MUP Tour: Bicycling in Michigan's Upper Peninnsula

On my recent bike trip “up north” in the “UP” (this is “Michigan Speak” which translates to: up north in lower Michigan, around or above the 45th parallel or so but below the Strait’s of Mackinac; and UP is in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan across the Strait’s of Mackinaw that divides Lake Michigan from Lake Huron. I am sorry for the geography lesson but almost no one in the US outside Michigan knows what the state looks like or even knows where it is located exactly. Michiganders [the official term for a person living in Michigan: Michigander, while the term for people living in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula is Uper pronounced /U per/] seem to think they are the center of the universe because cars are/were made here and everyone loves cars so much that people pours over maps of this desired location for life as “The Beaver”, Wally, Ward and June lived it in the 50’s and everyone longs to move here. Michiganders assume knowledge of their state that no one seems to have. This idea of life as the Cleavers of course is not true since there is a flood of people leaving here in caravans of anxious unemployed and under employed people who are abandoning their homes and just fleeing. Most people outside Michigan couldn’t even locate the great lakes that surround Michigan on a map let alone know that Michigan is a state divided in two parts)… Trip stopper… That was convoluted as hell.

Anyway… I took some notes on my thoughts about the UP trip, the countryside, the people and things of general and random nature. I will try to accurately and faithfully transcribe these notes and briefly annotate them as needed to be understandable to the non-Michigander. The bicycle ride was the MUP Tour or Michigan Upper Peninsula Tour. This was the ninth tour and maybe the fourth on the route they used for my ride. I don’t know why the two lakes, Lake Michigan and Lake Huron, are not just one really long lake that surrounds the lower state of Michigan on three sides, but the five mile wide strait at the top of the state is the dividing point and the defining end/beginning of both lakes. The UP should be part of Wisconsin (or Canada) by all rights since it is contiguous with that state/country, but back in the day when Michigan was going to go to war with Ohio over who owned Toledo, the US government stepped in and said it is better to go to war over the Ohio State/University of Michigan annual football game not some stupid city. To prevent immediate bloodshed the US gave the UP, land across the Straits, to Michigan and Ohio had to take Toledo.

Initially both states lost because Ohio got a port on Lake Erie but an armpit of a city, Toledo. Michigan got the frozen north country of the UP where winter goes into June and the biggest business was selling alcohol to the scant unemployed alcoholic population that are not native American. The Native Americans are also still in the UP and except for the occasional casino worker are also unemployed and alcoholic (not to stereotype too much). Eventually someone spotted the huge thousand pound nuggets of pure copper they had been tripping over right on the surface of the land. Copper in abundance was on or just below the surface in the UP and there for the taking. It took about 40 years before all the copper was mined out and the people went back to their alcohol fueled hockey playing child abusing wife beating trailer living pasty eating way of life. (Not that I have anything against that life style, why some of my best friends…). Maybe it is not quite that bad, but sometimes it does seem to be a bit depressing up there if you had to live in the UP for more than a vacation. I don’t know what people do to turn a buck in the upper peninsula besides tourism, sport fishing in the summer month and snowmobiling in the 11 months of winter (I think you need a snowmobile to get up to the upper peninsula so I don’t know how that “sport” works. I saw more stop signs in the woods and weeds for the snowmobiles than on the regular roads). I guess social services would also be a major employer in the UP since there are so many unemployed, under employed, partially employed, and leeching-on-relative types, that all need to be taken care of by someone in a position of handing out the dole or cleaning up the mess. Ohio still has Toledo, enough said about the trade.

Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against the right wing, radical republican, red-necked, tea party, militia-member, uneducated, narrow-minded ignorant types that populate the UP. Why some of my best friends… They have every right to narrow their minds down to a pin point of Glen Beck rant and Boss Limburger distortions as long as they are way up there. Gun racks in the pickup truck windows; baseball caps with arm forces, oil companies, and fishing logos; American Flags on every surface especially on the sides of the rusty single wide trailer they inhabit for the most part is what is seen of the human habitation. (Old trailers do not die: they are towed “up north” to the UP, dumped in the woods and become new UP subdivisions.) The Upers appreciate my dollars I leave as a tourist. They are polite and accommodating for the most part and for all but three pickup trucks in a week, they did not deliberately try to kill or injure me as I rode my bicycle on their roads. While the only stations on the TV up there are the shopping channel, TBS and Fox NoNews, they do not force me to look at the screens in the restaurants and bars although the TVs are on constantly in both establishments. The landscape is very beautiful at least in the summer month when I have seen it. The food is good, a bit fatty, a bit carbohydrate rich, but served in massive portions. A piece of “home” baked pie fits on a dinner platter, not that I tried more than four or five pieces in different restaurants. (How can it be “home” baked if it is made in the restaurant? The cook sleeps on the floor in the back.)

Sunday was registration day for the ride. There were several local informal rides out of St. Ignace after checking in if one was so inspired after having driven 500 miles from down state. The Sunday deluge of rain that went on basically all day drove many or most of the cyclists off their bikes and into the hockey arena that served as our home base the first and last day. I was able to set up my camp nicely in the hockey stands next to a garbage can that was set on an alcove of a size the length and width of my sleeping bag. No wet tent for me in the morning. With about 125 “old guys” sleeping in free standing tents or on sleeping mats on the floor of the arena (no there was no ice), the night time provided a cacophony of snoring, snorting, and farting with about a 75 decibel, two octave range reverberating off the walls and ceiling of the otherwise quiet hockey building. Until I finally put in my ear plugs I thought I was at the world cup soccer match in South Africa with the fans all blowing their vuvuzelas. The only problem this ride had with the “quiet hour” that begun at 10:00pm was that the snoring was reaching a crescendo about that time since most of the people had been asleep for about an hour or more.

Quiet time extends until 6:30am and we were admonished to not be zipping and unzipping tents and bags and waking up other people before that time. At 6:00am the first morning in the hockey arena someone’s phone alarm began to ring and ring and ring until almost 6:20 when someone went over woke the old guy and had him put his hearing aide back in his ear. I could hear the alarm through the ear plugs I had in and was fully awake and mostly packed up by the time the alarm quit. The poor guy had turned his phone alarm to high so he would be sure to hear it, but alas without the hearing aide he did not wake up because he could not hear it. I took note of his tent and resolved to move the location of my tent if I found myself near him again (even if I was on the same side of the schools we camped in).

At the first meeting I found out the mascot for the trip was Myles the moose. The moose rode a bicycle and actually had several moose friends riding with him. Since my name is Miles and people did not differentiate between me and the moose (I am the one with an “i” in my name) I was well known on the trip. Everyone has their name and town they come from on the back of their bike emblazoned in black marker on a big read fanny flag. That way as you rode along and approached people you could say, “On your left Louis,” “Good morning Bob,” “Great riding today Anne,” “Are you drunk Larry?” “Can you ride any slower Mary?” “How long have you been lost Hal?”… The signs on the back make this a personal ride and it was easy to get to know a few names and not have to identify individuals without calling them “Panasonic”, “Huffy”, “Recumbent” or “sports shirt”, “poka dot jersey”, “the guy who wears high-top Keds”… I liked that my name was the mascot because people seemed to feel like they knew me even if they didn’t differentiate me from the moose.

Breakfast on the trip was to be served 7-8am and almost everyone was ready and lined up politely by 7am. I ate with Hal and his wife who were young, 25 or so and teachers from Florida who were trying to move back to Michigan where they grew up, but they couldn’t find a job. Hal rode a fixed gear track bike and did very well on the ride which gives an idea of the degree of difficulty of the overall tour. By 8:15 the tents were all down from inside and outside the hockey arena, the truck that carries the equipment was almost loaded, and most of the cyclists were on the road. How did they move so fast in packing up? Off I rode to the thriving metropolis of De Tour (“the turn” which is the last turn in the St. Mary’s River that connects Lake Superior with Lake Huron). Riding was easy, fast and beautiful along Lake Huron and up to the St. Mary River that connects Lake Huron and Lake Superior.

As I rode along on the cool cloudy morning, I thought about the GPS in the car that I used to get to the start of the ride from my house down state. Maybe not having looked at the map or not having a map with me and not really knowing where the tour was going was part of my thinking along this line. With the GPS no matter what has or is happening the voice is patient and accepting: “In point one mile turn left, then left,” “Turn left now.” “Recalculating”. Why can’t people be that accepting and patient as the mechanical lady in the box? She never chastises me for missing a turn. She never accuses me of “getting us lost”. She doesn’t complain about having to now read the map in a moving car to find our way back. She doesn’t bring up that we should have stopped back there to ask for directions or listened better to the direction that we did get. She doesn’t make biting observations that we should have turned right back there and not left. She doesn’t give the invective “The other left stupid! The other left!” The voice is always positive about reaching our destination from where ever we are and doesn’t throw in things like, “Yea will get there about the time our grandchildren graduate from college!” The machine always reminds me well in advance of an upcoming turn, how far and which direction to turn. She never chastises, “Slow down we’re turning!”; “You’re in the wrong lane!”; “Turn here!” The little lady in the box never screams, “Turn here, turn here!, right here!” scaring the crap out of me and causing me to swerve off the road thinking a small child has just run in front of the car. Yes the GPS lady is a great driving companion and one that should be imitated by others especially others who ride in the car with me. Not that I have a problem with anyone who co-pilots with me. I’m just saying….

Be cautious of eating any food named after the nipple coverings of the 1930’s strippers who could not appear topless for certain obscenity rules or social norms. There are ads for this food at every restaurant, motel, and convenience store in the UP along with the local favorites smoked fish, beef jerky and fudge. “Pasties”. What are they? Seems like carbohydrates packed inside carbohydrates, baked in an oven and eaten with ketchup or gravy. Potatoes, rutabaga, onions, carrots, ground meat inside a circular pastry shell that is folded in half and baked in an oven. Sort of a hand held vegetable/meat pie which is light on the meat and heavy on the potato and rutabaga. I guess originally the16th century Cornish tin miners could not come to the surface to eat lunch. Their food they carried down in the mine got all covered with dirt, toxic arsenic dust and general filth since they did not have glad bags, saran wrap, brown paper bags or Scooby Doo lunch boxes to sequester their food. The miners could hold the pasty in one hand and eat the stuff inside without consuming the filth that accumulated on the crust. The pastry shell was discarded to appease the “knockers” or spirits of the mine. It seems the pasties have their origins with knockers one way or the other.

I got to eat some “homemade” pasties near the end of the trip. I discovered that “pasties” is pronounced with a short “a” so it rhymes with “nasty” not “tasty” not that it is nasty and not tasty. The pasty I ate may have been the only pasty that was not voted “The Best Pasties of the UP” as all others seemed to be advertized, but these belly bombers were actually tasty. Unlike the tin miners of Cornwall everyone ate the whole pasty, crust and all. There was nothing left for the knockers. Some sauce may have dripped down to the knockers especially if the “pie” was eaten by hand so knockers were still in play here. We were given the option of gravy or ketchup on our pasty. Having never eaten one of these I chose the gravy, but some of the regular consumer of pasties claimed that ketchup was the only way to really enjoy this UP delicacy. I guess ketchup is more portable and is easier to get out of clothing when it falls on your knockers, I mean front of your shirt. The pasties were about the size of a large dinner plate folded in half and weighed in at about two pounds each. Not bad for a person who has ridden 70 or 80 miles that day. I can see that much of a UP pasty would remain behind me if not for the exercise. In fact I could readily detect the regular UPers who regularly consumed pasties from a glance behind them.

At most food serving places (restaurants, party stores, antique shops, art stores, bait shops…)in the UP I saw deep fried potatoes, deep fried onions, deep fried mushrooms, deep fried broccoli, deep fried asparagus, deep fried burgers, deep fried steaks, deep fried fish, deep fried foul… Basically if it is good and good for you: Fry it! Turn that goodness into heart clogging plaque. Maybe the native cuisine is designed to either clog up the digestive track or to lubricate it so tourists are forced to purchase more expensive services such as Ex-lax, Kaopectate, a stomach pumping or a butt plug depending on the nature and severity of the affliction. There were desert options such as pies served hot with ice cream or whipped cream in huge slabs. And of course the ever present fudge which is pretty much chocolate flavored fried sugar as best I could sort out.

I am confused about the Native Americans/Indian/Injuns of the UP. According to the signs, posters, statues, and advertizing, they all build Tee Pees, wore feathers and buckskins, were bear chested and shot arrows with bows. I am thinking that a shirtless savage in a buckskin loin cloth is going to freeze his fried nuggets off about November. The only thing he will be hunting by January is the opening to his Tee Pee after 20 feet of snow has fallen. Perhaps the natives that do live up here in great numbers still have some opinion on the way they are portrayed but they aren’t letting any of it out.

By the end of riding on the second day I can report that there are about 10 to 1 pickups to other vehicles on the UP roads. Often the “other vehicle” is a gravel truck or a tourist in a big RV. People I asked about this phenomenon say that the pickup is needed for the rough winter. Fine, then why are there so few pickup truck, and so many regular cars just across the border further north in Canada? The UP pickup trucks are not generally old beat up rusty hulks, although there are a number of those rattling beasts. The trucks are often the big honkin’ shinny, four wheel drive or duel wheeled brand new vehicles costing more than my house down state. How can these people afford so many new pickup trucks with unemployment even when the economy is great never less than 25%? The only businesses seem to be souvenir shops, gift shops, restaurants, “antique shops” and “art stores”. Occasionally there are vehicle/truck repair places that seem to be what “Joe” does when he puts down his beer, drags his fat ass off the couch and decides to do something outside in the garage, like drink beer outside and fix a car/truck so he can buy another case of beer. Where do the funds for the new truck come from? Seems a lot of people are living in a single wide trailer that is deteriorating around them and except for the satellite dish and the new pickup truck out front a person might assume the place has been abandoned by people and taken over by vermin.

Every restaurant has “fish fry”. Even the pie shops and fudge stores seem to indulge in the weekly fish fry. The community centers all have a Friday fish fry, so does the fire department, the Elks, Moose, and Veterans organization although they might be fish fry Saturday,Thursday, Wednesday, or Tuesday. I guess Sunday and Monday are a day of rest for the hot grease. Don’t these people every poach, bake, broil, sauté, or BBQ the aquarian flesh? Fry it! Get some grease and fry it. Don’t matter what it is, just heat the grease and fry it.

There are lots of “Fish” restaurants in the UP, but there is no sign of a fishing industry up here beyond the sports fishing industry that is also keeping a low profile except for the occasional hand painted sign announcing “sports fishing guides”. The guide, for a fee, points at the lake and says, “Their out there.” Where does the fish for all these restaurants come from? My guess is that it is all flown in from Japanese fish farms. After all the restaurants proudly proclaim “White Fish”. Salmon and tuna are sort of pinkish, but most of the fish I have seen is all white. Is the “White Fish” like the “Ocean Bass” of Costa Rica? Any fish caught in the ocean is called Ocean Bass down there no matter what it is shark, shrimp or halibut. I had some breaded fried white fish up here on this trip. Why bread the fish if the skin is left on? I don’t like fish skin so much and almost gagged when I bit into the nasty breaded fried fish skin. Many in the group said this was pretty good white fish, but I could not tell the difference between this stuff and Long John Silver’s fish & chips except this had skin left on it with scales flaking off on my chin. I asked for tartar sauce and the waitress gave me a bottle of Best Foods Mayonnaise and a little bowl of sweet pickle relish. I am not sure that lemons have made it up that far north and after the tartar sauce I was afraid to ask.

One of the riders, a woman, was walking into the high school bathroom with an electric curling iron. What the fuck?! Who is this woman trying to impress? It’s a bike trip for god’s sake! People are walking around with hat hair from wearing helmets all day, dressed in lycra even if lycra is not the best fabric for their figure, they have grease on their legs, and they pretty much stink of a day’s worth of sweat. I am sure the curling iron will do the trick and raise the social status of the woman to something more respectful. Have to impress the high school volley ball team who is serving tonight’s dinner.

Sault Ste. Marie. What is with that name? First “Sault” has nothing phonetically to do with the pronunciation /sue/ that is said by everyone. When I asked people about it they generally looked puzzled like they had never thought of it and then they say, “Oh that’s a French word.” No it isn’t how that is pronounced in French. Even if it was how it pronounced in French, there are exactly zero French people in Sault Ste. Marie so why the strange collection of letters to come up with /sue/? Then there is the Ste. How can that be “Saint”? There isn’t even an “e” in the word saint! I guess if I ever misspell something I can claim that it is just “French” and get away with it.

The bridge between Sault Ste. Marie and Sault Ste. Marie (American and Canadian cities respectfully or is it Canadian and American cities respectfully?) is a strange looking thing. From the American side there is a run up or “ramp” about three quarters of a mile long steeply leading up to an arch over the main channel. The road/bridge then sways down to a low point and curves back up over about ¾ of a mile to an identical arch over the Canadian channel. The road/bridge finally has a ramp that curves down to the bank and the Canadian customs. The bridge looks like it is sinking into the middle of the river. Fix it! I rode both ways over the bridge on this two lane bridge for a buck and a half each ways making it some of the hilliest and most expensive riding of the trip.

In the town of Paradise the group stayed at the Paradise School: Home of the Rockets. This was THE school, K-12 with a student body of 52 students. Exactly how many “Rockets” could the school muster for any one sport? Hard to field a football team or any team with only 52 K-12 students total unless you do a co-ed thing and fudge the age requirement. Use the little first and second graders as field fader to kick the opposing team in the legs or trip over. Of the two graduating seniors both were going on to college making it a school with a 100% graduate to college bound ratio. Outside the school building where tents were set up there was a sand box surrounded by a foot and a half wall of wood. The sand box was about the size of a small hockey rink. One of the cyclist speculated that this was filled with water and used as a hockey rink in the winter. A little girl who attended the school and was on the swings as she waited for her sister who were helping serve the meal for the group. She told me the sand box had only been filled once with water. That year the ice NEVER melted all year and the school lost a valuable place to play since the ice was so crummy. Now they fill it with sand so it drains and the kids play sand hockey in the box all year. This honest little girl also ratted out the whole community. I mentioned that this was a beautiful place, the school, the town and the whole community. The little girls then said it always look like this when visitors come. She said, “Just wait until tomorrow when we leave.” Someone had gone around to the residents and had them move their garbage to the back yard and mow their grass at least in front. A group came to the school, mowed the lawn, raked the trash out of the front, swept the floor, and stashed all the “junk” from the halls into a room in the back. I asked about living in Paradise and this girls said it was nice, but this was a place where their summers were often winter too.

Ruth was one of the riders on the trip. She is about 75+ with the mental acuity of a 95 year old. She carried a box she made out of plastic corrugated sheets and duct tape. Inside Ruth kept all of her important stuff, like two rolls of duct tape, a screw driver, a sewing kit, a hammer, a ten pound chain, and assorted nuts and bolts plus a bunch of other things either too small or too broken up from the ten pound chain to be accurately identified. I helped Ruth put up her tent, on the last day. She hadn’t really figured out how it went up but was very proud of the tent once it was up. Ruth rode a recumbent giving recumbent a bad name because she not only was slow as a snail but SAGged in five of the seven days of riding (and one of those two days was a rest day). One day she got out of camp so late she sagged from campsite to campsite and was still struggling with her tent when the last riders got there. Ruth was great to talk to because she had a bunch of great stories about and camping all over the U.S, bicycle touring in Europe (with the Kaiser), the crusades, slaying giant mammoths near the ice cliffs of the glaciers ...

The last day of the ride nothing happened except for a 12% up hill. I guess someone got hit by a car or truck but the EMT’s were all over that. We rode on a stretch of road that had just been finished being paved the evening before and was opened just for us. (That new stretch made up for the 20 miles of road that had been ripped up to be repaved on the second day and was a brain beater to ride on.) I would recommend this trip to anyone wanting a “beginning” type bicycle tour since the pace is not savage, the distances are doable, the organization is great, and the number of people is low (154). A good time had by all.