The next morning we make our way back through the town of
Bloomer, whose 19th century downtown is fairly intact. We
feel time pressing on us, so we don’t stop.
I experience this as a contradiction in terms. Our “job” is to explore America, but we won’t
make it across America before cold weather, if we don’t get a move on.
It is not long before we are in the heartland of
Wisconsin. This is the landscape of
small family farms. Gone are the giant
threshers we encountered in North Dakota, where the blades of a single mower
were wider than both lanes of the highway.
(The thresher moved as far to the left as possible, and we left the
road, and the huge arm of rotating blades still just missed us.) The acreages for these Wisconsin farms are
probably in the hundreds rather than the North Dakota thousands. The ground is hilly and in the bottoms, it is
marshy. It is easy to see why this is
dairy country. While there are stands
of corn, it does not dominate the landscape the way it does in central
Minnesota. In fact, it is more likely to
be sweet corn or ethanol corn than miles and miles of feed corn.
The ride is really fun and the weather is just right. The hills can be charged, so we are moving
pretty rapidly. This is a testament both
to our increasing fitness and the relative gentleness of the landscape. Wes and I debate the best way to charge a
hill and have mini-competitions to see who develops enough speed and thrust in
the downhills to glide up the uphills without having to resort to the lowest
gears. Wes has fun making up silly
sayings about this, “I’m playing this hill like a….lyre…like lycra…like a lute…like
a bassoon….like a baboon.”
There starts to be more and more trees as the day
progresses. Our destination is the town
of Medford, which sits just outside the Chequamegon National Forest. In between the farms there are stands of
Northern Forest, which is a rich mix of pines, firs, and larches, along with
ashes, oaks, and birch. At the little
town of Prairie View, we first see a curious machine in a city park next to the
Chippewa River. We find out this large
diagonal machine, whose top was 60 feet in the air, was the sole example of a
counter-weight operated log stacker.
This a testament to the huge logging industry which is almost gone in
Wisconsin, and to the ingenuity of 19th century engineering. At its base, a long rails-to-trails bike
path winds its way down the river to Eau Claire. It looks lovely.
We make our way to a little café that specializes in
homemade ice cream. There are two older
women in there, along with the proprietor.
All three women immediately start asking us all sorts of questions. Wes starts teasing and flirting with the
women in their 70’s, making them laugh and telling them to get ready for their
bike trips. The smaller, rounder woman,
with assiduously dyed black hair, holds up her cane and waves it at Wes, “When
I was younger, I rode my bike everywhere, but my biking days are OVER!” The two debate who Wes looks like: certainly
like their friend Rory, but doesn’t he also look like Burt Lancaster? This makes us laugh because it is so
outlandish. We eat our lunch, visiting across
the dining room. Finally, they leave and
wish us well.
Hours later, we make our way into the little town of
Gilman. We are thirsty and hot, and
after our delicious root beer float of the day before, have a hankering for
another. We step into a tiny café, and
ask the big blousy waitress for a float, which is not on their menu. She says, “Let me ask…” A youngish cook steps out, sees that we are
cyclists, and says, “I think we can do that.”
As he makes up root beer and ice cream concoction in the blender
(decidedly not a float), he tells of his bicycle adventure at the age of 19,
during which he and a group of friends cycled from Vancouver to San Diego. “Man, I remember eating whatever we wanted:
steaks, fries, cake. Boy, those days are
over!” The waitress jokes, “I am a
perfect size 10, I just wear this size 22 over it to hide it!”
About that time, we hear the sound of small scooter pull
up. As a stocky, older gentlemen comes
through the door, the waitress and cook holler, “Hey Pauly!” He responds, “You got any of that lemon
merengue pie left?” Then, without
waiting for answer, looks at us, “You ridin’ them bikes out there? You need to get a scooter like mine. Be a lot easier!” They tell him the pie is all gone. He says, “You had some this morning.” “Well
you should have ordered it then!” Back
and forth like this, the signs of a long and easy acquaintance. Pauly finally allows that he will just have
a bowl of chili. The waitress sets down
the bowl. As Pauly starts to struggle
with the crackers, she steps over, removes the package from his bent and rigid
hands, and deftly pours the crushed crackers into his bowl. The gentleness and familiarity of the gesture
touches me.
The conversation and joking is really rolling and we don’t want
to leave, so we decide to split a tuna fish sandwich. The cooks starts making it as we talk about
farming and trees and the economy. They
all say that the economy is barely scraping along. The waitress says, “We lost alotta
businesses in this little town, let me tell you.” When they find out that this is Wes’
retirement trip, Pauly says, “You know how
you can tell when a dairy farmer has retired?
He starts to raise beef!”
We truly finally have to leave. Our fifteen minute break for a cool drink has
stretched in 45 minutes. We ask about
the route ahead. They tell us a back way
into to Medford that will save us some miles and some hills. Pauly takes his leave as we do. Wes says, “I’ll leave with a joke. You know there are only two kinds of gamblers. The first one goes to the casinos, the second
runs a farm.” The cook laughs and
says, “Well, Pauly is both!” Outside, Pauly zooms his tiny, maybe 50 cc
scooter around us as we get ready to ride again. He wishes us well, then putt-putts away.
We are aglow with fun of the visit when I step in the local
pharmacy to see if they carry Anbesol, which I use to dull the pain of constant
abrasion on my tender parts. The
pharmacist is a real grump, proving that not all Wisconsinites are ebullient
and outgoing. Just down the street, at a
garage littered with all sort of golf carts, four wheelers, lawnmowers and all
manner of small motorized equipment, Wes hollers out to the youngish men, “Can we get a squirt of air from you.” Sure thing.
This leads to another long conversation.
One of the men has a cast on his leg.
I ask what happened to his leg.
Pointing with his thumb at this partner, “He ran me over with that golf
cart!”
By the time we get out of this town, it is getting late and
the sky is starting to darken with heavy rain clouds. We still have 20 miles to reach our
destination of Medford. About 6 miles
from Medford, we take the short cut and the sky lets loose. We soldier on in the pouring rain. When we get to the truck entrance to the
town, we take it, and make our way through a warren of window
manufacturers. Just as we pull into the
park alongside the Black River, the rain lifts.
We climb the steep hill to the main street and call our motel for
further instructions. The desk clerk
seems totally befuddled and has a hard time describing how to get to the motel
that does not involve major highways. I
am unhappy to hear that we have another 4 miles to go after we had just come
more than 60. A young, Goth woman in
black with heavy tattoos steps out of a bar.
Her sweet face and gentle voice do not match her harsh clothes and loud
tattoos. She gives us good instructions
to get to the motel, which is on the outskirts of town, by the Wallmart. Now we understand why the downtown, once a
prosperous and lovely mill town with elaborate limestone storefronts, looks so
forlorn. Another victim of
“spawlmartization.”
We wind our way to the perfectly average, but perfectly
acceptable motel and realize that if we hadn’t taken the “short-cut”, we would
have driven right by it. On our way, we
meet an older couple from Milwaukee.
They too want to hear all about our trip. They, too, are funny and friendly. During our nightly ritual of showering
together at the end of our biking day, we talk about the open culture here in
Wisconsin. Certainly people have been
friendly and helpful all the way across the country. But nowhere else have we seen people so free
of self-consciousness, so open to experience, so funny and friendly. We decide: We like Wisconsin.
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posted from Port Stanley, ONT
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