T+151: We Don’t Know, We Just Go…

Mile 4084: Meredith, NH

Using my handy-dandy mapping tool, I find a way to take us out of West Lebanon that will allow us to get past the congestion and freeways before returning to US Highway 4.  We are curving around a back road when we spot a tell-tale trail marker just off the road.  The trail does not show up on the program, but this looks quite promising.  We’ll take it. 

Not too far along, we see what appears like college students out for a jog. We hope we haven’t made a bad choice. The conditions begin a little dodgy, but get better as we go along.  The trail is lovely as it crosses back and forth over the Mascoma River.  We don’t know where we are, but we are paralleling Highway 4, so we keep going. 

A few miles in, we are greeted by a handsome 60-something woman and her gregarious Jack Russell dog.  She tells us we are on the Northern Rail trail, and that it goes 30 miles or so all the way up to Grafton.  She also tells us about some the sights up ahead, including Mascoma Lake, with the Shaker village of Enfield across the way.  She asks about our trip and is very surprised to find out that we started in Portland, Oregon.  She tells of a recent trip she and her husband took to the Netherlands.  There, they would ride their bikes during the day, then get on a canal barge at night for their dinner and lodging.   She tells us they enjoyed it so much, she has developed a taste for more bike travel.  We offer “tips of the trade” and we all laugh about the various strategies we have employed to deal with saddle pain.

The ride is spectacular as it passes Mascoma Lake.  Two distinct features tickle our fancy.  In celebration of Halloween, various scarecrows depicting sports deaths are placed on the park land between the trail and the lake.  The bike-wreck scarecrow seemed to be plowing into a giant rock on a small moto-cross bike, with the stuffed rider about to fly right over the handlebars.   The hockey scarecrow had a black eye and broken teeth, and a hockey stick out of his head.  The six or seven of these creations were quite funny and creative---and must have been a big community effort to design, costume, and place these images.
This is also the first place we spot what we soon come to call “New Hampshire add-on houses.”  A house might begin with a small single gabled cottage.  Another generation would add a wing at a right angle, then another might add another gabled cottage addition, which might then have a connected corridor or two with eventually joined the barn. Over the years, simple structures become quite complicated.  I tell Wes that is what we are going to do with our cabin.  He just rolls his eyes.

We follow the rails to trails all the way to Grafton, even though the track is becoming more and more marginal.  There are places where it is hardly more than a sandy two-track.   Sometimes the trail is just a few feet from Highway 4.  We look longingly at the smooth surface, but don’t leave the track, choosing no competition with vehicles over an easy ride.   The trail takes us through a variety of huge culvert tunnels, which strikes us as a good solution for contested intersections.  

We are getting discouraged at our slow progress.  We are working pretty hard and not going very fast.  It is nearly noon and we have only gone about 12 miles.  We enter a rock cut where the train track was cut through 12 foot tall granite walls, and see a small brass marker.  We have just passed the Orange Summit, the highest point on the trail, and the highest point the railroad reached between the coast and its terminus at White River Junction at the Connecticut River.  Although we had been seeing  Mount Cardigan before and beside us, we didn’t realize we had been climbing all morning. 

We stop for a break at Danbury, where we will turn off to take a road to the little town of Meredith on the shores of Lake Winnipesaukee.  By the time we get there, we are tired, crabby, and worried.  I know we have to go a total of 60 miles to get to our bed and breakfast.  It has taken us until after 1pm to go 20 miles.  How on earth will we ever make it the rest of the way before we lose the light?    We have an uncomfortable break at the small country store.  Both of us are picking at each other.  My phone doesn’t work and there is no wi-fi, so we can’t scout the road ahead.   A young man and several senior ladies out for a bike ride try to allay our fears about the route ahead, but I, for one, am not having it.  One lady says, “It’s not bad.  There are ups and downs, but it’s just like life, isn’t it?” 

We are still sniping at each other when we head out on Highway 104.  It is pretty easy and quite beautiful, but we are both convinced these good times will end momentarily, leaving us to slog up the mountain to the Lake.  The miles start to slip by.  We’re cruising along.  Wait!  Where’s the climb into the White Mountains?  This part of the ride has been no problem whatsoever. 

As we ride along, we see lots of the “Add-on Houses.”   However, very few of these look like working farms.  There are no animals, no tractors, no work-trucks.  The fields lie fallow even as the houses are well-maintained.  We pass the grounds of the private Hampton School, and realize that this is probably the third private residential school we have seen since entering New Hampshire.   Although the road is fairly populated, there are very few commercial establishments.  I ask Wes, “How are people making their livings here?”   He answers, “Maybe they aren’t.”   This is obviously not a place where people are trying to make a living and can’t, as we have seen in New York and Washington.  This is a place where the living is coming from elsewhere.

I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop and the ride to get much harder, as we zip along to Bristol and the crossing with Interstate 93.   There is a little outbreak of plastic land close to the freeway.   We have about 15 miles to go when the climb in the foothills of the White Mountains begins.  We spend the rest of the afternoon climbing, climbing, climbing.  We have just cleared one good sized hill when we see a long-haired hippie-ish looking fellow standing next to his station wagon.  He has pulled his car into the little verge between our road and a right turn.  He has been watching us hump up the hill and as we go by, he calls to us, “Do you have a place to stay for the night?”  We answer that we have a bed and breakfast waiting for us.  “Too bad.” He says, “I was gonna offer you a room at my house.  Where you headed?”  We tell him, and he sighs, “Man, you got a big hill ahead of you.  Good luck.”

He wasn’t kidding.  The country we are entering reminds me a lot of the glacial highlands of the Rockies.  There are deep, cold lakes surrounded by granite shelves.  In the distance we can see foothills with the occasional glance at the rocky highlands beyond.  We are about 5 miles from the town of Meredith and we look up to see what should be called a cliff climb.   We’re beat, but too bad.  Up we go until we can’t.  Then it is off our bikes and time for pushing. 

At the top of this steep hill, our road joins the Daniel Webster Highway and the traffic increases.  Now we are tired, it is close to dusk, and we are still not there.  It is spectacularly beautiful alongside the shores of Lake Winnipesaukee, but hard to appreciate it because of the dangerous road conditions.  We feel a surge of energy, however, when we get to the town of Meredith.  It is a lovely tourist town, dominated by large, white 19^th century hotels which overlook the lake.  The town is a warren of 18^th and 19^th century buildings sitting cheek to jowl on the hills just above the lake.  Like all tourist towns, it is full of restaurants, bars, and cute little shops. 

We need to make our way to the Tuckernuck Bed and Breakfast.  When I had made the reservation, the innkeeper was thrilled to hear that we were cross country bicyclists. Her husband, she told me, was an Ironman, and had participated in many super long distance triathlons.  I told her we were far from Ironmen and that a 60 mile day was a pretty long day for us.   It had been a long day, and we were feeling every bit of those 60 miles, when we found the street on which the inn was located, and saw that it was another big climb.  We were pushing our bikes up the hill, on our last legs, when a young police officer, in a Meredith Police Department sedan, pulled alongside us.  “Don’t you know you are supposed to be riding up this hill?”  It took us a moment to realize he was joking before we had the presence of mind to assure him that this was just our “cool-down.”

Our brains are fogged by exhaustion as we get to the house on the top of the hill: our inn.  We drag our bikes around to the side and meet a young couple who say, “You must be the bicyclists!  Kim has told us all about your trip!  We can hardly wait to hear your stories!”   They take us to meet the landlady, an effusive, petite blonde with a somewhat raspy voice, who welcomes us mightily and tells us how excited she is to have us staying there.   We don’t feel special, just tired, sweaty, and hungry.  She gives us a great deal on a beautiful suite at the top of the house.   It is all we can do not to fall asleep right then and there.

After a shower, we feel slightly less exhausted and want to get some dinner.  Our landlady gives us a bunch of menus and guidance.  She also tells us that the other guests in the house are the young couple we had earlier met; they were newlyweds on their honeymoon.  There is also a threesome from England, fellow innkeepers enjoying a holiday in various beauty spots of eastern and western United States.  She assured us that they were all very interested to meet us and hear our stories tomorrow at breakfast.  Apparently, there would be no sitting back and listening to other’s stories for us in the morning.
Oh, how we wished we had been better able to follow our landlady’s advice about eating establishments.  We had seen a little brewpub on the way in to town.  We thought it would be a good place to eat and listen to the Tigers/Red Sox baseball game that night.  It was a fail on both counts.  The place was packed with sports fans, all right, football fans cheering loudly, then not so loudly, as the New England Patriots barely beat the New Orleans Saints.

After a disappointing corporate plastic goo-fest for dinner, we walk around the town, follow the lakeshore and explore the historic inns.  In one, we were sitting by the blazing fire, when a distraught man came in, trailed by a manager.  His wife had lost her phone.   Could we please move so they could check the overstuffed sofas where we were seated.  We do, but no phone is found.  Off they go, the man almost wailing, “What are we going to do?  Where can it be?”

We find the town charming, but we’re too tired to do much, so we go back to our inn.  We turn on the game, but fall asleep with the Tigers comfortably ahead 5-1 in the 7^th inning.  The next morning, as we make our way to breakfast, our landlady asks us, “Did you hear what happened in the game last night?”  Her husband, who had driven the 2 hours to attend the game in Boston, called her around midnight to tell her that game was now tied and there was still one more inning to go.  He was going to be very late getting back. She woke up to find out that Red Sox had won, in one of the most stunning comebacks in baseball history. 

At breakfast, all eyes are on us.  We start by telling them about how much economic distress we have seen as we travelled across the country.  Not very romantic, to be sure, but it does get the newlyweds going.  They are from Rochester, New York and in their mid-twenties.  He has a degree in civil engineering; she in marketing.   Together, they have sent more than 500 letters of inquiry.  They have gotten a few bites, but they see people with lots more experience getting the jobs.  They wonder how they will ever get a start, but they were still hoping a job would materialize for them.   The Brits are shocked at this.  They didn’t know the economy was that bad in the US.

We tell stories of our bicycle trip through England, Ireland, Wales and Scotland and make the Brits laugh with those “innocents abroad” adventures.  We all end up telling stories of our favorite places to visit.  I don’t think we ended up talking much about our ride across the country, but it was good fun anyway.

When we make our departure, our landlady, who had generously volunteered to find our next lodging, tells us how much difficulty she had making arrangements in the little town of Cornish, Maine.  After numerous attempts, she was able to find a place for us not too far from the town.  We thank her and commiserate with her.   Who would have thought securing lodging would have become such an on-going hassle?  She tells us of one set of bicyclists who had stayed with her.  They had arranged their entire lodging six months in advance.  Only once did they miss their reservation.  It’s clear we are not that rigid or that well-organized.

As we prepare to leave, I stop to stare at a topographic map on the wall.  Just to the northwest of Lake Winnipesaukee lies a circular range of mountains called the Ossipees.  Surely, this must have been an ancient volcano.  I show Wes and he agrees with me.  We ask Kim.  No, no volcanos around here.  Wondering what else could make such a distinctive outline, we vow to look more closely as we ride by.  Our route out of New Hampshire will take us half way round this strange feature.  By the end of this day, we will be in Maine.  Almost there.  Somehow or another.

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Posted from Centennial, Wyoming

T+137. Lost and Found and Lost

Centennial, Wyoming: We have just witnessed two days of gale force winds.  Yesterday, the snow was blowing so bad we could not see more than 100 yards.  We sat at the windows and heard the house shake.  We watched for and worried about the Angus yearlings on the next ranch, who were huddled up in the willows.  When we went shopping, we made sure we prepared our car for the worst: (shovel, blanket, kitty litter, emergency kit.)  Here, the earth is in charge and we best not forget it.  Getting lost or stuck out here is no laughing matter.  In central New York, we found out a little something about losing and finding.  It wasn’t funny at the time.

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Mile 3757: Rome, New York

We leave Fulton early on a Saturday morning.  It is grey and a bit chilly.  We will follow the north shore of Lake Oneida to Rome.  This was not our original intention.  We are going to Rome because it was the only place we could find lodging.  Everything on Lake Ontario was full because of salmon fishing, and everything in Syracuse was full because of the football game.  We were able to get a room in Rome, partially because the local historic attraction, Fort Stanwix, is closed because of the government shutdown.   Because the Fulton motel had no WiFi, I had to use the internet at the gas station across from our motel.   I play “hotel bingo”, book an expensive hotel in Rome, and lose.

We will have to make a long ride to get there, then use Rome as our launching point into the Adirondacks.  We leave Fulton as the sun was coming up, and enter rolling farm and woodlands, scattered with a series of tiny towns.  There is much poverty and abandonment along the way.  In the hamlet of Central Square, the volunteer firefighters are hosting a chicken barbeque to provide support for a member whose child has cancer.  This must be the tenth chicken dinner benefit we have encountered.

The chicken is not yet ready, so we ask at the local gas station about local cafes, and the skinny woman, whose bright smile was missing a few teeth, first tells us what used to be in the village, before telling us we can find a breakfast down by the freeway in a few miles.  The place is busy with lots of football fans and motorcycle riders.  We sit down to order and a family with adult children sitting next to us immediately begins peppering us with questions.  They are from Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.  They are up to spend a final fall weekend before closing their cottage on Lake Oneida.   They get into a debate with our waitress.   Is cycling across the country brave, stupid, or crazy?  I think they decided that the right answer was all three.   As we go out the door, a young woman just dismounting a motorcycle asks where we are going.  When we tell we are going to Rome, she asks “Today?”  As we cycle off, we hear her say to her compatriots, “I  think I would bike 10 miles…no, make that 5 miles…before I would give up.”

The north shore of Lake Oneida is ringed with cottages and small villages.  There are a number of resort attractions that have long since decayed.  We stop and stare an immense Dutch style barn, at least 200 feet long, with faded lettering announcing dancing, fine food, and drinks.  The tangled web of ivy growing over the building tells us it has been a few decades since this hand-hewn building was a destination.  There are few places to stop, and where there are active business, many have closed for the season.

Thus, Wes and I are relieved when we finally find a place to stop for lunch: a small bar not far from the shore of the lake.  The place is small, dark, and empty.  The female bartender is at first quite perfunctory when we discover that the only food available are cheese puffs and pickled eggs.  We drink a beer on an empty stomach.  Before long, a vivacious couple who knows the bartender quite well enters the bar.  Soon we are in the middle of lively conversation about the economy, jobs, dogs, and what-not.  The man runs out to his truck to get his “darlin’”, a tiny, jittery Chihuahua who runs up and down the counter and jumps into his arms on command.   He says he is “retired,” although it means he has just quit looking for work after his last lay-off.  He says he might work again, if he could find anything.  His wife snorts at the thought.   We order another beer for the two of us, but the bartender gives us each another beer. 

I am wee bit tipsy when we leave, giddily waving to the laughing couple.  We jump on the bike and have a great ride, winding up and down through empty roads and the coloring forest.  We come to a pretty meadow that shows the trees to their advantage.  I suggest we stop and get a picture.  After I get off my bike, I am horrified to see that I have left my pannier, along with my purse, back in the bar.  I know exactly where it is.  We originally sat at table when we entered.  When the chatterboxes came in, we moved to the bar, but my pannier didn’t.

Wes picks up the story:

What to do. . .what to do? I walk across the road, stick out my thumb, and the first car by stops. It was an off-duty county sheriff. I told him our problem, and he said, "We'd better get you there before one of those unemployed people discover it".  He took off like a rocket and we covered the ten miles, in ten minutes. He dropped me off, but couldn't take me back because he was meeting his son to fix his son's broken down car. Luckily, the pannier/purse was still leaning against the wall, but the minute I picked it up, Shaun's phone rings. Everyone in the bar turned and looked.

I smiled and said, "It's for me". 

But I still had to get back to Shaun, so I step out and try to wave someone down. Some kids living in a run-down apartment adjacent to the pub saw me and ran to their mom and told her some wild looking man was trying to stop cars like he'd been in an accident or something. The mom came out and asked if everything was all right.

I explained and told her my wife was on the side of the road waiting. She immediately dropped what she was doing, called her mother to babysit, and said she'd take me. We got into her beat-up old car and took off. She mentioned she hoped she had enough gas. A few minutes later, we pull up to Shaun with the pannier, thanked the lady profusely, and gave her gas money, which we hoped would keep her fueled up for the week.

 Total time since Shaun discovered the missing purse?--25 minutes.

Feeling grateful that my foolishness had not done us in (once again), we are soon back on the bikes.  Truly, God takes care of fools and little children.  It is getting to be late afternoon, and we still have close to 20 miles to go.  As we leave the shores of the lake, we go through a marshy area.  It is horrifying: the road is be-smattered with thousands of frog carcasses.  The gore lasts close to a mile.  We wonder if the cars even see these small guys.  We certainly do, and wonder why there are not viaducts under the road in obvious migration routes like this, especially given frogs’ state of near extinction.

We have travelled 45 miles, 35 miles since breakfast, when we see a store which has been in business since the 19^th century.   The building has been made and re-made, but here at the conjunction of river, lake, canal, and road, it is easy to see why folks have been stopping here for generations.  We grab sandwiches and eat on our bikes.  Time is slipping away.

When we finally make our way to Rome, we are relieved.  We have travelled 60 miles, lost and found my purse, and are ready to get to our hotel and prepare for our push into the Adirondacks tomorrow.  I call the hotel to get directions.   The young desk clerk gives me simple directions, but they don’t make sense where we are.  I tell we have just entered the town on highway 49.  She says, “Good, just take the Griffiss Park exit, you will find us on the right.”   I don’t understand how we can take an exit if we are already in town, and she repeats her instructions again. 

We figure we’ll find it soon enough, so start making our way through the small city of Rome.  This is an old city, built over an old fort, built over a central location for the Six Nations Confederacy of the Iroquois.  At this point in time, there are lot of abandoned warehouses, many rail lines, shuttered factories interspersed between various business and eateries.  It looks alive, but very much in transition.  We ride a long way and see no sign of the hotel.  We stop a mom and daughter combo going into a fancy barbeque place for help.  They both whip out cell-phones, then struggle to tell us how to get there, with the admonition that it is pretty far.  We get some more instructions, which are a bit confusing and keep going.   We have now ridden several more miles since entering the town.

We come to the restored grounds of Fort Stanwix and have to make a decision which way to go: freeway, small street, or main street. The website seems to say “small street”, the ladies said “main street”, the clerk seemed to say “freeway”.  Wes goes into a Laundromat to seek further assistance.  Apparently, he does not hear me say I will wait on the corner before the Laundromat.  I wait and wait, check the website, call the hotel, try to use my phone to figure out what to do.   I walk to the Laundromat.  No Wes.  I look up and down the street.  No Wes.  The sun is going down.  I call his cell phone.  It is off.  Oh, boy, now I am really getting upset.  I don’t know how to get to the hotel; I don’t know where my husband is; I am tired and in a somewhat dodgy location.   I call again.  Still no response.  A while later, starting to get a bit panicked, I call again and to my relief, I am able to leave a “where are you, where are you, where are you?” message.

By time Wes calls me back some minutes later, I am crying. He had come out of Laundromat and not seen me.  Thinking I had gone on, he had hurried up the hill to find me.  After he had gone a long way with no sight of me, he too began to worry, and stopped to turn on the phone. 

 Night and cold are coming on.  We follow the instructions from the girls in the Laundromat, which confirmed the ladies’ instructions.  We ride a couple of miles out the main street, turn on another highway and come to another junction.  I call the hotel again, and tell her we are lost.  When I tell her where we are, she says, “Great, just take the street there and follow it up a ways and you’ll get there.”  I say, not kindly, “There are four streets here, which one do I take?”  She says, “Go straight from the Burger King.”  I am angry now.  “Which way?  East? West? North? South?  Left? Right?”  She says, “I’m don’t know directions.  Just follow the road by the Burger King.”  Wes snatches the phone from my hand because I am about to go ballistic.  He says, “Thanks, anyway, I think we understand.” 

We start following the road and it is clear that we have left the main part of town.  It is quite dark now.  My emotional stability is deteriorating rapidly.  We fumble our way to an unmarked roundabout and can’t tell which way to go.  Wes calls the hotel again and gets the same poor instructions, although it is clear that we are getting closer. 

My tears and panic have returned as we fumble along in the dark, unable to find a big hotel in the ever increasing remoteness of the landscape.  Wes doesn’t know what to do with me.  I don’t know what to do with me.  We finally spot a sign to the Rome Free Academy, which I recognize from the website as adjacent to the hotel.   We make our way there at long last, we are cold, hungry, and upset.  The desk clerk stares at us with big eyes, afraid we are going to yell at her.  Wes has told me to just keep my mouth closed and I know he is right.  I say nothing.  Wes is kind to her, although he tells her that a basic skill for a desk clerk is understanding the layout of the city enough to give directions.  She doesn’t apologize, but she does let us store our bikes in the board room overnight.

The hotel is in a corporate convention center outside of city of Rome.  We have travelled 10 miles from our entry into the city on the northwest side to former air force base, now business park, on the far southeast side.  It wasn’t until we got into our expensive, soul-less room that we understood that.  Our disappointment grows when we discover that there is no restaurant, no bar, no nothing in the facility, nor within walking distance.   They have an expensive cantina, where we get some frozen dinners.   This is not a happy night for the Nethercotts.

 

The next day, we awaken to a pouring rain.  This is not the day to bike into the mountains.  We hang around, watch movies and football.  Late in the afternoon, the rain has relented, and we are a bit stir crazy.  We ask the same desk clerk for a coffee house we can walk to.  She gives us vague instructions to a coffee house in the business park.  We make our way there, walking through a moderately interesting sculpture garden.  Of course, it is closed. 

 Back at our room, we give up and order all sorts of food from a pizza and calzone delivery place.  Our eyes were bigger than our stomach and we have lots of leftovers, which seems like a problem, but proves fortuitous.  While Wes watches football, I mess around with my phone trying to find a route into the Adirondacks.  I discover a program on my Windows phone, which I have never used, that will give me detailed topographic and street maps of my exact location and will identify various businesses.  I shudder to think how many times we have been lost, when all the time I had a solution right on my phone in my purse.  Well, it may be true that God protects fools and little children, but it is also true that fools sometimes have to learn the hard way.

 

T+129: Navigating on the Erie Canal, Pt. 2.

Centennial, Wyoming:  We can tell we are truly back in Wyoming.  We have seen an elk herd of 200, a gathering of 75 pronghorn antelope, 50 or so wild horses on the hillside, and a group of five mule deer eating trees at the edge of our property….yesterday.  This is more wildlife in one day than we saw on the entire bike trip.   There is another sign that the bike trip is over and daily life is returning.   We now have both phone service and internet at the cabin.  We have spent the morning, going through mail, paying bills, and updating all our accounts and correspondence.   Being on the bike was quite other-worldly.   There is such peace in simply being in the moment, taking in what the world was giving us.  Most of the time we loved it, but getting through New York state was proving troubling, for reasons both sublime and ridiculous.

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The only accommodation available in Brockport is up the hill, out of the Mohawk Valley, into the plastic land and at a perfectly average motel.  This is also where we discover that the word “town” has a different meaning in New England.  In the rest of the United States, most towns are the product of rail lines and grew with the development of cars.  The towns are set up in a grid and grow along straight lines moving out from the center.  In New England, a sign will announce “Entering X town.” There may not be any cohesive group of homes or businesses for another 5 miles.  That grouping will be announced by signs announcing “X center” or “X village.” A town in this context is roughly equivalent to a township in Michigan or Wisconsin: a civic jurisdiction.  We don’t know that when we see that the Dollinger Inn is in Brockport Town.  We ride and ride away from the village near the canal.  We arrive at the plastic land and I am so disappointed.  Until that point, I thought this part of New York had evaded the plastic-land scourge.  Not so.  It’s just up by the main highway.

The next morning, we return to the canal area and ensconce at a coffee shop, where I work on the blog and Wes reads the newspaper.  As we are leaving, we greet a group of five cyclists seated outside, enjoying their morning coffee in the bright fall sun.  They are all about our age, dressed in full cycle regalia, with nice bikes and panniers. They are from Pittsburgh, and here to cycle 200 miles on the Erie Canal.  A woman with her knee taped is quite proud about this distance.  Another woman in the group asks about our travels and is surprised to hear that we have gone more than 3000 miles. She is very interested in our travels, but one fellow wearing bib cycle shorts and no shirt, is openly contemptuous and talks over our answers to the woman’s questions.  Although he doesn’t say this, we see him staring at our floppy shirts and pants and BOB trailers.  “Don’t we know we are supposed to give the impression of speed and aerodynamic styling?” his sneer seemed to say.

We all go to get on the tow path at the same time.  Wes and I are just competitive enough to speed off and leave the group in our wake.  Some miles down the path, we have stopped to read another information sign.  The no-shirt guy and the knee brace woman come cycling up, the other members of the group nowhere in sight.  We acknowledge their presence, but cycle off without saying a word.  We never see them again.

We are entering the environs of Rochester, which is a very big city.  The main path of the Erie Canal passes south of the city, with numerous connecting canals.  The route is bit tricky because it is passing in and out of city parks and sometimes moving away from the water.  At one point the path takes us over a bridge.  There is a path leading from the bridge and we assume it is our path.  Before we know it, we find we are on the campus of IBM Research and Development, just as the lunch break is beginning.  This is a nice campus and all sorts of corporate types, wearing their blue IBM shirts, are out walking the paths that circle the man-made lake, and in an out of various buildings.   We are obviously out of place as we pass men with brief cases and women in heels.  We wander about a bit, trying to find a way back to the canal, laughing at spectacle we are creating.  We finally go back to where we went wrong.  There we discover that the tow path has crossed to the south side of the canal for the first time since we started following it.

It is odd to ride the canal in the midst of a city.  It is loud and we cross under a variety of freeways.  It passes through a number of neighborhoods and suburbs.  It is clear that Rochester has been hit hard in the Great Recession.  We see lots of closed businesses and empty houses.  Some miles after our foray onto the IBM campus, we are quite hungry and need to find someplace to eat.  Just as we are about to cross a busy highway, an older man with a bright yellow jersey, stops his bike to talk to us.  He is slight and quite slender, probably in his late 60’s.  He has a mirror and lights and flashers on his bike; he announces that he is a Canal Path Ambassador.  Did we have any questions or concerns about our ride on the Canal?   Yes.  Where can we get something to eat?  “Well, it depends on whether you want to eat now or ride 10 more miles.”  We’re hungry now.  “Well, there’s a restaurant just down this street.  A lot of people eat there.  I never have.  But a lot of people do.  But ten miles down is Fairport.  They have a lot of nice restaurants there.  One difference is that Fairport, the average per capita income is $40,000.  Around here it is $15,000 per capita.”  We say we are hungry now, bemused by his economic assessment.  “Well,” he says, “you should be able to get a burger or something.”  As we cycle off, he calls to us.  “Make sure you stop to see the city skyline on the ridge after you eat lunch. It is quite impressive!”

By the time we get to café, it is mid-afternoon and we are the only customers.  The cook is sitting in a booth picking at some soup; the single waitress is sitting next to her, eating from a sack lunch.   Shortly after we are seated, a big pony-tailed fellow of at least 300 pounds rides up on a motorcycle.   He announces himself as he comes through the door and is greeted by name by both the waitress and the cook.  He seats himself at a small table across the room and proceeds to flirt with the waitress.  This is an established routine with them.   He calls her sugar and offers to help with her young daughter.  She cheerfully dismisses everything he says even as he keeps trying.   It looks like he will keep trying until he finally gets a yes…to home repairs, babysitting, car repairs….something that will establish a deeper relationship with her.

The lunch is notable for two reasons, both of them ridiculous.  On the petty side, this lunch was the final straw for me.  While Wes had the good sense to order the tuna plate and get some decent handmade salads, pickles, and tuna, I ordered the special, a chicken cordon blue sandwich.  I received a hunk of slimy corporate chicken and a cold piece of canned ham, covered with bottled blue cheese dressing on a squishy white bread bun…accompanied with pre-fab potato-food fries.  Revolting…and the end of chicken sandwiches and fried food for me…I hope forever.

The second reason had to do with the government shutdown.  It was October 1, and the shutdown was the lead story on radio and newspaper.  A slender, middle-aged man wearing a delivery service uniform enters the diner, and as soon as he is seated, asks the whole room. “Didya see about the government shutdown?”   The waitress, who was getting him a glass a water, “Yeah, I saw, but I don’t understand what it it.

Did Obama shut down the government?” Delivery guy, “Naah, It’s not him….well, it’s not just him…it’s the whole bunch of ‘em.  Democrats and Republicans both just trying to feather their own nests.”  Waitress: “I don’t even understand what they are talking about.”  Flirting guy.  “I say to hell with all of ‘em.  Any time someone starts talking politics, even on the TV, I just walk out the room.”  Delivery guy, “Ain’t that the truth.  They’re all a bunch of corrupt liars….and you know who I blame it all on?  Richard Nixon!  He’s the one who ruined it for everyone.”

Wes and I don’t add our two cents, but on the way out, while paying our bill, I say to the waitress. “The Congress is supposed to have a budget by today, but the Tea Party Republicans won’t agree to a budget unless Obamacare is de-funded.”  She looks at me blankly, “Oh.”  I might as well have been speaking Navajo.

On the way out of the diner, we ride up the overpass to see the view touted by the ambassador.  To one side, we see a derelict truck repair yard; right below us, a string of eight or so sets of railroad tracks.  Off in the distance, we can just make out a tiny view of the Rochester skyline. 

We make our way to Pittsford, which is clearly a higher rent district.  It is warm and sunny; the leaves are turning.  There are a number of people sitting on benches.  Many are eating ice cream handmade in a nearby shop.   We get some coffee from the shop and are surprised to see that it is also selling a wide variety of African masks, drums, and handicrafts.  The owner had been a Peace Corps volunteer in the 1980’s.  He returns regularly and brings back various goods.   Outside, we sit next to two ladies who are trying to remember the Erie Canal song. One sings… “Low bridge, everyone down/ Low bridge ‘cause you’re coming to a town/You always know… your friend when you make you way on the Erie….that’s not right.”  The other sings, “You always know your neighbor, you always know…”  We sing, “your pal.” We all sing, “when you’re ever navigating on the Erie Canal.”  We all laugh and tell how we learned that song.  One says, “I remember the verse was something about 15 years on the Erie Canal.  Shouldn’t it be 15 MILES on the Erie Canal?”  We don’t know, but later, I do a google search and find out the song originally was written about a “Mule by the name of Sal” who was pulling barges “15 years on the Erie Canal.”

We are trying to make miles so we pedal off from the warm sun and the singing ladies.  Fairport is just 10 miles away and supposed to have a variety of accommodations.  Not too far out of town, we see three sculls go by.  One is a two person boat, but the other two are eight person crews…of middle-school and high school girls.  They slide down the canal at an impressive speed.  Shortly, thereafter we see a group of kayakers, a bunch of teenage boys out fishing, numerous hikers and joggers.   Not long after that, two more sculls glide by, powered by teenage boys, their coaches following in small motor boat, shouting instructions through a megaphone.

I try all the accommodations in town.  No luck.  All full.  I look further afield and end up talking to an innkeeper, who has no room, but gives me a number for private bed and breakfast.  She says, “They are really nice people, but I can’t vouch for their accommodations.”  I call and leave a message.  We wander around town, leave another message.  It is starting to get dark.  We wish we had our camping gear.  I remember that the house was very near the canal. Maybe we can find it.  It takes us a while, but we do find it.  We are really getting worried now.  There is a handwritten note on the door saying they are away and which gives a different number.  We call it and thank goodness, someone answers, and asks us, “Are you riding bikes pulling trailers?”  They had seen us wandering about the town.   Kathy and Phil do have a room and we are grateful, even though Wes has an attack of claustrophobia because the room is so full of trinkets and tchotchkes, he is afraid to move.

This very long day ended on a high note, however.  Our hosts recommend a place to eat on the canal.  In the warm October night, we eat on the balcony, looking at the winking lights on the docked pleasure boats below.  We watch a young couple come in to eat dinner with the female’s parents.  We guess it is their first meeting.  The young man is wearing a badly tied tie with a short sleeve shirt.  He is sits rigidly in front of the father, who has his arms crossed and is learning back.  At first, the daughter is chattering away, but only the mom responds.  By the end of the dinner, however, conversation is flowing, and the daughter reaches over and gently, lovingly, touches the young man's shoulder, who visibly relaxes. 

We have a great meal, with truly delicious pumpkin soup.  As we are getting ready to leave, we hear the pipping bark of the coxswain.  In the pitch dark, moving much more slowly down the canal, come the two sculls of young men. 

The next day, we will leave the towpath of the Erie Canal to explore New York’s Lake Ontario shores. 100 miles of straight flat bicycling is enough, but we have learned a lot and loved a lot on this peculiar path.

 

Posted from Centennial, Wyoming

 

T+106: Thumb-ities

Mile 3757, Rome NY.  The rain has us holed up in the motel with me catching up on the blog while Wes watches football on the television.

Bay City is a very short distance from Midland, Michigan—at least by car.  However, if you travel by Adventure Cycling map and Wes and Shaun’s remarkable way-losing skills, this twenty mile auto trip can take more than 4 hours and leave you exhausted and frustrated. 

Getting out of town was the first challenge.  The mapmakers hate main streets and direct paths.  Wes and I think we know more than we really do, so try to create work-arounds to avoid the zigging and zagging of the prescribed path.  Very often, we add miles, times, and turns to already long paths.   We finally get out of town on the prescribed path which takes us just downwind of the landfill. 

We cross into the country, where we see even more of the mysterious greens plant.  The route is flat, the traffic moderate, the wind high.  We make reasonable time and are excited when we cross Interstate 75.  This is our neighborhood freeway in Detroit, and a marker of our eastern progress.   Wes and I know Bay City and Saginaw Bay rather well, having visited both quite a few times.  Bay City was one of the queen cities of the lumber boom.  Its main street has a remarkable collection of Victorian mansions.  Its downtown, once derelict, is reviving and artsy.  It has a nice waterfront.  The Bay has numerous wetlands and wildlife refuges.  Does the Adventure Cycling trail go by any of these?  No.

After our foolishness of the morning, we thought we should follow the path as prescribed.  Mistake.  For reasons unknown, it crossed to the far northeast of the town, then circled through its most industrial bits on the western side, then wandered in down-trodden neighborhoods until it exited on a beat up farm road on the southeast.  The best thing about the route was the section that travelled on the Saginaw River, where the town has created a bike path around and over the river and amongst its marshes.  We ended up eating at a worn out workers’ bar on the tracks where the bar food matched the ugliness of the surroundings and the surliness of the customers.

The wind is blowing and we are travelling in farm country.  Along the way, we spot a pumpkin farm setting up for its first Halloween Hayride.  It is the 20^th of September, but we’re thirsty and curious, so stop in for apple cider and cinnamon donuts (one of the essential tastes of Michigan). I end up visiting with the enormously fat dwarf goats.  They are very pleased to be fed fresh grass from outside their pen, instead of the handfuls of grain pellets little children pay $.50 to feed them.  I’m trying to communicate with the chickens, when Wes comes to remind me that we still have miles to go this late afternoon.

The path takes an odd rails to trails conversion, which is barely marked and runs a short distance in the midst of fields.  It is not far from the tourist haven of Frankenmuth.  Maybe it is the first stage of a longer project.  It is in the midst of this trail, surrounded by corn and the greens plant, when Wes suddenly shouts, “Sugar beets!  Those are sugar beets!”  Of course they are.  Haven’t we been to the Sugar Beet Festival in Sebawaing just a few miles from Bay City?  Doesn’t Pioneer Sugar appear on every Made in Michigan shelf?  Smart as whips, we are.

I have made arrangements for us to stay in the North Bed and Breakfast in Vassar.  It was listed as one of two choices on our map, but I couldn’t find any other information.  When I called, the proprietor answered my question about available accommodations with a question, “Are you allergic to cats?”  I said no.  She said, “Good, because there are cats on the premises.”  I said I thought that was an advantage.  She laughed, and said, “I can see we are going to get along.”  This was a foretaste of things to come.

Vassar is pretty river town in the north central part of the Thumb, about 12 miles northwest of Frankenmuth.  Its 19^th century brick downtown is intact and moderately healthy. Its 1920’s movie house is still operating.  We make our way to the B & B, following the numbers.  We come to big mansion on the tallest point in town (maybe for miles), with ancient white pines and stolid oaks guarding the grounds.  We enter up an almost hidden drive and are immediately astonished.  This is a BIG house, built in 1880’s, elaborate and well maintained. 

When our landlady answers the door, two cats run out.  She tells us where we can store our bikes and takes us indoors, where we are confronted with a big cat smell.  There are eight cats living on the premises.  They have the run of the place and she gives us elaborate instructions for dealing with them.   She warns us to keep our doors closed unless we want cats in our bed.  She shows us around the mansion which was built by Townsend North, a nephew of the founders of the famous college, the local lumber baron, and co-founder of the village.  The house has not been much updated; its woodwork is a testament to the riches of the local forest.  However, there is only one outlet in our bedroom and it is in the middle of the wall above the sagging, plush sitting couch.

Just as we are getting ready to leave, her other guests arrive.  They look intriguing.  They are in their mid-thirties.  He has a shaved head, numerous tattoos, and big hipster glasses over bulging blue eyes.  She is exceptionally pretty, if fifty pounds overweight, with long curly hair, and an infectious laugh.  She has golden brown skin and some sort of African ancestry.  They tell the landlady that they plan to see the movie, “The Butler” at the local movie house before going to their conference tomorrow.   That captures our imagination, as well.  As we head out, the landlady calls out, “Will you please look for a pink sparkly cat collar when you are going down the stairs?  I’ve looked everywhere in the house.”

The next morning, after enjoying the movie and particularly Forrest Whittaker’s performance, we were looking forward to talking about it with the other guests.  That conversation lasted about 2 minutes, because we soon found out little you can tell about people based on first impressions.  They were fairly newly-wed.  She was highly educated and world travelled, the daughter of an Air Force officer.  A strange set of circumstances had her move to Fort Wayne, Indiana where she met her husband at church.  She said, “I was originally dating his roommate, but…” He interrupts, “He was no good.  I wanted to protect you from him….”  She starts to say something; they stare at each other and let it drop.  He was recently hired at a factory that makes hard plastic parts for cars after years of looking for work and “taking any kind of anything I could get.”   He is actually rather shy and tongue-tied for all of his hard edge looks.  He stares at his wife admiringly when she explains something he can’t. She homeschools their son, who is twelve.  She says, “We are doing everything we can to protect him from the evils of the world.   When he sees a woman who is wearing provocative clothes like shorts, we tell him God wants him to put his eyes down and not look.”  As they talk on, it is clear that they are members of a super-conservative evangelical church.  They were attending a conference on religious home schooling. 

Back on the road, we wind through small towns where families are out watching their children play soccer or full pads pee-wee football.  The path takes us to another rails to trails conversion, where once again we see lots of Baby-boomers on Bikes.  It’s nice but a bit wet and muddy.  The route leaves the trail, to turn a bit east and wander towards the lower Thumb and Port Huron.  We take our lunch in the tiny town of Clifford, where we have a raucous conversation.  Two are older women, with beauty parlor hairdos lacquered to their heads; they are joined by a pink faced young looking 40 year old.  It is obvious they know each other and this place very well.  All of us tell stories of life in Michigan, especially the way the weather has changed over the years.  We had just gotten into the more sensitive topic of politics and the economy.  (They were shocked at the deterioration of Michigan’s commitment to its people and towns)  The conversation veered over to the public accommodations smoking ban. 

A young man, accompanying his young daughter and son, had recently come to the café and announced to all ears that “They had just come from two soccer games after going hunting this morning and they needed some food.”  The father jumped into the conversation.  “I plumb don’t agree with the smoking ban. If it’s my business and I’m paying the bills, I have the right to do what I want in my business.”   Wes comments, “If we go in your restaurant, and you’re smoking, it affects us.” He almost shouts, “Then you can just leave.  You don’t have to be any place you don’t like.”  Both the pink faced fellow and I ask him about employees in that situation.  He doesn’t answer.   Pink face points out, “If you smoke in your business and it’s against the law, and your employee get sick from it, you know you would be liable.”  The dad shouts, “I don’t care! I just think there is too much government.  If I’m paying the bills, I should get to call the shots.”

This effectively ends the conversation.  Very shortly thereafter, the 70 year old women and we take our leave.

I have been trying to find a place to stay on the trail for most of the morning. So far I have not had any luck.  We have to go off the route.  We end up riding down a crazy busy Michigan 57 (Van Dyke Road) on a Saturday night.  Wes is full of nostalgia because his school is just off Van Dyke 70 miles down the road.  We spend the night in a totally plastic freeway motel on Interstate 69.  We eat at a “bad food and plenty of it” restaurant nearby, where nearly every patron is very overweight.   Both Wes and I note that we have seen very few overweight men on the trip thus far.  We have seen a lot since we entered the (formerly) industrial environs of eastern Michigan.

The next day, we head for the ferry at Marine City.  This is the closest we will come to Detroit.  Several friends have asked us why we don’t go closer.   We know if we get too close, we will be tempted to stop.  Even now, traveling through a part of Michigan we know well, it is still just strange enough to feel like exploration.   We keep our minds on the oddities of the Thumb and don’t let the comforts of home entice us.

T+91: Welcome to Wisconsin

Mile 3133: Imlay City, MI

The wild and scenic river of St. Croix delineates the border between Minnesota and Wisconsin.  It is a very different landscape than anything we have yet encountered.  In fact, it reminds me of a little finger of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.  Steep hills, big trees, and unadorned water.  It is always refreshing to see water that is not completely ringed by summer homes. 

Wes and I stopped to take pictures at the scenic overlook, then zoomed down to the town of Taylor Falls.  It is a classic tourist town, and it is hopping.  The streets are full of Minneapolis day trippers here to see the St. Croix National Scenic River Park.   Wes and I consider stopping at one of the crowded coffee houses or restaurants for about 20 seconds, but the hub-bub is too much, so we push on. 

We walk our bikes over the bridge, which points out that the word “falls” in the 19^th century also meant any stretch of white water in a river.  The “falls” at St. Croix Falls are a stretch of about 50 yards of rapids in a beautiful tree lined canyon.  As people who were raised in the Rocky Mountains, we were amused at this fuss over the little change of elevation, although we do grant that the deep, tree-lined, river course is quite beautiful.  

We push our bikes partially up the steep bank and visit the decidedly much quieter town of St. Croix Falls, Wisconsin.  The streets are almost empty and there are no cars visiting the federally funded visitors’ center.  We wander up and down the street and are most intrigued by a small café that says, “Vegetarian and Vegan Food.”    We are so sick of bar food.   We don’t think we have seen the word “vegan” for over a 1000 miles. 

We are greeted effusively by the Indian host when we enter.  The place is not full, but the people who are there seem mostly to be young, mostly people of color.  We have not seen this crowd since we left the West Coast.    The menu is eclectic, but we are drawn to the northern India dishes.    We savor dishes made with beans and with exotica like eggplant.   We are sick beyond belief of fried stuff.   Fried stuff is the cheap and easy offering at 90 out of 100 American restaurants.   Why this is, especially here in the fertile Midwest, we cannot tell you.   In the land of corn and tomatoes, why is it impossible to get fresh corn and tomatoes at the restaurants we visit?

Afterwards, we make our way to the Wisconsin tourist information station, where I hope to get a state map.  We have already decided we are not going to take the ridiculous Adventure Cycling route, which would have us ride north to within 3 miles of the Michigan border (for several days), then turn south for several more to go the ferry at Manitowac.  Instead, we will make a dash across the center of the state, without all the ups, downs, ins and out, prescribed by the bicycle touring organization.

At the tourist information, Wes goes right in, but I get hornswoggled by an interesting trio of people.  They are all in their 70’s.  There are two women, each tightly gripping the arm of a slender, formerly red-haired, gentleman.  They ask about our trip.  After the usual responses to the usual questions, I ask about them.   He is a former pastor who had lived in Wisconsin for many years, then had a parish in Florida.  The short, grey haired woman clutching his left arm was also from Wisconsin.   The tall, willowy woman in the bob haircut is clinging to his right arm.  She is a former teacher from Florida, where she retired a few years ago.  The pastor’s wife died last year.  Now that he is alone, it seems that these two women have come to his aid.  I sensed a competition over this pastor, as each woman ever so slightly pulled at his arm as they talked about the places they have visited and planned to visit.  He looked at pleased as punch; his bright blue eyes twinkled beneath his light eyebrows.  When Wes returns with the needed maps, the talk turns to our travels.  Wes always encourages people to make plans for their cross country ride.  This is particularly amusing to our elders.  The former pastor replies, “In my younger days, I would have taken you up.  But now, I’ve got a bad back, and I just can’t get around like I used to.  I don’t know what I would do if I didn’t have so many kind people around me.”   The women blush, and clutch their pastor a little more tightly.    We make our good-byes and go to get on the first of several bike trails we take in Wisconsin.
 

The nice folks at the information booth have given Wes a tourist map, and a series of small maps which highlight the very local bike trails, as well as the statewide network of bike trails.  One of the most famous trails starts here and goes north following the river and ending at Lake Superior.  We are to follow a short local route.   In a few miles, there is another route which will take us to our destination for the evening, Ashby.   The first route starts out badly: badly marked and bumpy, it is just feet away from a nice highway with a wide shoulder.  It is much steeper than the road and we cast aspersions about the trail designer.   All of a sudden the route ends.   Perhaps it goes into the state park and resumes, we wonder.   We ride into the park, talk to the attendant.  No, no bike route around here.  Sorry.

Feeling snookered, we return to the highway and travel down a series of ups and downs, with one very long, fun downhill.   We have a map leading us to a route called the 7 Lakes Trail.  It is a complicated set of instructions to get there and I am skeptical after the first snafu with the trail.  We ride up and around, through little towns, and into smaller and smaller roads.  I keep questioning Wes, “Are you sure this is not a goose-chase?”   We have already cycled more than 40 miles through the Hay Daze and St. Croix tourist enclave, the last thing I want to do is go wandering aimlessly in the Wisconsin hinterlands.

However, the instructions are good and my fears are unfounded.  We ride a 10 mile trail through truly lovely scenery.  There are in fact 7 lakes, as well as marshes, and farms, and cute little towns.  The day is getting late, however, and we are getting tired.  About 2 miles from our destination, the rain comes down.  We don rain gear and push on.  By the time we get the town of Ashby, the rain, though fierce for a few minutes, is gone.  We goggle at the fancy new bike center with WiFi at the terminus of the bike trail, and wander about town trying to find a motel.  There are only two.   We decide to take the closer, cheaper one, but I have a fit when we get there and see guys hanging outside and a big anti-meth poster just outside the office.  The proprietor can barely be pulled away from her Packers game to give Wes the registration form. 

The room is underwhelming, to say the least.  With wall paper from the 1960’s and in need of a good scrub, I am less than happy to be here.  We have to bring our bikes into the small room, not only out of fear of the rain, but also with some concern about theft.  I fuss about the cleanliness of the room, and Wes is irritated: “If you wanted to see the room before we rented it, why didn’t YOU ask to?”  The room is icky and worn, but not worth a fight.  We go next door and have good margaritas and bad Mexican food, then come back to the room and sleep surprisingly well.

The next day we are up early.  It is very foggy.  After a quick breakfast at the brand new restaurant across the street, we start following Highway F.  Wisconsin is the only state I have encountered where all county roads are named by letters instead of numbers.  There is limited visibility and this part of Wisconsin is a series of glacier-made hills and dales.  We ride up short steep hills, then right back down.  This goes on for some hours and is getting wearisome.  The agriculture in this part of the state is marginal.  We encounter much that makes us uncomfortable.  First, this must be some sort of center for puppy mills.  We identify them by the endless howling of dogs, the cyclone fences, and the multiple NO TRESPASSING signs. 

This is also the first time Wes and I have seen factory turkey farms up close.  One such: behind the sign “Welcome to Wesley and Debbie Nelson’s Farm”, we see a big warehouse, approximately 100’ by 24’.  Along the long side closest to us, there are at least 25 turkey pens.  Along the short side, there are four turkey pens with a center aisle between them.  Each of these 100 pens is about 8’x8’.  There are 8 turkeys in each pen.  Each turkey has about 1 yard square.   They are screaming and pecking and flapping, but they cannot turn around.  There must be at 1000 white turkeys in this single building.  A while later, we see another farm with 3 of these turkey torture chambers.   I don’t think that Wes will ever be able to eat commercial turkey again.

We make another corner, and I see several rows of what looks like large igloo type dog houses.  As we get closer, I see that these are not dog houses, but calf-cages.  Very young calves of just few weeks in age are chained to each of these dog houses with big industrial chains about their necks.  They can walk only a few steps.  This is a veal operation.  I look at their knobbly knees and big eyes and am repulsed at the cruelty to these baby animals.

By noon or so, we are ready for a break.  Wes is having issues with his bike (a trend that started in Minnesota and will continue all the way through Michigan).  The back derailleur quits working just as we pull into the little town where we hoped to take our break.  Unfortunately, this town is in the process of becoming a ghost town.  The pub is out of business.  Most of the houses are for sale or abandoned.  The only place that seems occupied also seems to be a puppy mill. 

We mess around with his cables and shifters.  We take his shifter apart, then have a hell of a time getting it back together.  In the end, we cannot get all the washers and spacers back in and still get the shifter to work.  We are frustrated, hungry, and a bit freaked out by our surroundings.   We didn’t think Wisconsin would be like THIS.  All our messing around with the shifter does not fix the problem, but Wes has no more patience.  He smacks the back derailleur in frustration.  Out pops the missing nut that holds the hook of his bike bag.  The derailleur now works.  We didn’t need to disassemble the shifter at all.  Mercifully, and inexplicably, the whole thing works better than before, so we stagger on.

A couple hours later, we pull into a beautifully situated farm town on a lovely river.  There is a “c-store” where we buy nuts, cheese, and other emergency supplies.  There are no restaurants, but we can get food at the tavern next door.  We do and it is wretched, though not as bad as the chicken-cheese-wild rice goo of the other day.  Back on the bike, I rail about the unconscionably bad state of American foodways.  How can we have ridden through 1000 miles of farmland and yet have been served so much adulterated and overly processed food?  Where is the respect for the food and the eater?

As the day goes on, however, the ride becomes more pleasant and more beautiful.  In one little farm town, I see a sign on a corner store announcing “home-made root beer floats”.  We pop in, have a truly delicious treat and encounter ebullient and talkative Wisconsin natives, who make us laugh and ask us about our travels.  Afterwards, we both don headphones to listen to our “stories” as the miles zoom by and the discomforts of the morning slip away.  We get to the freeway two miles from our reserved room, but have to circle all the way through the town of Bloomer then back out because cycles are not allowed to ride on the freeway in Wisconsin.  The extra six miles are a drag at the end of this nearly 70 mile day, but the town is well put together, with lots of social services.  

When we get to our motel, there is a big crew of youngish men drinking beers out on the porch.  They are very fascinated by us, and true Wisconsinites, start asking questions before we can even get the bikes parked.  They can’t believe we have ridden from Portland, Oregon.  We are surprised that they are a crew of traveling grain elevator maintenance men.  They will be out for months at a time, servicing the giant metal and ceramic containers we see every few miles.  It is a good, hard, dangerous job.   I didn’t realize such job even existed. 

These first two days in Wisconsin have been surprising in so many ways.  There is so much we don’t understand, but we sure do like the people.  We look forward to the rest of our whisk across the center of Wisconsin, but conk out immediately and sleep like logs.

 

 

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posted from St. Clair, MI