it is hard to bear. The rural isolation here coupled with the ever-shortening days, and I'm suddenly finding myself with hours of free time every evening between when the sun goes down and when I'm ready to sleep (hence, for example, this overly long post).

Well, enough then. I squandered my extra hours this evening running around town trying to accomplish things I never got accomplished, and lost a biking glove in the process; I'm just grumpy and feeling sorry for myself, and ready for this day to be over.

Happy 60th anniversary, G&G! Happy 21st birthday, Amy! It's about time. Love to all...

A Slight Change of Plans (with hyperlinks!)

One evening as I was on my way to Milwaukee from Madison, I found myself in a fantastic brewery (a 9.5 on the Rinnan scale) in Middle of Nowhere, Wisconsin.  Leaning back in my chair with my paws wrapped around a pint of bourbon barrel brown, I reflected upon the days ahead of me, the roads yet untraveled, the cities yet unvisited, the untold opportunities that will inevitably grace my path, and I arrived at a simple and unassailable conclusion: fuck it.  Ain't no reason to battle the sprawling 'burbs of the Windy City when I have the time and ability to explore the U.P., everyone's favorite non-Olympic peninsular region.

So!  No Milwaukee.  No Chicago.  No Three Floyds brewery.  No brassin' it up with Environmental Encroachment (at least, not till Boston).  No Bean.  And a hearty yes! to autumn-coloured deciduous forests aplenty, isolation and funny accents.

I've spent the last few days taking a ridiculously circumlocutious route through Wisconsin, in a brazen attempt to hit every bike path and brewery between Madison and Michigan.  I'm resupplying in Stevens Point, and then headin' out to the nether regions of the Midwest.  Sorry, Chicago, maybe next time.  Frostbite awaits!

Changing seasons, changing landscapes

I've begun to feel the summer transitioning into autumn. It can be subtle sometimes, piercing others: a flaming red tree contrasting with the foliage of its neighbors; shade, once so vital for cover, has become chillingly cold, even in the high afternoon sun; the noticeable loss of precious minutes of daylight. Last night the temperature got down to 36˚. I feel positively jubilant about the onset of fall, but a little worried, too; in terms of time, my trip is barely even half over (if that), and in the waning hours of light and the growing cold, I fear I have a hard month or so ahead of me.

Wisconsin has udderly (yes, udderly) stolen my heart. Every facet I've seen of this state has been something to love. (Well, last night I was disappointed by a locked Trader Joe's dumpster, but that's really my only complaint.) I entered Wisconsin from the outer suburbs of the Twin Cities, and wended my way along the Mississippi river. The land was unexpectedly and uncannily similar to how I imagine the river's delta region: warm, boggy, slow and expansive; an alligator would not have been out of place. At some point I serendipitously happened upon a bike trail that split off the highway and into rural marshland. This one trail ended up connecting to a whole network of rails-to-trails bike paths that I've been able to follow for almost the entirety of the state. By the time I leave Wisconsin, I will have spent more than half of the miles here passing through back-country forest and w

etlands. The Sparta-Elroy trail passed through three ancient train tunnels blasted from the hillside, the longest of which was three-quarters of a mile long, freezing cold and containing

nary a photon of light, save for the pinpoint exits at either end.

Entrance to the world's coolest bicycle tunnel

I was hoping to make it to Madison for critical mass on Friday night, as I previously mentioned. Didn't happen, not by a long shot, but arriving Sunday morning proved to be magnitudes better. The city just happened to be throwing their first annual bicycle celebration day (I'm sure it had some more official and impressive sounding name), with giant swaths of city streets and highways open only to bicycle traffic, and replete with street bands and a procession of species and food and bike booths, and much more. I met a couple of other cyclists who have done long-distance tours before, including a great guy named Scott Stoll, who rode more than 25,000 miles circumnavigating the globe, and wrote a wonderful book about it. Another fellow, Keri, rode the Trans-Am route with his son a few years ago, and most graciously shared a round of beers and stories with me, and even showed me around campus.

Penny-farthings owning the streets of Madison

Madison is a beautiful town, strangely sandwiched between two lakes on an isthmus the width of my forearm. It has something of a reputation for being the Eugene of the Midwest, or, as my Couchsurfing host put it, "seven square miles surrounded by reality". I'm beginning to realize that Seattle is not really a bike friendly town at all; sure, it has gobs of cyclists, but is almost totally lacking in supportive infrastructure. (To any of you who defend Seattle by pointing out the existence of the Burke-Gilman trail: boooooo.) This whole damn state seems stitched together by well-maintained bike routes, both in and out of cities. I've really only ventured through the southern parts of Minnesota and Wisconsin, which are not exactly renowned for their aching beauty, but from what little I've seen, I am already planning my next trip to come back and explore the northern lake regions and into the U.P.

Enough. To Milwaukee! I am determined to find some good beer in that city, and salvage its reputation in my mind.

South Dakota, Come and Gone

Number of miles: 2,435
Fastest speed: 45.6 mph

Total number of hours spent riding: 223

Equivalent number of consecutive viewings of The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (extended versions): 19

In the proverbial blink of an eye, South Dakota has come and gone. Bland as a state it may be geographically, it completely surpassed my expectations, to the point where it might be my favorite state I've passed through yet. It was a welcome relief after a month of serious mountains to have a straight, flat shot, with the wind at my tail much of the way. And contrary to the generally surly attitudes of Wyomingites, South Dakotians have been above and beyond friendly and helpful; I've been given taken out to breakfast by strangers who approached me while outside a grocery store, I've been offered places to stay, showers, ice cream on a hot day, and a hundred other kindnesses.

Welcome to South Dakota

I took my first rest day at a couch surfer's house in Rapid City. Arik, the host, was wonderfully generous with his house and food and instruments, and his place turned out to be something of a hub of activity in the city; four other couch surfers were there with me, along with any number of neighbors and friends and even dogs that seemed to drift in from the bushes and hang out and tell stories for a spell. I walked into his house dirty, tired and sunburnt; after finding myself a mason jar of water and noting the NPR on the radio in the background, I knew I'd be staying a day. Rested and rejuvenated, I set out for the Badlands.

As fortune would have it, the weather was on my side. Normally the Badlands are, well, bad, nay, hellishly scorching this time of year. Turns out, though, that this whole region has been having the mildest summer on record, and I headed out to them under a welcome cover of clouds, and passed through with a gentle sun. The Badlands are truly other-worldly; I really think at least one away mission from an episode of Star Trek should have been filmed there.

Heading into the badlands...

...and the subsequent citation.

The nightly storms have been incredible, far and away more violent than anything I experienced in Wyoming. With the sprawling openness of the land and skies, you can see a storm coming from far away, but they roll in fast. There have been nights where my tarp simply did not provide me adequate shelter, but one of the more fortunate features of the landscape of South Dakota is the abundance of abandoned barns and houses; I've slept in several of them, and I really don't know what I would've done without them. (Consequently, I've found an old abandoned pot plantation on more than one occasion.)

Some of the local weeds.

I'm in Minneapolis right now, staying with a Mennonite intentional community, whose members are quite well-versed in the arts of dumpstering and biking and all those nifty city things. I think I'm going to stay for a day and explore the city, and then it's off on a whirlwind metropolitan tour of Madison, Milwaukee and Chicago by way of the Mississippi. I was kind of hoping to be in Chicago in time for Critical Mass next Friday, but that's still a good 500 miles down the road, so probably not this time.

The Roadkill Chapter

In my roadside journeys, it is only natural that, over the miles, I should come across many a squashed animal. Here is a brief photo essay* of the more interesting ones I've come across so far:

Ironically, this was probably hit while picking at some other roadkill. Any ornithologists out there care to identify (Lanie, I'm looking at you...)?

Okay, seriously, wtf? No body, no nothin'.

Apparently this coyote wasn't quite Wile E. enough.

That's vun! Vun batty bat! Ah ah ah!

I bet that made a terrible sound.

...and with her last dying breath, she coiled herself into a message dicipherable only to those amoungst us her are blessed with the gift of parseltongue. Thus began the mystery of the corn snake...

I really hope that this porcupine popped one of the tires of the car that hit it.

Pepe Le Mort

Any minute now, it'll jump up and start singing...

*idea for this photo essay graciously borrowed from the illustrious Ms. Katherine.