Time to go out and face the traffic; secure my space on the tarmac bands that connect the geography of S.E. Michigan; ride the vapors of exhaust and dodge the pot holes of winter’s gone by; ride my velo-machine among massive fossil fuel burning metallic and plastic dragons. Have to put on my “Game Face” before I ride or so I am told by people who, I guess, should know, but are kind of arrogant or know-it-all so I prefer to tune them out most of the time, except for today when I grant this aphorism some credence because for god’s sake I need all the help I can get here in the ‘burbs of the motor city. I have heard that axiom of vehicular cycling and processed it as best I can: Game Face. Given there is no real game and my face is what it is day to day what does it mean?
The bike commuter’s Game Face is seen in that thousand meter stare taking in and processing all the potential threats ahead, prioritizing them in the context of surrounding traffic, traffic furniture and the ever elusive and often temperamental digit of destine that the dimension of time often deals. All of that concentration of the world ahead is done while still maintaining vigilance to the rear perusing in a series of still images, snatched from a glimpse in my mirror attached to my glasses flicked up, out and around, tipping my ear back slightly to catch the possible threats receding or approaching from behind. The commuter’s face must remain neutral as if everything is the way it is and the rider is in this moment, riding the Zen of Now. Most of all the tilt of the head, the hunch of the shoulders, the crick of the neck and the tension in the jaw must say, “I am serious, don’t mess with me! Alley cat ready to run, or rumble! Notice to all who see my eyes ‘Don’t Tread On Me!’”
Hidden within the Game Face, but close to the surface, there also needs to be a smile ready when needed for others: cyclists, pedestrians, and sometimes motorists. The smile should look as if it is meant to be polite and sincerely happy to see others doing something that is getting them out of their cars or at least not killing you as a cyclist with their vehicle. A smile lost in a grimace of exertion, concentration, agitation, or exhaustion is hard to read as a happy, positive, genuine effort. A smile that is too broad and wide showing too many teeth can be interpreted by some as an angry-dog appearance with lips pulled back showing canine teeth ready to lunge and take a chunk of flesh as its trophy. A tip of the head, lips together, ends of the mouth pointing upward; An eyebrow raised; Maybe an extra wrinkle in the forehead inquiring if the smile is OK and acceptable. Kind of a shy smile. A happy to know there are others like me kind of a smile. The smile is important to practice and have at the ready.
The raised finger of displeasure with the action of an automobile that has, in your estimation, rudely and dangerously invaded your space from “out of nowhere”, is too late to do any good and seems to be more of an “I am very mad,” kind of a display. Yes, you are angry, but are you really mad you did not see that incident coming and was surprised that you did not evade, avoid, or brace before it happened? That strong urge to raise up an arm, hand and finger then yell out an expletive we bellow to the gods, should remind the rider that they are really happy the motorist passed so close without killing them and they have been alerted to the dangers they were missing on the road because they are not paying enough attention: “Wake UP!” Most of the time the finger gets raised and the cyclist cry to the heavens their displeasure at the actions of the motorist, nothing ever comes of it except… Except that all the other motorists in the vicinity witnessed this display. They may recoil with horror not having seen why the cyclist reacted that way. They may feel that is how all cyclist treat motorists. The effects of that finger action will ripple away from the incident and spread outwards to others who have no knowledge of what went on. The effect of that raised finger will resonate for hours, days, or a lifetime and cause problems for other cyclists never seen.
Some cyclist mistakenly put on the game face of the novice or intermediate biker guy who has been out of the saddle for a few decades. This game face is when the cyclist becomes the game of the hunter: trucks, busses, pick-um-up trucks, automobiles, motorcycles, and… are there any others? This face requires a pair of beady eyes with the pupils slightly dilated, eyelids retracted fully into the head, whites slightly bulged out. The focus is everywhere and no where all at once jumping around from place to place looking for the first sign of rapid repeated random or potentially threatening movement so as to follow the Taoist Tai Chi mantra: “If he doesn’t act you do not act. If he acts, you act first.” Ready to act if needed, but not knowing when it will be needed or what action will keep you safe. This game face has a wrinkled worried forehead, a tense jaw line, a look of stoic pain in the tightness and line of the lips breaching into a full on grimace of fear and anxiety. The mirror on the left handle bar, the mirror on the helmet, the mirror on the right handle bar and, for the “freds”, the rear video-cam image on the computer screen mounted on the handle bars between the hands, are constantly being refreshed and consulted for usable bits of information from behind that could prevent death, destruction, dread, or distress. Hands grip the handle bars on the hoods of the brakes with white knuckles protruding out the open bike gloves finger wrapped around the brake levers with a death grip waiting to happen. Body posture is tense from the shoulders to the legs, the neck is retracted like a turtle trying to keeps its head protected from attack under its shell but still having to move ahead to avoid assault. Arms are slightly bent ready to absorb any unexpected jarring that could dislodge the rider from the bike or the road. The buttocks have slid back on the saddle to the most rearward perch that is the most comfortable of that uncomfortable posture. Feet spin around toes pointed down in a jerky flip of the toe like a twitchy sprinter ready to kick in that last 5% for the last 50 meters to try to win the day. Not a pretty picture.
When getting ready for a ride outside it is important to remember that the last thing you need to do is to put on your heart rate monitor, requiring you to strip down to bare skin above the waist to position and adjust the detector and to put on chamois cream which requires you to strip down below the waist to the skin and smear the butt butter on the nether parts of the anatomy. I don’t know why these can’t be done maybe first when getting ready for a ride, but alas they always come as the rider is about to leave the building. I guess it is tradition or something: Get ready and then get ready again. This is especially frustrating when the temperature is below 32 and there are considerable layers carefully tucked in to keep in the warmth which have to be removed and replaced before mounting the machine.
Before heading out early in the season t is a good idea to check your cleats, or at least do it biannually and not biennially. Actually if they are only checked biennially then there most likely has not been a problem and don’t mess with them, don’t touch them! Come to think of it if you are riding enough then biannually would also indicate there was no big problem with original installation so they cleats are working and if nothing was noticed then they are most likely good to go. Now there are people who ride on the weekend, when the temperature is good or there isn’t much rain. In those cases biennially cleat inspection would not really be long enough time of use to present a problem with installation of the cleats because they are used so infrequently. I guess if there is to be a rule about cleats then they should be put on, ridden for twenty or so miles and then checked to see if they are the least bit loose. If they have loosened up then “loctite” is needed on the bolts. Loctite is bolt glue. If the loctite is applied right then the rider should check the bolts in 20 miles. The average cyclist will forget of course because there will be no obvious problem at that point. Having “fixed” the problem of a lose cleat the cyclist will blissfully go about their riding until a cleat falls off or maybe it it doesn’t fall off.
Point is if the cleats fall off because the bolts come loose on the shoe the consequence are really not pleasant and almost always is accompanied by embarrassment. Worse case is one cleat bolt comes out allowing the cleat to pivot about 20 degrees in each direction. That 20 degrees is added to the 10-20 degrees needed to free the cleat, the normal foot will not pivot 30 to 40 degrees without damaging the knee so the cleat on the shoe will not release from the pedal mounted on the crank arm firmly attached to the bike. Bottom line: the shoe cleat is still attached to the pedal; the cleat is attached to the bottom of the shoe; the shoe is attached to the foot with strange one way ratchets and Velcro; the foot cannot let go of the pedal nor can it really use the pedal that wobbles around on the one bolt. This condition usually occurs when you want to stop the bike and get off. Many times a biker, especially a bike club rider, likes to stop when there are other cyclists stopped or they stop where traffic lights tell them they have to stop because there are a lot of other people in cars around. At that time many things come together to highlight the problem of a bicycle shoe cleat that has not been properly installed and maintained. The bike slows loosing the gyro stability and increasing the latitudinal instability: the bike wants to fall over. Just as the feeling of falling enters the cortex of the brain, the foot twitches to the side to free the pedal so the foot can touch down on the ground and stop the perceived fall. Alas the cleat will not free and the shock of that happening takes a few seconds to process. Meanwhile the bike has continued to lean farther over accelerating towards the pavement. Suddenly the pavement or parking lot comes up and hits the rider taking the skin off the outside of the knee and elbow and if he/she is not wearing gloves, the heels of the hand on that side of the bike maybe braking the wrist of breaking the collar bone. Like a fish out of water you thrash around in the parking lot trying to free your foot from the pedal, but it will not happen with only one bolt in the cleat. Pathetic. Not that I have had a problem with that scenario.
Just a few thoughts before a late spring ride…
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Friday, June 3, 2011
Dead Possum
Thoughts while riding to the store…
I’m just saying that when you see a dead possum on the side of the road, maybe even have to steer around it a bit to keep from thumping over the deceased marsupial, it is a fair guess that the possum was too slow to escape the car that hit it. That may be a wrong assessment of the clues; smashed possum in the road and tire marks across and beyond the carcass, but it is not in error by much because whatever the “real” reason for the demise of the pouched beast, the outcome is the same: flat or not so flat nocturnal semi-arboreal omnivore with or without car tire track across it. A neutral observer might watch the possum crossing the street and when the head lights of the oncoming car sweep across it as it is scurrying across the dark pavement, a long dark shadow is laid down behind the hind haunches and the possum may just “play possum” in the road, falling down pretending to be dead. Then… it is dead when the car thumps over its pretending to be dead body causing it’s actual untimely end. Was that prescience of the possum to foresee his/her own demise beneath the wheels of the urban vehicle and it just lay down to assume the position? Was it an error in the fur ball’s threat assessment process? Was the possum just to slow to live? Regardless, the pouched predator, did not have to be in the road, and most likely could have chosen to leave and would have made it if it had been fleet of foot and fast with its brain. But the opossum doesn’t make it across the road before the car hits and kills it as evidenced by the remains alongside or even in the road: a testament to something maybe even spiritual. Too slow to live at least on a busy road at night.
Like seeing a dead possum and thinking, “not quick enough,” I see with my review mirror blue hair at the top of the steering wheel as the only hint of life inside the giant land yacht approaching me from behind and I also have an instant thought. I assume a particular scenario which may or may not be entirely true and correct, but ultimately it has served me well from joining the road crossing dead possum. Perhaps an elderly matron with the prestigious car her deceased husband bought 20 years ago which is now only driven to and from the hair dresser down the street because her license has not been renewed due to poor eye sight, poor reflex time, poor processing speed, flights of fantasies, tunnel vision or all the above. Move over and hope for the best. Not a time to insist on taking the lane.
Thirty something woman with a cell phone held to her ear driving a mini-van somewhere near or over the center line of the lane with what appears to be a bunch of people/kids packed in the two back seats. Now that conjures up a scenario of what has and is going on inside the vehicle and the lack of attention to the other traffic on the road and even the road and driving itself. I ride with caution expecting the unexpected.
Shiny brand new pickup truck sitting high on the frame, with fancy rims, big mud tires, spot lights and just maybe a gun rack in the rear window with or without guns. Junker car with terminal cancer surrounded in a blue cloud coming from the engine and beneath the car which can be smelled before hearing the rattling and roaring as it approaches from behind. La Bomba chebby with the woofers thumping out a beat that shakes the vehicle visibly, tinted windows all the way around, blue lights in the wheel wells, sitting low to the ground driving too slow for conditions. An RV with all the bells and whistles, an old guy with a plaid shirt and short pants behind the wheel like the captain of a ship commanding from the bridge. There are a lot of these indicators of a potential dead possumness for a cyclist. Fill in a story that surrounds the vehicle and act accordingly to be safe. Or end up like the possum assuming he/she can outwit a car that doesn’t even see it playing possum in the road or is just running a bit too slowly.
There are some things that I think about when situations present themselves that have served me well and kept me on the road regardless of the truth of what I am thinking. Is that being prejudice or being vigilant? Is that making a judgment or being judgmental? Just sayin’ that a blue haired in a land yacht has never revved its engine, honked, passed me extra close, stuck the middle finger out the window and yelled, “get on the sidewalk ass hole!”, but she has nearly run over me without knowing it. A new pickup truck with huge mud tires has not followed me at ten miles an hour up a hill for a mile and finally swerved into the other lane passing me almost and swerved back before actually getting past me leaving the other twelve cars behind it fuming at me for slowing them down. Now a junker has passed me, dropped a large chunk of a muffler that had to be bunny hopped over and I know I could smell it before it passed me safely before the muffler thing happened so I am ready for that. La Bomba chebby with the tinted window, I just want to say not in Detroit thank god.
The possum is dead and dead by car. Whether it was struck and killed in a fair race across the road, or the car swerved to hit it unfairly or the thing just lay down and took it on the chops because it was stupid, dead is dead. Some judgments just need to be made for life as a cyclist.
I’m just saying that when you see a dead possum on the side of the road, maybe even have to steer around it a bit to keep from thumping over the deceased marsupial, it is a fair guess that the possum was too slow to escape the car that hit it. That may be a wrong assessment of the clues; smashed possum in the road and tire marks across and beyond the carcass, but it is not in error by much because whatever the “real” reason for the demise of the pouched beast, the outcome is the same: flat or not so flat nocturnal semi-arboreal omnivore with or without car tire track across it. A neutral observer might watch the possum crossing the street and when the head lights of the oncoming car sweep across it as it is scurrying across the dark pavement, a long dark shadow is laid down behind the hind haunches and the possum may just “play possum” in the road, falling down pretending to be dead. Then… it is dead when the car thumps over its pretending to be dead body causing it’s actual untimely end. Was that prescience of the possum to foresee his/her own demise beneath the wheels of the urban vehicle and it just lay down to assume the position? Was it an error in the fur ball’s threat assessment process? Was the possum just to slow to live? Regardless, the pouched predator, did not have to be in the road, and most likely could have chosen to leave and would have made it if it had been fleet of foot and fast with its brain. But the opossum doesn’t make it across the road before the car hits and kills it as evidenced by the remains alongside or even in the road: a testament to something maybe even spiritual. Too slow to live at least on a busy road at night.
Like seeing a dead possum and thinking, “not quick enough,” I see with my review mirror blue hair at the top of the steering wheel as the only hint of life inside the giant land yacht approaching me from behind and I also have an instant thought. I assume a particular scenario which may or may not be entirely true and correct, but ultimately it has served me well from joining the road crossing dead possum. Perhaps an elderly matron with the prestigious car her deceased husband bought 20 years ago which is now only driven to and from the hair dresser down the street because her license has not been renewed due to poor eye sight, poor reflex time, poor processing speed, flights of fantasies, tunnel vision or all the above. Move over and hope for the best. Not a time to insist on taking the lane.
Thirty something woman with a cell phone held to her ear driving a mini-van somewhere near or over the center line of the lane with what appears to be a bunch of people/kids packed in the two back seats. Now that conjures up a scenario of what has and is going on inside the vehicle and the lack of attention to the other traffic on the road and even the road and driving itself. I ride with caution expecting the unexpected.
Shiny brand new pickup truck sitting high on the frame, with fancy rims, big mud tires, spot lights and just maybe a gun rack in the rear window with or without guns. Junker car with terminal cancer surrounded in a blue cloud coming from the engine and beneath the car which can be smelled before hearing the rattling and roaring as it approaches from behind. La Bomba chebby with the woofers thumping out a beat that shakes the vehicle visibly, tinted windows all the way around, blue lights in the wheel wells, sitting low to the ground driving too slow for conditions. An RV with all the bells and whistles, an old guy with a plaid shirt and short pants behind the wheel like the captain of a ship commanding from the bridge. There are a lot of these indicators of a potential dead possumness for a cyclist. Fill in a story that surrounds the vehicle and act accordingly to be safe. Or end up like the possum assuming he/she can outwit a car that doesn’t even see it playing possum in the road or is just running a bit too slowly.
There are some things that I think about when situations present themselves that have served me well and kept me on the road regardless of the truth of what I am thinking. Is that being prejudice or being vigilant? Is that making a judgment or being judgmental? Just sayin’ that a blue haired in a land yacht has never revved its engine, honked, passed me extra close, stuck the middle finger out the window and yelled, “get on the sidewalk ass hole!”, but she has nearly run over me without knowing it. A new pickup truck with huge mud tires has not followed me at ten miles an hour up a hill for a mile and finally swerved into the other lane passing me almost and swerved back before actually getting past me leaving the other twelve cars behind it fuming at me for slowing them down. Now a junker has passed me, dropped a large chunk of a muffler that had to be bunny hopped over and I know I could smell it before it passed me safely before the muffler thing happened so I am ready for that. La Bomba chebby with the tinted window, I just want to say not in Detroit thank god.
The possum is dead and dead by car. Whether it was struck and killed in a fair race across the road, or the car swerved to hit it unfairly or the thing just lay down and took it on the chops because it was stupid, dead is dead. Some judgments just need to be made for life as a cyclist.
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Bike Ride
“Hey Miles, I hear you ride your bike. Where do you ride?... Do you ride really fast? …About how many miles/hour, average, you know when you are out for a ride, not racing?... Yea, I’ve been riding this summer a bunch…”
So the conversation started about bicycling with a colleague the first day of school meetings in early September. Mike had become very excited about his bike. He made a commitment to riding over the summer logging over 1000 miles mostly on short day rides and rides to school. This conversation, a “malk” (man talk), “man-shit”, “broversation” was really an invitation to ride, a “man-date”, opportunity for “bro-bonding”, a “bronding”time request, a “brosesh” on bikes, a “brofest” with riding on the saddle or so I hoped. It is hard to dance around the man-date thing without sending the wrong signals or without sounding like a complete dweeb. The friendship process among men is like stalking a school of minnows: one false move and they all scatter and there is nothing there and no way to get 'em back. Put it out there without having it put down, with “it” being one's self. There seems to be a set of rules that I missed when growing up and cannot find on the internet that specify the way a conversation among men goes. Any variation from the set pattern or the set rules and the conversation is terminated and maybe never approached again. Women communicate with each other all the time so they don’t know the trials and tribulations of being a guy, a real guy, sensitive and all but also guy-like without coming off the wrong way especially to other guys or in front of other guys.
Always awkward, the first man-date request. Best to do it in person so all the body language can be read and the tenor of the voice and the posing of the body can be adjusted just right to send the correct message and to observe how the messages are being received and sent so the abort button can be pushed quickly. I like to go a half an octave lower with my voice, tuck in my stomach, slouch my back to the side a bit, stand at a 45 degree angle to the guy not quite looking him in the eye, but turning my head to face them but getting ready to run, throw up or change subjects when dancing around a first man-date situation. Mostly my finger is on the abort button because I know I have read things wrong and have few social skills. Calling a halt to it before much of me is at risk is my normal manner of behavior in these situations maybe because of so many times I have been burned (at least in my own mind).
I ride alone almost entirely in my basement on various devices, rollers, bike stands, wind trainers... Riding with people is kind of foreign to me and has been a chance to be raked over the emotional coals as I think about high school bike rides. Not only do I have a hard time interacting with other males, I have very few males to interact with since I have moved to Michigan and teach in a Girls’ School with a mostly female staff. The whole “locker room” thing between males was lost on me due to traumatic experiences in seventh grade locker room (nothing bad, just the general bullying thing while naked or near naked by older boys). High school was not too bad because I was in the football locker room with all the real bros, the athletes, the top social class of high school. I never really fit in to that group but was able to keep a low profile, observe and keep to myself in the “privileged” locker room outside the main crush of the regular locker room. All that testosterone, posing, posturing, and strange language sort of shot over or around my head and I never really got the purpose or even the meaning of half of went on. Not that I didn’t have testosterone, I just didn’t get why guys did what they did, talked about stuff that was so hurtful to others, stupid, or just outright lies. Guys seldom said what they thought let alone what they felt and if what they said didn’t have a sexual overtone, anger and hostility towards some group or specific individual or ended in a laugh it wasn’t said. Maybe in the high school football locker room there wasn’t much thinking and only feeling physical pain was respected. I liked getting beat to a pulp in practice and ending the day with bruises, out of breath and ready for a nap. I talked to most of the football players, but mostly outside the locker room or on the field. Seemed like when two or more of them were gathered they switched gears into a language, both verbal and body language, that I didn’t understand and didn’t feel like I wanted to understand. There were no translator in the locker room and despite a careful four year period of observation I never cracked the locker room male code of behavior or communication. Since I wasn’t let into the girls’ locker room despite my repeated attempts especially in my fantasies (I was always invisible of course), I never got into the whole female communication thing either. It does seem like girls/women communicate very differently than guys do and maybe even do not have a locker room version of communication that negates things said outside the locker room. Hard to know for sure.
Back to my riding man-date in Michigan… Hard to get excited about the scenery or weather from the basement as I spin out five or six thousand miles a winter, but I make do with head phones and an iPod. Some may say that it would be boring, but I have done this for decades and have my own world. I can race anywhere in the world and win. I can listen to news, music, talking, books, pod casts, or just quiet. The basement is the world. I close my eyes, turn on the headphones and spin my way anywhere I want to go. I even have several kinds of bikes to ride. Occasionally I pack up my bike and transport it to some faraway place to get in some actual road riding that doesn’t involve stop lights, stop signs, narrow roads with far too many cars, people yelling at me to get on the sidewalk which is my normal experience if I leave from my house on a bike and ride 30 miles in any direction or so it seems to me after years of living here. I was actually excited about the prospect of riding with another human on the “road” and see things around here I had not seen in the 15 years I have lived here.
I let Mike know my problems with riding around close to my house and talked some about touring and “century” rides which I have more experience with. Being the conversational terrorist I am, changing the subject to something I wanted to talk about was easy. This direction of talk sparked his interest and he had his stories to tell about his long ride, a century sometime in the past maybe this summer. He talked about riding to school from his house that really intrigued me. Mike is not an urban cycle commuter who rides no holds barred carving out his space on the road in defiance to Detroit’s finest and most massive production vehicles. No one would mistake him for a bike Nazi, a peddlya (a peddler and a playa), a fixcreant (fixed gear freak in traffic), that abound in busy metropolitan areas where traffic is thick and needs to be navigated like a salmon heading for the spawning grounds through the rapids, eagles, bears and thousands of other fish. One would not mistake Mike for a Sir Lance-alike, a McBiker, a Spandexter, a lycra-biker because he does not have the costumes when he rides. Mike seemed to me to be a person who would get out on the sidewalk and ride along pausing at each driveway and slowing at each road intersection especially when traveling on the sidewalk against traffic. Not that it’s a problems but it does make for some confusion among the rest of the vehicle world that witness this strange adult behavior and wonder what rules motivate the boy and where he will go next. Mike is happy, confident, and intelligent and seems to be pretty much in shape, so don’t get me wrong about his abilities. This guy logged a lot of miles this summer on the roads in this area.
I just think that as an adult who is learning to ride a bike in our current traffic world it is a bit confusing and there are not a lot of answers especially when riding alone. A lot of the bike riding rules develope as the riding ability progresses and as the rider encounters novel situations on their bike. A bicycle is a vehicle and should be treated as a vehicle by the drivers of the other traffic around it. That said, a bicycle rider is very exposed and it seems like there is a real imbalance between the bike and the car. There is a similar imbalance between a small car and big trucks but cars still drive with their regular rules. Bicyclists need to acknowledge the difference and within reason go about their business as a vehicle so there is some way to anticipate what all the participant in the vehicular dance on the roads are all going to do. Going freestyle leaves people clearing the floor. Mike’s tales of riding around here with little traffic made me wonder how he did it. He told me about riding down Telegraph Road (M-29) a six lane 50mph crowded road with no shoulder, huge and frequent pot holes (pit traps), businesses over the whole length with cars turning in and out of the driveways and curb cuts. As a professional bike rider and seasoned bike commuter, I would avoid that road at all costs and was in awe that I was talking to him after such a ride. Now, he did say that particular route was not a pleasant experience, duhhh, but he not only did it but survived and was not mentally scared for life.
Mike told me about riding to work from his house to school which he first tried going down Telegraph as described above. He dreaded the ride home that night but went for it anyway with predicable terror. This urban riding experience would have scared off most harden war veterans from every mounting a bicycle again, but he soldiered on. After consulting maps and exploring options he found a new route to work sans panic parkway, trepidation through-way, or abhorrence alley. He now claimed that he could ride to school with most of it on bike trails the little bit on roads with low volume traffic. Having lived here for 15 years I could not imagine how that could be. Surely there were not that many bike trails I knew nothing about.
I had ridden on one trail, the Clinton River Trail, which went out for and ungodly distance, 20 or 25 miles, until it disappeared into some town I wasn’t sure the name of and then switched to sidewalks and regular roads. I had ridden this trail a few times amassing about 40 or 50 miles on the round trip and not really understanding where I had gone, but was pretty sure I was not near where Mike lived. Bike maps are made with the route fitting on the map as best they can from left to right without regard to the cardinal directions. I never really checked directions I rode, I just followed the trail to its end, turned around and rode back. If I looked at a regular map when I got home I was never able to translate to the bigger picture like where I had actually gone. The Clinton River bike trail is a rail to trails route and didn’t seem to go anywhere I ever thought I needed or wanted to go except to ride the trail. It went on the outside of towns and out by itself as the rail lines tended to do back in the day when the rails shipped goods to towns. I like utility riding to destinations usually beyond the trail. As far as I knew this bike trail was just a place to practice balancing and pedaling a bicycle or a place to go for a long quiet run without moving through neighborhoods.
Mike said there were trails that went all over the place, 40 miles in one direction, 30 miles in another direction, beyond the distance he had ridden in another direction. He claimed that these could be connected with a little road work all the way from Cranbrook to his house in god’s knows where east Jesus, Michigan. I knew Mike lived out near Pine Knob where the school has skiing on Fridays during the season. I knew that it took about 25 minutes on the freeway to get to Pine Knob from Cranbrook when there were no road problems like crowds of people going up north, blizzards blinding the drivers on I-75, road work, an accident, or “Milton” behind the wheel of the bus. (“Milton” is one of the Cranbrook bus drivers who is beyond a slow and cautious driver: he drives with a pondering sluggish snail-like leaden plodding done with judicious circumspect about his guarded forethought of the route and conditions ahead.) In my mind a ride out there to near Pine Knob would take me all day and I would not know how to approach such a ride without including I-75. To make this a “commute” on bike was amazing and really had me questioning my understanding of the geography of this area. I told Mike I wanted to see this ride he did to his house because I had not experience much auto-free riding in this state let alone in this area.
Well, Mike said he was up for a ride “this week”, the week before classes started. Each day that week there was some kind of problem, meetings, work, some thundershowers, pre-season coaching… Finally on Friday with no days this week left, Mike called and said, “let’s do it.” He either implied or flat out said it would be a 30-35 mile ride. That is not a big deal even if there were some hills or wind. That was what he had been talking about with the tales of his riding this summer, a 20-40 mile ride every day. I could easily do that and if he showed me a new trail or connected a couple of trails. That knowledge would be a big plus I could build on for riding the area near my house. I wasn’t at all understanding how to get to Pine Knob area and back in 30-35 miles since it took 25-30 minutes on the freeway when we drove, but I was up for it.
Around 3pm Mike arrived at my house with his van and bike inside. Out came his bike, a trek mountain bike with no cleats or toe clips, a saddle with springs, 26” wheels, but pretty well fitted with good components (brakes, shifters, chain, rims…) and really pretty decent bike. A 30-35 mile ride on this machine would be a good ride given the upright position, the fat low pressure knobby tires, the lack of efficiency without toe clips or cleats, and the comfortable but energy absorbing saddle. The bike was a neighborhood bike of high quality on the verge of being a good trail riding bike. His bike did have two water bottle cages on it and a bike computer, so that was something used to go the distance.
I had my road bike, my touring bike. This hand-made bicycle has fenders and a rack, two water bottle cages, a comfortable efficient saddle, down turned handle bars, 700c high pressure tires, sealed bearings throughout, great components, 27 gear choices and was made to power up and cruise all day with the minimum of effort beyond overcoming wind resistance. The ride was only 35 miles so I abandoned one of my water bottles, and went for a new R.E.I. on sale short sleeve tec shirt, and a pair of regular shorts rather than cycling shorts. My bike had a bit of a noise in the front fender that I figured I could put up with for 35 miles, no big deal, or beat on it as I rode if it got to me. I searched around and finally came up with a spare tube for my bike which I knew I would not need but took it “just in case” my phone didn’t work. Mike did not have a tube, a pump, or a tool, he just had two store bought bottles of water, a helmet, sunglasses and the will to ride.
Off we sped on our machines from my house with me tweaking mirrors, clicking in and out of my cleats, adjusting my shorts, shirt and bandanna. We had about two and a half miles on neighborhood and a collector roads to get to the start of the Clinton River Trail. The pace was pretty good and I got the feeling that Mike was trying to ride fast to impress me and not “hold me back.” People are often sensitive about their riding when they mostly ride alone. They don’t know if the pace is fast enough or if their style and form is good enough to ride with the pack. Riding alone eliminates the competition and comparison factor. Actually everyone reaches about the same level of riding ability when they ride alone but they get better and better when they do ride with others. Riding 100 miles with ten people give every rider in the group the experience of the problems of riding 1000 miles since all the bikes encounter slightly different situations over the same terrain and everyone sees the solutions to those problems. Not everything has to happen to each cyclist for all the cyclists to learn from the common experiences. Any useful knowledge in the group is also passed on to all the cyclists by talking so all the cyclist become better riders.
Mike was more willing to go with jumping up to the sidewalk than staying on roadway as we did the bit of road work to the trails beginning. He had a few strange ways of maneuvering through intersections, but it was all good. A couple of miles on a busy collector street and we started the Clinton River Bike Way. This begins with a bumpy asphalt surface for about three miles, followed by about 15 miles sort of hard packed dirt which is actually a very good surface. The trail changes names somewhere and so does the surface until it seems to turn to sidewalks out in the sticks to the south. Our goal was ultimately to go northeast to Pine Knob. I thought we started out riding southwest for about ten miles or more away from Mike’s house. The wind was directly at our back on the first ten miles, a steady 15 mph blast with gusts over 20. That meant we would have to ride back into and against this wind before we finish if we came this way. I assumed that Mike was aware of this fact and up to it or had a way around it. We cruised along at a very quick pace, maybe a pace that was to show me that Mike could ride at a fast pace or maybe because he was pushed by the wind as a sail boat with its spinnaker set running down wind.
After ten miles or a little less, we turned off the Clinton River Bike Trail and onto a branch trail I had noticed but thought was just a sidewalk into a town. Turns out that after a mile of riding on sidewalk/trails, across a couple of busy roads, in and around the town, behind the library, along a river “walk” we got onto another hard packed earth bike trail surrounding a park. The route bent around in a new direction and took us west and then north, directly back into the 15mph wind. I only know the direction because of the severe cross wind in town followed by the driving head wind when we got to the earthen trail next to a park (I assumed the wind direction was constant). After passing through the park we rode through a fully enclosed tunnel of trees that burrowed through a forest and passed, horse farms, small parks, an archery range and river next to and along much of the trail. This was all new territory I hadn’t seen by bike, foot, car or plane. We could have been in New Hampshire for all I knew, definitely not Wyoming or North Dakota.
Our course was into the wind but in a very pleasant setting on smooth hard packed earthen trail with a few runners, walkers, and a cyclists or two to pass or who passed us going the other way. With the wind in our faces the going was a bit slower. It actually seemed to require even more effort than I thought it should be taking. Was I really a bit out of shape, or were my brakes on, or was I just not use to the bike I had chosen to ride or perhaps there was some other excuse that I could come up with to reconcile the speed with the effort. Turns out this part of the trail in this direction is a slight uphill run for about 10 miles or so. A river grade uphill to be exact and one I should have recognized since we were basically paralleling a river in the upstream direction. Riding was very comfortable and undemanding because with a lot of chatting and passing, cyclists, runners and walker the miles just seemed to roll by. The trees blocked a lot of the wind and the scenery provided a diversion from the slightly slower speed proceeding to our destination. I really wasn’t aware of the distance going by because I had left my Garmin GPS and bike computer at home and the novelty of the new route and the chatting kept me engaged and distracted.
We rode for some amount of time, hour or hours, crossing several earthen car roads, a couple of asphalt roads and were having a great time. I had no idea where we were or even which direction we were riding except in relationship to the wind. Mike let me know that we were coming up to a town called Lake Orion. For those not residents of Michigan this lake and town are pronounced /O’ re un/ not as the rest of the planet pronounces it /O ri’ un/. I believe the people who live here use this strange pronunciation so they can sort out strangers who come into their town. Must be a fearful group of residents.
After arriving in Lake Orion I was sure I had no idea of where I was, where I had been or where I was going. Nothing look familiar because I had only driven through this town in the dark on the way to somewhere else and then only once or twice since moving to Michigan. There was a bit of negotiation situation of crossing a busy street, sort of the main street and state highway. I had to take Mike’s lead and assume he knew where to get across and how to do it efficiently and safely. Mike had a strange sense of bicycle safety and negotiation of traffic on the road. I would have just ridden across the street or blended into the flow and made a left when clear but Mike had us go down the sidewalk heading against traffic to a stop light and then ride the crosswalk, go up a one way street the wrong way and then meet the regular street a block later. Very confusing for me and every other vehicle on the street. That maneuver cemented in my mind the idea that Mike was a good rider, handling his bike well, riding with strength, but he was very much not aware of the big picture of urban and suburban effective cycling. I might have to take charge of these maneuvers to keep from getting killed or having drivers get pissed off at the strange activities of these two cyclists.
The ride through Lake Orion was on regular surface streets (that is Michigan surface streets with no shoulder, no defined edge of the road, narrow lanes, pot holes and missing pavement…). We traveled around a lake (maybe lake Orion) on roads that weren’t too heavily trafficked but were narrow, uneven, twisty, windy and hilly. Again we were powering into the wind but now there was a lake or sometimes just single level homes around us instead of a tunnel of trees to block the gusts. At a few points Mike jumped to the sidewalk and dealt with the driveways he crossed while I rode along in the road wondering what advantage he thought the sidewalk gave. It took about 20 minutes to get back to a bike trail. We resumed our ride on a quiet uncongested bike trails. This was the Poly Ann Trail I had heard about but did not know much about it beyond its name. We followed this rails to trails route through the woods and behind some subdivisions (of greater Orion?) until it was time to get back to some road work again.
This last stretch of the ride was right into the 15mph wind on a road with quite a bit of rush hour traffic, with little shoulder and very little cover from the wind. At a few points even I jumped to the sidewalk for some traffic relief and because these sidewalks were nowhere near any houses or subdivisions so there were no driveways. Sidewalks are not good riding with the expansion strip every three feet, thump, thump, thump… This last push to Mike’s house was also a bit hilly, but rolling up a lot more than rolling down. Not that there were mountains or towering ascents with switch backs and steep grueling climbs. This was just going up the roads that were built along and up the moraines left by the melting glaciers 10,000 years ago with each moraine to the north a bit higher than the last one. Pine Knob ski hill is actually just one of the moraines, the biggest one for 50 miles ergo a ski hill. Mike lived near Pine Knob or so I surmised.
As we balanced the white line on the edge of the busy road (where the white line had not fallen into the ditch because the edge of the road was missing), Mike yelled at me, “Watch out ahead, the bridge sticks out a bit.” I looked down the hill and did not see the bridge anywhere and wondered how a bridge could “stick out”. Maybe the bridge had a lip that was a few inches above or below the road surface. Maybe a railing on the bridge was broken or bent by a collision and was sticking into the lane a bit. Maybe the bridge didn’t line up well with the road. I couldn’t see a bridge ahead so the bridge must be small and inconsequential. Lost in speculative cogitation of a sticking out bridge, Mike yelled from behind, “Right there!” Well there wasn’t a “bridge” sticking out anywhere in sight. There was a “branch” sticking out. The branch was sticking out from the brush in the ditch next to the road and hung into what passed as a shoulder of the road at eye level. One word difference and I am swerving around trying to keep from being skewered in the eye by a log attached to a tree sized bush. No big deal, I avoided an emergency trip to the ophthalmologist and kept from swerving into the accompanying rush hour traffic by skillfully ducking my head back so the “branch” slammed into the top front of my helmet and slid off my back. Mike just rode around it smoothly.
Riding on the roads in Michigan presents its challenges whether it is from the pot holes, weather related problems such as snow, ice, puddles, gravel and dirt or from the lack of a shoulder on 90% of the roads in this state. Sometimes there is a white line along the edge of the road: this is the designated shoulder over most of the state, just this three inch white line. This white line, when it is there, comes and goes as the road deteriorates and the edge falls away into the ditch next to about every road, or the gravel or the sand that spills onto the road if there is no ditch. Rarely there is actual asphalt to the right of the white line on the edge of the road, but not often. When there is some room to the right of the edge line it is often covered with sand, rocks sticks, chunks of cement or alternative road surfaces. This occurs because the state does not give a damn about cyclists or the edge of the road and because plowing the snow from the road in the winter pushes things to the edge, but not off the shoulder. When the snow melts the debris of the winter road snow and ice drops down on the edge and is swept clean by bicycle commuters or drunks swerving off the edge of the road. When there is six inches of asphalt to the right of the three inch white line, motorists expect cyclists to be in that “bike lane” the state has provided and will sometimes yell or honk to remind the cyclist of his/her transgressions of using the actual automobile owned road surface. Once in this “bike lane”, six inches at best, cars just proceed to pass as if the cyclist was on the sidewalk three feet away or off in the ditch where they end up if the rider tries to claim some space on the real road surface. Actually in Michigan the law says that vehicles cannot travel on the shoulder of the road, so not only could I get nailed by a pickup trucks side mirror, but I could get a ticket for riding on the shoulder.
Our ride snaked around up and down hills, onto sidewalk/bike ways and mostly into the howling 15mph head wind. We finally reached Mike,s house. Now I may not be in top Tour de France riding shape, but I have ridden a lot this summer and am no slouch. Arriving at Mike’s house I knew we were half way into our ride since Mike left his van at my house: We had to ride back. Without a watch or a computer I was assuming we had ridden maybe an hour or an hour and a half and had about 15 miles under our belt. This was suppose to be a 30-35mile ride. I mean to say, I was pretty tired for having ridden only 17 miles (half of 35miles) and wondered what the deal was. Sure it was uphill a bit, but only about 200 feet overall at most. Sure the wind was blowing hard, but it had not been a head wind for 100% of the ride only about 80%. Sure we went on a lot of hard packed earth surfaces, but we seemed to have moved right along at a very decent pace. With only one water bottle of water, I had finished that long ago and might have been dehydrated and not thinking straight. I wasn’t sure what the reason was for my exhaustion until Mike looked at his computer and said we had ridden 35 miles. My god I thought that was how far we were going on the whole ride! What time was it? How long had it taken us? How long was the ride back? There must be a short cut or maybe it was downhill with the wind to our back on very fast roads. Was he serious about riding back and getting there before dark? What was he thinking to start a 70 mile ride after 3pm? Maybe he intended to get a ride back to the van, but there was no one at his house. I sure could not follow our route back the way we came if he thought I was going to go back and get the van. Oh, well wait and see what developed. Looking to the west I could see the sun reaching the peak of the next moraine and with us on top of the highest moraine for 50 miles that did not portend a long period of day light for this day.
After downing about three liters of water and filling my one pitiful water bottle we were set to ride back to my house. The route began with a slightly different course but this was just roads paralleling the ones that we had just ridden on the last few miles. This return trip promised the wind to our backs and a slight overall downhill grade. Big deal, we also had 35 miles under our belt 35 miles to go with a rapidly setting sun to race. I thought maybe the pace would be increased a bunch on the ride back especially if we were going to make it before dark. I didn’t know what time it was but it was late and the shadows had pretty much merged together. My attempts to ride at a faster pace left me alone at the front and I didn’t know where I was going. Actually our combined pace was pretty decent especially for having already ridden so far. We made a few starts and stops as we tried to weave our way back to the trails. Even at the brisk pace with the wind to our backs and the overall downhill, the sun was setting faster than our bikes were moving. At one point Mike took a phone call from his wife and he said he couldn’t talk because he was riding, he would be on his way home in a couple of hours. A couple of hours!? At least he talked while he rode. Yes, Mike’s estimate of the time line seemed right as I thought about the parts of the ride I could remember. I was in fear of looking at the time. Kai called at some point and we stopped to catch our breath and take a drink. I looked at a road sign of a road we were crossing and we were on a road that is actually only about two miles from my house. Unfortunately we were god’s knows how far out on the road where the collector had turned to an earthen road and we were crossing the road going the wrong way to my house.
We sped down the earth packed trails with the sun glowing over the horizon behind us hidden in the dark of the tunnel of trees that surrounded us until I had to take my sunglasses off to see the trail’s surface. I thought it was seriously dark and wondered if calling for a ride was not in order. Taking my sun glasses off gave us another half hour or so before the trail would disappear into the black of night. There is math at work here. If it is so dark that a person cannot ride with sunglasses on a cloudless day, then it is late in the afternoon and there is only so much time until the sunglasses view of the world will be the way it is and getting darker. It will be seriously dark in X Minutes (not hours) and will not get lighter for ten or twelve hours.
Mike was beginning to fade at this point and it was hard to keep the pace moving and not ride away. After all we had ridden 50 + miles when I took off my sunglasses. It was getting to be tired time for this cyclist. Street lights were on as we flew through the last town on the bike trail and we headed directly back into the wind for the last 12 miles. The wind took its toll on the pace. Mike is sitting upright on the mountain bike and the 15mph constant wind pushed on him like a big lineman on a little running back. The pace slowed and the darkness encroached. Two miles from the last street we had to ride, I called it. The last stretch we would have to ride was on a very busy road and could be a death ride in the dark without lights. I was not riding down that four lane 50mph road in the dark wearing my dark clothes on my dark gray bike with no reflectors or lights. I had never thought we would be out after dark or I would have: A). not have signed up for the ride, or B.) have brought lights and worn reflective clothing. I thought we were riding only 35 miles today. Somewhere around 8:30pm I stopped and called for a ride where the trail met the Opdyke Road. It was very dark when we reached the parking lot at the end of the bike trail. Twilight was not even a memory, it was dark dark dark.
My god that was actually a savage ride, fun, but savage. Mike said he had not really ridden that far in one stretch except for the century ride he did at some point in his life. What was he thinking? I only thought we were going 35 miles not 70 miles with a raging head wind for the last ten mile ride caper. With only the one water bottle I had, I was totally dehydrated as well as physically spent.
This was a good ride. Lots of fun. I will have to figure out where I went when I recover.
So the conversation started about bicycling with a colleague the first day of school meetings in early September. Mike had become very excited about his bike. He made a commitment to riding over the summer logging over 1000 miles mostly on short day rides and rides to school. This conversation, a “malk” (man talk), “man-shit”, “broversation” was really an invitation to ride, a “man-date”, opportunity for “bro-bonding”, a “bronding”time request, a “brosesh” on bikes, a “brofest” with riding on the saddle or so I hoped. It is hard to dance around the man-date thing without sending the wrong signals or without sounding like a complete dweeb. The friendship process among men is like stalking a school of minnows: one false move and they all scatter and there is nothing there and no way to get 'em back. Put it out there without having it put down, with “it” being one's self. There seems to be a set of rules that I missed when growing up and cannot find on the internet that specify the way a conversation among men goes. Any variation from the set pattern or the set rules and the conversation is terminated and maybe never approached again. Women communicate with each other all the time so they don’t know the trials and tribulations of being a guy, a real guy, sensitive and all but also guy-like without coming off the wrong way especially to other guys or in front of other guys.
Always awkward, the first man-date request. Best to do it in person so all the body language can be read and the tenor of the voice and the posing of the body can be adjusted just right to send the correct message and to observe how the messages are being received and sent so the abort button can be pushed quickly. I like to go a half an octave lower with my voice, tuck in my stomach, slouch my back to the side a bit, stand at a 45 degree angle to the guy not quite looking him in the eye, but turning my head to face them but getting ready to run, throw up or change subjects when dancing around a first man-date situation. Mostly my finger is on the abort button because I know I have read things wrong and have few social skills. Calling a halt to it before much of me is at risk is my normal manner of behavior in these situations maybe because of so many times I have been burned (at least in my own mind).
I ride alone almost entirely in my basement on various devices, rollers, bike stands, wind trainers... Riding with people is kind of foreign to me and has been a chance to be raked over the emotional coals as I think about high school bike rides. Not only do I have a hard time interacting with other males, I have very few males to interact with since I have moved to Michigan and teach in a Girls’ School with a mostly female staff. The whole “locker room” thing between males was lost on me due to traumatic experiences in seventh grade locker room (nothing bad, just the general bullying thing while naked or near naked by older boys). High school was not too bad because I was in the football locker room with all the real bros, the athletes, the top social class of high school. I never really fit in to that group but was able to keep a low profile, observe and keep to myself in the “privileged” locker room outside the main crush of the regular locker room. All that testosterone, posing, posturing, and strange language sort of shot over or around my head and I never really got the purpose or even the meaning of half of went on. Not that I didn’t have testosterone, I just didn’t get why guys did what they did, talked about stuff that was so hurtful to others, stupid, or just outright lies. Guys seldom said what they thought let alone what they felt and if what they said didn’t have a sexual overtone, anger and hostility towards some group or specific individual or ended in a laugh it wasn’t said. Maybe in the high school football locker room there wasn’t much thinking and only feeling physical pain was respected. I liked getting beat to a pulp in practice and ending the day with bruises, out of breath and ready for a nap. I talked to most of the football players, but mostly outside the locker room or on the field. Seemed like when two or more of them were gathered they switched gears into a language, both verbal and body language, that I didn’t understand and didn’t feel like I wanted to understand. There were no translator in the locker room and despite a careful four year period of observation I never cracked the locker room male code of behavior or communication. Since I wasn’t let into the girls’ locker room despite my repeated attempts especially in my fantasies (I was always invisible of course), I never got into the whole female communication thing either. It does seem like girls/women communicate very differently than guys do and maybe even do not have a locker room version of communication that negates things said outside the locker room. Hard to know for sure.
Back to my riding man-date in Michigan… Hard to get excited about the scenery or weather from the basement as I spin out five or six thousand miles a winter, but I make do with head phones and an iPod. Some may say that it would be boring, but I have done this for decades and have my own world. I can race anywhere in the world and win. I can listen to news, music, talking, books, pod casts, or just quiet. The basement is the world. I close my eyes, turn on the headphones and spin my way anywhere I want to go. I even have several kinds of bikes to ride. Occasionally I pack up my bike and transport it to some faraway place to get in some actual road riding that doesn’t involve stop lights, stop signs, narrow roads with far too many cars, people yelling at me to get on the sidewalk which is my normal experience if I leave from my house on a bike and ride 30 miles in any direction or so it seems to me after years of living here. I was actually excited about the prospect of riding with another human on the “road” and see things around here I had not seen in the 15 years I have lived here.
I let Mike know my problems with riding around close to my house and talked some about touring and “century” rides which I have more experience with. Being the conversational terrorist I am, changing the subject to something I wanted to talk about was easy. This direction of talk sparked his interest and he had his stories to tell about his long ride, a century sometime in the past maybe this summer. He talked about riding to school from his house that really intrigued me. Mike is not an urban cycle commuter who rides no holds barred carving out his space on the road in defiance to Detroit’s finest and most massive production vehicles. No one would mistake him for a bike Nazi, a peddlya (a peddler and a playa), a fixcreant (fixed gear freak in traffic), that abound in busy metropolitan areas where traffic is thick and needs to be navigated like a salmon heading for the spawning grounds through the rapids, eagles, bears and thousands of other fish. One would not mistake Mike for a Sir Lance-alike, a McBiker, a Spandexter, a lycra-biker because he does not have the costumes when he rides. Mike seemed to me to be a person who would get out on the sidewalk and ride along pausing at each driveway and slowing at each road intersection especially when traveling on the sidewalk against traffic. Not that it’s a problems but it does make for some confusion among the rest of the vehicle world that witness this strange adult behavior and wonder what rules motivate the boy and where he will go next. Mike is happy, confident, and intelligent and seems to be pretty much in shape, so don’t get me wrong about his abilities. This guy logged a lot of miles this summer on the roads in this area.
I just think that as an adult who is learning to ride a bike in our current traffic world it is a bit confusing and there are not a lot of answers especially when riding alone. A lot of the bike riding rules develope as the riding ability progresses and as the rider encounters novel situations on their bike. A bicycle is a vehicle and should be treated as a vehicle by the drivers of the other traffic around it. That said, a bicycle rider is very exposed and it seems like there is a real imbalance between the bike and the car. There is a similar imbalance between a small car and big trucks but cars still drive with their regular rules. Bicyclists need to acknowledge the difference and within reason go about their business as a vehicle so there is some way to anticipate what all the participant in the vehicular dance on the roads are all going to do. Going freestyle leaves people clearing the floor. Mike’s tales of riding around here with little traffic made me wonder how he did it. He told me about riding down Telegraph Road (M-29) a six lane 50mph crowded road with no shoulder, huge and frequent pot holes (pit traps), businesses over the whole length with cars turning in and out of the driveways and curb cuts. As a professional bike rider and seasoned bike commuter, I would avoid that road at all costs and was in awe that I was talking to him after such a ride. Now, he did say that particular route was not a pleasant experience, duhhh, but he not only did it but survived and was not mentally scared for life.
Mike told me about riding to work from his house to school which he first tried going down Telegraph as described above. He dreaded the ride home that night but went for it anyway with predicable terror. This urban riding experience would have scared off most harden war veterans from every mounting a bicycle again, but he soldiered on. After consulting maps and exploring options he found a new route to work sans panic parkway, trepidation through-way, or abhorrence alley. He now claimed that he could ride to school with most of it on bike trails the little bit on roads with low volume traffic. Having lived here for 15 years I could not imagine how that could be. Surely there were not that many bike trails I knew nothing about.
I had ridden on one trail, the Clinton River Trail, which went out for and ungodly distance, 20 or 25 miles, until it disappeared into some town I wasn’t sure the name of and then switched to sidewalks and regular roads. I had ridden this trail a few times amassing about 40 or 50 miles on the round trip and not really understanding where I had gone, but was pretty sure I was not near where Mike lived. Bike maps are made with the route fitting on the map as best they can from left to right without regard to the cardinal directions. I never really checked directions I rode, I just followed the trail to its end, turned around and rode back. If I looked at a regular map when I got home I was never able to translate to the bigger picture like where I had actually gone. The Clinton River bike trail is a rail to trails route and didn’t seem to go anywhere I ever thought I needed or wanted to go except to ride the trail. It went on the outside of towns and out by itself as the rail lines tended to do back in the day when the rails shipped goods to towns. I like utility riding to destinations usually beyond the trail. As far as I knew this bike trail was just a place to practice balancing and pedaling a bicycle or a place to go for a long quiet run without moving through neighborhoods.
Mike said there were trails that went all over the place, 40 miles in one direction, 30 miles in another direction, beyond the distance he had ridden in another direction. He claimed that these could be connected with a little road work all the way from Cranbrook to his house in god’s knows where east Jesus, Michigan. I knew Mike lived out near Pine Knob where the school has skiing on Fridays during the season. I knew that it took about 25 minutes on the freeway to get to Pine Knob from Cranbrook when there were no road problems like crowds of people going up north, blizzards blinding the drivers on I-75, road work, an accident, or “Milton” behind the wheel of the bus. (“Milton” is one of the Cranbrook bus drivers who is beyond a slow and cautious driver: he drives with a pondering sluggish snail-like leaden plodding done with judicious circumspect about his guarded forethought of the route and conditions ahead.) In my mind a ride out there to near Pine Knob would take me all day and I would not know how to approach such a ride without including I-75. To make this a “commute” on bike was amazing and really had me questioning my understanding of the geography of this area. I told Mike I wanted to see this ride he did to his house because I had not experience much auto-free riding in this state let alone in this area.
Well, Mike said he was up for a ride “this week”, the week before classes started. Each day that week there was some kind of problem, meetings, work, some thundershowers, pre-season coaching… Finally on Friday with no days this week left, Mike called and said, “let’s do it.” He either implied or flat out said it would be a 30-35 mile ride. That is not a big deal even if there were some hills or wind. That was what he had been talking about with the tales of his riding this summer, a 20-40 mile ride every day. I could easily do that and if he showed me a new trail or connected a couple of trails. That knowledge would be a big plus I could build on for riding the area near my house. I wasn’t at all understanding how to get to Pine Knob area and back in 30-35 miles since it took 25-30 minutes on the freeway when we drove, but I was up for it.
Around 3pm Mike arrived at my house with his van and bike inside. Out came his bike, a trek mountain bike with no cleats or toe clips, a saddle with springs, 26” wheels, but pretty well fitted with good components (brakes, shifters, chain, rims…) and really pretty decent bike. A 30-35 mile ride on this machine would be a good ride given the upright position, the fat low pressure knobby tires, the lack of efficiency without toe clips or cleats, and the comfortable but energy absorbing saddle. The bike was a neighborhood bike of high quality on the verge of being a good trail riding bike. His bike did have two water bottle cages on it and a bike computer, so that was something used to go the distance.
I had my road bike, my touring bike. This hand-made bicycle has fenders and a rack, two water bottle cages, a comfortable efficient saddle, down turned handle bars, 700c high pressure tires, sealed bearings throughout, great components, 27 gear choices and was made to power up and cruise all day with the minimum of effort beyond overcoming wind resistance. The ride was only 35 miles so I abandoned one of my water bottles, and went for a new R.E.I. on sale short sleeve tec shirt, and a pair of regular shorts rather than cycling shorts. My bike had a bit of a noise in the front fender that I figured I could put up with for 35 miles, no big deal, or beat on it as I rode if it got to me. I searched around and finally came up with a spare tube for my bike which I knew I would not need but took it “just in case” my phone didn’t work. Mike did not have a tube, a pump, or a tool, he just had two store bought bottles of water, a helmet, sunglasses and the will to ride.
Off we sped on our machines from my house with me tweaking mirrors, clicking in and out of my cleats, adjusting my shorts, shirt and bandanna. We had about two and a half miles on neighborhood and a collector roads to get to the start of the Clinton River Trail. The pace was pretty good and I got the feeling that Mike was trying to ride fast to impress me and not “hold me back.” People are often sensitive about their riding when they mostly ride alone. They don’t know if the pace is fast enough or if their style and form is good enough to ride with the pack. Riding alone eliminates the competition and comparison factor. Actually everyone reaches about the same level of riding ability when they ride alone but they get better and better when they do ride with others. Riding 100 miles with ten people give every rider in the group the experience of the problems of riding 1000 miles since all the bikes encounter slightly different situations over the same terrain and everyone sees the solutions to those problems. Not everything has to happen to each cyclist for all the cyclists to learn from the common experiences. Any useful knowledge in the group is also passed on to all the cyclists by talking so all the cyclist become better riders.
Mike was more willing to go with jumping up to the sidewalk than staying on roadway as we did the bit of road work to the trails beginning. He had a few strange ways of maneuvering through intersections, but it was all good. A couple of miles on a busy collector street and we started the Clinton River Bike Way. This begins with a bumpy asphalt surface for about three miles, followed by about 15 miles sort of hard packed dirt which is actually a very good surface. The trail changes names somewhere and so does the surface until it seems to turn to sidewalks out in the sticks to the south. Our goal was ultimately to go northeast to Pine Knob. I thought we started out riding southwest for about ten miles or more away from Mike’s house. The wind was directly at our back on the first ten miles, a steady 15 mph blast with gusts over 20. That meant we would have to ride back into and against this wind before we finish if we came this way. I assumed that Mike was aware of this fact and up to it or had a way around it. We cruised along at a very quick pace, maybe a pace that was to show me that Mike could ride at a fast pace or maybe because he was pushed by the wind as a sail boat with its spinnaker set running down wind.
After ten miles or a little less, we turned off the Clinton River Bike Trail and onto a branch trail I had noticed but thought was just a sidewalk into a town. Turns out that after a mile of riding on sidewalk/trails, across a couple of busy roads, in and around the town, behind the library, along a river “walk” we got onto another hard packed earth bike trail surrounding a park. The route bent around in a new direction and took us west and then north, directly back into the 15mph wind. I only know the direction because of the severe cross wind in town followed by the driving head wind when we got to the earthen trail next to a park (I assumed the wind direction was constant). After passing through the park we rode through a fully enclosed tunnel of trees that burrowed through a forest and passed, horse farms, small parks, an archery range and river next to and along much of the trail. This was all new territory I hadn’t seen by bike, foot, car or plane. We could have been in New Hampshire for all I knew, definitely not Wyoming or North Dakota.
Our course was into the wind but in a very pleasant setting on smooth hard packed earthen trail with a few runners, walkers, and a cyclists or two to pass or who passed us going the other way. With the wind in our faces the going was a bit slower. It actually seemed to require even more effort than I thought it should be taking. Was I really a bit out of shape, or were my brakes on, or was I just not use to the bike I had chosen to ride or perhaps there was some other excuse that I could come up with to reconcile the speed with the effort. Turns out this part of the trail in this direction is a slight uphill run for about 10 miles or so. A river grade uphill to be exact and one I should have recognized since we were basically paralleling a river in the upstream direction. Riding was very comfortable and undemanding because with a lot of chatting and passing, cyclists, runners and walker the miles just seemed to roll by. The trees blocked a lot of the wind and the scenery provided a diversion from the slightly slower speed proceeding to our destination. I really wasn’t aware of the distance going by because I had left my Garmin GPS and bike computer at home and the novelty of the new route and the chatting kept me engaged and distracted.
We rode for some amount of time, hour or hours, crossing several earthen car roads, a couple of asphalt roads and were having a great time. I had no idea where we were or even which direction we were riding except in relationship to the wind. Mike let me know that we were coming up to a town called Lake Orion. For those not residents of Michigan this lake and town are pronounced /O’ re un/ not as the rest of the planet pronounces it /O ri’ un/. I believe the people who live here use this strange pronunciation so they can sort out strangers who come into their town. Must be a fearful group of residents.
After arriving in Lake Orion I was sure I had no idea of where I was, where I had been or where I was going. Nothing look familiar because I had only driven through this town in the dark on the way to somewhere else and then only once or twice since moving to Michigan. There was a bit of negotiation situation of crossing a busy street, sort of the main street and state highway. I had to take Mike’s lead and assume he knew where to get across and how to do it efficiently and safely. Mike had a strange sense of bicycle safety and negotiation of traffic on the road. I would have just ridden across the street or blended into the flow and made a left when clear but Mike had us go down the sidewalk heading against traffic to a stop light and then ride the crosswalk, go up a one way street the wrong way and then meet the regular street a block later. Very confusing for me and every other vehicle on the street. That maneuver cemented in my mind the idea that Mike was a good rider, handling his bike well, riding with strength, but he was very much not aware of the big picture of urban and suburban effective cycling. I might have to take charge of these maneuvers to keep from getting killed or having drivers get pissed off at the strange activities of these two cyclists.
The ride through Lake Orion was on regular surface streets (that is Michigan surface streets with no shoulder, no defined edge of the road, narrow lanes, pot holes and missing pavement…). We traveled around a lake (maybe lake Orion) on roads that weren’t too heavily trafficked but were narrow, uneven, twisty, windy and hilly. Again we were powering into the wind but now there was a lake or sometimes just single level homes around us instead of a tunnel of trees to block the gusts. At a few points Mike jumped to the sidewalk and dealt with the driveways he crossed while I rode along in the road wondering what advantage he thought the sidewalk gave. It took about 20 minutes to get back to a bike trail. We resumed our ride on a quiet uncongested bike trails. This was the Poly Ann Trail I had heard about but did not know much about it beyond its name. We followed this rails to trails route through the woods and behind some subdivisions (of greater Orion?) until it was time to get back to some road work again.
This last stretch of the ride was right into the 15mph wind on a road with quite a bit of rush hour traffic, with little shoulder and very little cover from the wind. At a few points even I jumped to the sidewalk for some traffic relief and because these sidewalks were nowhere near any houses or subdivisions so there were no driveways. Sidewalks are not good riding with the expansion strip every three feet, thump, thump, thump… This last push to Mike’s house was also a bit hilly, but rolling up a lot more than rolling down. Not that there were mountains or towering ascents with switch backs and steep grueling climbs. This was just going up the roads that were built along and up the moraines left by the melting glaciers 10,000 years ago with each moraine to the north a bit higher than the last one. Pine Knob ski hill is actually just one of the moraines, the biggest one for 50 miles ergo a ski hill. Mike lived near Pine Knob or so I surmised.
As we balanced the white line on the edge of the busy road (where the white line had not fallen into the ditch because the edge of the road was missing), Mike yelled at me, “Watch out ahead, the bridge sticks out a bit.” I looked down the hill and did not see the bridge anywhere and wondered how a bridge could “stick out”. Maybe the bridge had a lip that was a few inches above or below the road surface. Maybe a railing on the bridge was broken or bent by a collision and was sticking into the lane a bit. Maybe the bridge didn’t line up well with the road. I couldn’t see a bridge ahead so the bridge must be small and inconsequential. Lost in speculative cogitation of a sticking out bridge, Mike yelled from behind, “Right there!” Well there wasn’t a “bridge” sticking out anywhere in sight. There was a “branch” sticking out. The branch was sticking out from the brush in the ditch next to the road and hung into what passed as a shoulder of the road at eye level. One word difference and I am swerving around trying to keep from being skewered in the eye by a log attached to a tree sized bush. No big deal, I avoided an emergency trip to the ophthalmologist and kept from swerving into the accompanying rush hour traffic by skillfully ducking my head back so the “branch” slammed into the top front of my helmet and slid off my back. Mike just rode around it smoothly.
Riding on the roads in Michigan presents its challenges whether it is from the pot holes, weather related problems such as snow, ice, puddles, gravel and dirt or from the lack of a shoulder on 90% of the roads in this state. Sometimes there is a white line along the edge of the road: this is the designated shoulder over most of the state, just this three inch white line. This white line, when it is there, comes and goes as the road deteriorates and the edge falls away into the ditch next to about every road, or the gravel or the sand that spills onto the road if there is no ditch. Rarely there is actual asphalt to the right of the white line on the edge of the road, but not often. When there is some room to the right of the edge line it is often covered with sand, rocks sticks, chunks of cement or alternative road surfaces. This occurs because the state does not give a damn about cyclists or the edge of the road and because plowing the snow from the road in the winter pushes things to the edge, but not off the shoulder. When the snow melts the debris of the winter road snow and ice drops down on the edge and is swept clean by bicycle commuters or drunks swerving off the edge of the road. When there is six inches of asphalt to the right of the three inch white line, motorists expect cyclists to be in that “bike lane” the state has provided and will sometimes yell or honk to remind the cyclist of his/her transgressions of using the actual automobile owned road surface. Once in this “bike lane”, six inches at best, cars just proceed to pass as if the cyclist was on the sidewalk three feet away or off in the ditch where they end up if the rider tries to claim some space on the real road surface. Actually in Michigan the law says that vehicles cannot travel on the shoulder of the road, so not only could I get nailed by a pickup trucks side mirror, but I could get a ticket for riding on the shoulder.
Our ride snaked around up and down hills, onto sidewalk/bike ways and mostly into the howling 15mph head wind. We finally reached Mike,s house. Now I may not be in top Tour de France riding shape, but I have ridden a lot this summer and am no slouch. Arriving at Mike’s house I knew we were half way into our ride since Mike left his van at my house: We had to ride back. Without a watch or a computer I was assuming we had ridden maybe an hour or an hour and a half and had about 15 miles under our belt. This was suppose to be a 30-35mile ride. I mean to say, I was pretty tired for having ridden only 17 miles (half of 35miles) and wondered what the deal was. Sure it was uphill a bit, but only about 200 feet overall at most. Sure the wind was blowing hard, but it had not been a head wind for 100% of the ride only about 80%. Sure we went on a lot of hard packed earth surfaces, but we seemed to have moved right along at a very decent pace. With only one water bottle of water, I had finished that long ago and might have been dehydrated and not thinking straight. I wasn’t sure what the reason was for my exhaustion until Mike looked at his computer and said we had ridden 35 miles. My god I thought that was how far we were going on the whole ride! What time was it? How long had it taken us? How long was the ride back? There must be a short cut or maybe it was downhill with the wind to our back on very fast roads. Was he serious about riding back and getting there before dark? What was he thinking to start a 70 mile ride after 3pm? Maybe he intended to get a ride back to the van, but there was no one at his house. I sure could not follow our route back the way we came if he thought I was going to go back and get the van. Oh, well wait and see what developed. Looking to the west I could see the sun reaching the peak of the next moraine and with us on top of the highest moraine for 50 miles that did not portend a long period of day light for this day.
After downing about three liters of water and filling my one pitiful water bottle we were set to ride back to my house. The route began with a slightly different course but this was just roads paralleling the ones that we had just ridden on the last few miles. This return trip promised the wind to our backs and a slight overall downhill grade. Big deal, we also had 35 miles under our belt 35 miles to go with a rapidly setting sun to race. I thought maybe the pace would be increased a bunch on the ride back especially if we were going to make it before dark. I didn’t know what time it was but it was late and the shadows had pretty much merged together. My attempts to ride at a faster pace left me alone at the front and I didn’t know where I was going. Actually our combined pace was pretty decent especially for having already ridden so far. We made a few starts and stops as we tried to weave our way back to the trails. Even at the brisk pace with the wind to our backs and the overall downhill, the sun was setting faster than our bikes were moving. At one point Mike took a phone call from his wife and he said he couldn’t talk because he was riding, he would be on his way home in a couple of hours. A couple of hours!? At least he talked while he rode. Yes, Mike’s estimate of the time line seemed right as I thought about the parts of the ride I could remember. I was in fear of looking at the time. Kai called at some point and we stopped to catch our breath and take a drink. I looked at a road sign of a road we were crossing and we were on a road that is actually only about two miles from my house. Unfortunately we were god’s knows how far out on the road where the collector had turned to an earthen road and we were crossing the road going the wrong way to my house.
We sped down the earth packed trails with the sun glowing over the horizon behind us hidden in the dark of the tunnel of trees that surrounded us until I had to take my sunglasses off to see the trail’s surface. I thought it was seriously dark and wondered if calling for a ride was not in order. Taking my sun glasses off gave us another half hour or so before the trail would disappear into the black of night. There is math at work here. If it is so dark that a person cannot ride with sunglasses on a cloudless day, then it is late in the afternoon and there is only so much time until the sunglasses view of the world will be the way it is and getting darker. It will be seriously dark in X Minutes (not hours) and will not get lighter for ten or twelve hours.
Mike was beginning to fade at this point and it was hard to keep the pace moving and not ride away. After all we had ridden 50 + miles when I took off my sunglasses. It was getting to be tired time for this cyclist. Street lights were on as we flew through the last town on the bike trail and we headed directly back into the wind for the last 12 miles. The wind took its toll on the pace. Mike is sitting upright on the mountain bike and the 15mph constant wind pushed on him like a big lineman on a little running back. The pace slowed and the darkness encroached. Two miles from the last street we had to ride, I called it. The last stretch we would have to ride was on a very busy road and could be a death ride in the dark without lights. I was not riding down that four lane 50mph road in the dark wearing my dark clothes on my dark gray bike with no reflectors or lights. I had never thought we would be out after dark or I would have: A). not have signed up for the ride, or B.) have brought lights and worn reflective clothing. I thought we were riding only 35 miles today. Somewhere around 8:30pm I stopped and called for a ride where the trail met the Opdyke Road. It was very dark when we reached the parking lot at the end of the bike trail. Twilight was not even a memory, it was dark dark dark.
My god that was actually a savage ride, fun, but savage. Mike said he had not really ridden that far in one stretch except for the century ride he did at some point in his life. What was he thinking? I only thought we were going 35 miles not 70 miles with a raging head wind for the last ten mile ride caper. With only the one water bottle I had, I was totally dehydrated as well as physically spent.
This was a good ride. Lots of fun. I will have to figure out where I went when I recover.
Monday, August 23, 2010
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.
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.
Friday, July 16, 2010
Home Repairs: The Cat Door
No problem, just deal with the cat for the three week vacation. A sliding glass patio cat door panel, that’s the answer. After about two hours online I found out everything about cat door including the door that would work for me at about $200. Just install it in the patio sliding glass door frame close the existing door against to lock the two together. No muss, no fuss, no big learning curve. The cat can come in and out through the small door in the bottom of the cat door panel when a properly installed. “Very easy to install,” or so the advertisement states. “Only a screw driver needed for installation”. The sliding glass patio door will still open and close, dragging the cat door panel with it in the track. I can do that. I know which end of a screwdriver to use.
Trip stops… No one in the area has the sliding glass patio cat door panel in stock. Lowes, with their “30 minute online order preparation guarantee” (“order online and pick up everything in 30 minutes”) has to call and order the panel through their “one day stocking” guarantee service. The guy on the phone assures me that they can have it in the store in five days, one day after calling the “stocking” department. I can pick it up 30 minutes later and it will only cost $456 unless I want it delivered with their “free delivery” which will cost $45 because the cost of my item is under $500. A week or ten days at the most and I can have it at my house with some assembly required. Home Depot has about the same options but were rude on the phone and will not deliver it ever even if I buy the $650 double pane best of show most expensive cat door ever. That’s about how much the sliding glass door itself cost.
Online the sliding glass patio cat door panel place will ship the panel for $45. Now the $45 pays for two day delivery. That is not bad so after considering the options of available doors from $200 to $650. I chose one door in the mid-range and then filled out the purchase form. When the delivery info came up there was a map that showed Michigan is in the 5 day delivery time. So why do I pay the $45 for two day delivery? I called and the guy at the online store and he told me that they would deliver it within 2 days after they get the order which would take at least 5 days. That means that in 7 to 10 days I could expect the thing to arrive with some assembly required.
Then there is the training period the online cat panel door person told me about when I talked to him on the phone. Training the cat can be done in as little as a week, but could take as long as a month. Some animal become traumatized and never really take to the door. I was thinking that after installation the animal would just figure it out. How hard could it be? I only have three days until I leave. Should have considered this last week, or last month.
New plan. Put a regular cat door in the door that provides access to the garage from outside and then just leave the food in the garage. (I thought about just throwing a 15lb bag of food on the floor in the middle of the garage and cutting it open to let the animal feed as it wanted, but I found a self filling bowl that is essentially a plastic version of what I proposed but cost $11.) After calling the pet stores in the area it seemed clear that they all had the thing I needed and had many versions and prices ranges to choose from. The installation seemed simple and required only a screw driver and a saw: “Anyone can do it.”
It took 30 minutes to drive to the pet store through the construction and Saturday traffic. Inside the store there was special event: adoption day for random animals, dogs mostly. The store was full of cages, crates, dogs on leashes, dogs tethered to shelves and dogs running amok. The dogs were barking, whining and fighting in the back of the store. I think there were people taking bets back there on the vicious fights breaking out among the adoption animals. At least from the din of barking and people shouting it sounded that way. After looking through the selection of available cat doors that had been severely picked over by previous cat door buyers, I got some of the “expert” help from one of the 16 year old professional pet associates and choose a door. I exited the isles and migrated to the one checkout stand behind a line of people holding animal food, toys, weasels, rats, cats and dogs, all squirming, wriggling and fighting trying to interact in a natural way with all things near them or escape the din of the store. Only one counter open, why do they have five checkout counters in the store? Why do they put the new person at the checkout? By the time I reached home I had invested about an hour and a half in the cat door project and that doesn’t include the two hours of research and frustrated online shopping.
Once home I looked over the project and the box clearly stated the cat door was for an inside door. My garage door of course is an outside door. I am sure that that information was printed on the front of the box after I left the store because I am sure I read everything on the box before selecting a winner. The cat door I bought would never do in the garage. Back to the store through the traffic and into the phalanx of barking, yapping, crying pets in the store to select a more appropriate product. Add another $45 to the cost of the pet door because the outside door cost more. Now I am up to $70 and by the time I got home I had three hours of driving and buying and two hours of research and no way for the cat to get into the garage yet.
The directions for installation were simple, only a screw driver and a saw required, oh, and a drill and a pry bar to get the door off the hinges, a hammer, a ruler, pencil, scissors and the template cut from the directions... It took me an hour to gather the tools required with the scissors taking the most time to find. After removing the whole garage door from the hinges and laying it down on two chairs, I drilled the pilot holes for the saw. Two problems: the access door is metal front and back and the 1/2” hole is too small for the hand saw I bought and assembled myself, and the saw I bought cannot cut the metal. Back to the store to find a saw that would cut the metal door. Now I have about seven hours of work putting the pet door in the garage door and all I have is the door in the garage lying on two chairs (it won’t go back on the hinges that seem to have been bent when I took it off) and four holes drilled through the metal door. Skit, the cat, can’t get through a 3/8” hole, but it might be able to peek through and see its food. Of course the cat won’t have a problem getting through the doorway because the door is on the chairs and won’t go back on the hinges which are now bent.
This sucks! A whole day spent testifying to my sheer incompetence at home repairs. I can’t drill the holes bigger to fit the new saw blade because my drill has the biggest bit I own and the biggest bit that will fit in the chuck. And speaking of chucks, I lost the chuck tool for the drill and had to mickey mouse the installation and removal of the bits using a 4mm Allen key and a large pair of pliars. I can’t cut the door because I don’t own a blade that will cut the metal of the door or is even small enough to fit in the ½ inch hole. I only have a few primitive hand tools and my ax doesn’t seem to be the right tool for the job although I am close to using it. I was able to prop the door into the doorway and hold it in place using two garbage cans and a two by four. The cat can peek at its food through the holes in the door but can’t get in.
New day and time for a new approach to the problem of the cat door. I borrowed the tool I needed from my father-in-law: Black and Decker jig saw. Now this saw was made sometime in the 50’s so it is a bit on the used side with a cracked power cord and two blades for cutting metal. Of course the blades are about and eighth inch too short to go all the way through the door and cut both sides at once. The first blade lasted about half the way through the short side of the inside face of the door. The next blade did all the other cuts on the inside part of the door. The second side, the outside, had only holes in the corners. The cut I made on the inside face was not entirely perpendicular to the surface of the door, nor were the holes entirely perpendicular, so the cut on the other side was going to be tricky. In fact it was too tricky for me. The second and last blade broke about halfway through the opening on the outside face. I mickey moused the first broken blade into the saw and finished the cut. Naturally the cut rectangular opening on the inside did not quite line up with the rectangular cut on the outside face of the door. I hate it when that happens. Not only that, but the cut rectangular opening was too small for the frame of the cat door on either face.
It took another half an hour and mickey mousing the other broken blade into the saw to get the rectangular openings (actually quadrilateral openings since there were no real parallel sides) to kind of line up and kind of fit the frame of the cat door. Now the holes needed to be drilled for the screws/bolts that connect the outside and inside of the cat door. Without the chuck for the drill I took a 4mm allen key and a pair of pliers to extract the half inch bit that was actually too small for the project but almost too big for the drill. Looking in the work shop I found the box the drill bits had lived in at some point. I found an 1/8 inch bit and a 1/4th bit. I needed a 3/8 inch bit. The 1/4th was the best I could put in the drill being the closest to 3/8th. Next problem… The bit was for wood not metal so they did not really want to penetrate the metal. Given enough time and pressure the four holes were drilled, not perpendicular to the surface but through both sides of the door.
Now I had to ream out the hole as best I could to get the 3/8th hardware to fit in the 1/4th hole. I got six of the eight holes pretty much reamed out to fit and the other two were close, but the bit was finished. The holes were not quite lined up but they went “straight” through, so they did line up each in a different plane. Unfortunately that fine point does not always count for much in the world of home repairs. The two pieces of the frame, inside and outside, were pounded in the rectangular cuts in the door but the hardware and bolts did not make it to mate with each other nicely, or at all. Hammer time!
Idiot! Two of the holes that were not reamed out were on the outside of the door and that was the only place it really mattered. The only four holes that needed to be 3/8th inch were the outside where the female part of the hardware set into the door. Oh, well, muddle on and get a bigger hammer. When the bolt finally met the female part I cranked it down with a worn out Phillips screw driver. Why does the worn out part matter? The screw driver would not give enough force to the bolt before it slipped in the socket. Before the thing was all set, the screw was stripped out. Good enough. Hit it with a hammer and it looked pretty good from outside even if it was loose as a goose. I will caulk it or glue it or something.
I straightened the hinges of the door (remember they were they one of the first casualties of my home repairs) with a hammer and beat the door into place on those twisted hinges. The cat would have nothing to do with the newly installed cat door. The beast yowled for half an hour while I stood outside with the flap held open calling him. He was pissed and finally escaped when I open the door to try to grab him and shove him through opening. After three hour without access to the food bowl, the cat came back for a snack. I scooped up the feral beast and pushed him through the plastic flap in the cat door. Claw marks were left in the metal of the door with his passage. Once the front feet hit the sidewalk outside the animal shot down the driveway, across the street, between houses and disappeared on the next block. Maybe I won’t have to feed him now.
I am left with a thing of beauty in my garage door on the outside. The cat door has an artistic slant making it a rectangle not in line with any other part of the universe. In fact maybe it isn’t even a true rectangle but more of an irregular polygon, a quadrilateral of indistinct description. The gaps at the top left side between the metal of the door’s surface and the cat door frame, should not collect much debris before the snow flies. Caulk it, pack it with newspaper and caulk the space. I will have to paint the door to remove the scratches and paint scrapes from two days of building pains or maybe not. The garage door does not squeak anymore, it groans as effort is put into swinging the door shut. A hammer should be able to straighten out the hinges and tune the noise but I am definitely not in the proper mood for such subtle adjustment. Should have gone with my gut and used an ax to cut the hole, then duct taped the frame in place.
Well, it has been two weeks now and I got a report on the cat. Seems there is no sign of the cat, however there have been raccoons, woodchucks, and possums traipsing in and out of the garage partying hardy. They have dumped over the huge plastic tub of food, scattered it all over the garage and have eaten to the point of vomiting which the ants seem to be taking care of. From the looks of the droppings, the mice have been snacking heavily between parties.
After three weeks away I drove up to the house finding a large woodchuck basking in the sun on the sidewalk near the cat door. Inside the garage the food was gone and the beast has shit in the water bowl. The cat is gone, driven off by competing wild life. There is one animal I will not have to make arrangements to take care of when I leave again.
Trip stops… No one in the area has the sliding glass patio cat door panel in stock. Lowes, with their “30 minute online order preparation guarantee” (“order online and pick up everything in 30 minutes”) has to call and order the panel through their “one day stocking” guarantee service. The guy on the phone assures me that they can have it in the store in five days, one day after calling the “stocking” department. I can pick it up 30 minutes later and it will only cost $456 unless I want it delivered with their “free delivery” which will cost $45 because the cost of my item is under $500. A week or ten days at the most and I can have it at my house with some assembly required. Home Depot has about the same options but were rude on the phone and will not deliver it ever even if I buy the $650 double pane best of show most expensive cat door ever. That’s about how much the sliding glass door itself cost.
Online the sliding glass patio cat door panel place will ship the panel for $45. Now the $45 pays for two day delivery. That is not bad so after considering the options of available doors from $200 to $650. I chose one door in the mid-range and then filled out the purchase form. When the delivery info came up there was a map that showed Michigan is in the 5 day delivery time. So why do I pay the $45 for two day delivery? I called and the guy at the online store and he told me that they would deliver it within 2 days after they get the order which would take at least 5 days. That means that in 7 to 10 days I could expect the thing to arrive with some assembly required.
Then there is the training period the online cat panel door person told me about when I talked to him on the phone. Training the cat can be done in as little as a week, but could take as long as a month. Some animal become traumatized and never really take to the door. I was thinking that after installation the animal would just figure it out. How hard could it be? I only have three days until I leave. Should have considered this last week, or last month.
New plan. Put a regular cat door in the door that provides access to the garage from outside and then just leave the food in the garage. (I thought about just throwing a 15lb bag of food on the floor in the middle of the garage and cutting it open to let the animal feed as it wanted, but I found a self filling bowl that is essentially a plastic version of what I proposed but cost $11.) After calling the pet stores in the area it seemed clear that they all had the thing I needed and had many versions and prices ranges to choose from. The installation seemed simple and required only a screw driver and a saw: “Anyone can do it.”
It took 30 minutes to drive to the pet store through the construction and Saturday traffic. Inside the store there was special event: adoption day for random animals, dogs mostly. The store was full of cages, crates, dogs on leashes, dogs tethered to shelves and dogs running amok. The dogs were barking, whining and fighting in the back of the store. I think there were people taking bets back there on the vicious fights breaking out among the adoption animals. At least from the din of barking and people shouting it sounded that way. After looking through the selection of available cat doors that had been severely picked over by previous cat door buyers, I got some of the “expert” help from one of the 16 year old professional pet associates and choose a door. I exited the isles and migrated to the one checkout stand behind a line of people holding animal food, toys, weasels, rats, cats and dogs, all squirming, wriggling and fighting trying to interact in a natural way with all things near them or escape the din of the store. Only one counter open, why do they have five checkout counters in the store? Why do they put the new person at the checkout? By the time I reached home I had invested about an hour and a half in the cat door project and that doesn’t include the two hours of research and frustrated online shopping.
Once home I looked over the project and the box clearly stated the cat door was for an inside door. My garage door of course is an outside door. I am sure that that information was printed on the front of the box after I left the store because I am sure I read everything on the box before selecting a winner. The cat door I bought would never do in the garage. Back to the store through the traffic and into the phalanx of barking, yapping, crying pets in the store to select a more appropriate product. Add another $45 to the cost of the pet door because the outside door cost more. Now I am up to $70 and by the time I got home I had three hours of driving and buying and two hours of research and no way for the cat to get into the garage yet.
The directions for installation were simple, only a screw driver and a saw required, oh, and a drill and a pry bar to get the door off the hinges, a hammer, a ruler, pencil, scissors and the template cut from the directions... It took me an hour to gather the tools required with the scissors taking the most time to find. After removing the whole garage door from the hinges and laying it down on two chairs, I drilled the pilot holes for the saw. Two problems: the access door is metal front and back and the 1/2” hole is too small for the hand saw I bought and assembled myself, and the saw I bought cannot cut the metal. Back to the store to find a saw that would cut the metal door. Now I have about seven hours of work putting the pet door in the garage door and all I have is the door in the garage lying on two chairs (it won’t go back on the hinges that seem to have been bent when I took it off) and four holes drilled through the metal door. Skit, the cat, can’t get through a 3/8” hole, but it might be able to peek through and see its food. Of course the cat won’t have a problem getting through the doorway because the door is on the chairs and won’t go back on the hinges which are now bent.
This sucks! A whole day spent testifying to my sheer incompetence at home repairs. I can’t drill the holes bigger to fit the new saw blade because my drill has the biggest bit I own and the biggest bit that will fit in the chuck. And speaking of chucks, I lost the chuck tool for the drill and had to mickey mouse the installation and removal of the bits using a 4mm Allen key and a large pair of pliars. I can’t cut the door because I don’t own a blade that will cut the metal of the door or is even small enough to fit in the ½ inch hole. I only have a few primitive hand tools and my ax doesn’t seem to be the right tool for the job although I am close to using it. I was able to prop the door into the doorway and hold it in place using two garbage cans and a two by four. The cat can peek at its food through the holes in the door but can’t get in.
New day and time for a new approach to the problem of the cat door. I borrowed the tool I needed from my father-in-law: Black and Decker jig saw. Now this saw was made sometime in the 50’s so it is a bit on the used side with a cracked power cord and two blades for cutting metal. Of course the blades are about and eighth inch too short to go all the way through the door and cut both sides at once. The first blade lasted about half the way through the short side of the inside face of the door. The next blade did all the other cuts on the inside part of the door. The second side, the outside, had only holes in the corners. The cut I made on the inside face was not entirely perpendicular to the surface of the door, nor were the holes entirely perpendicular, so the cut on the other side was going to be tricky. In fact it was too tricky for me. The second and last blade broke about halfway through the opening on the outside face. I mickey moused the first broken blade into the saw and finished the cut. Naturally the cut rectangular opening on the inside did not quite line up with the rectangular cut on the outside face of the door. I hate it when that happens. Not only that, but the cut rectangular opening was too small for the frame of the cat door on either face.
It took another half an hour and mickey mousing the other broken blade into the saw to get the rectangular openings (actually quadrilateral openings since there were no real parallel sides) to kind of line up and kind of fit the frame of the cat door. Now the holes needed to be drilled for the screws/bolts that connect the outside and inside of the cat door. Without the chuck for the drill I took a 4mm allen key and a pair of pliers to extract the half inch bit that was actually too small for the project but almost too big for the drill. Looking in the work shop I found the box the drill bits had lived in at some point. I found an 1/8 inch bit and a 1/4th bit. I needed a 3/8 inch bit. The 1/4th was the best I could put in the drill being the closest to 3/8th. Next problem… The bit was for wood not metal so they did not really want to penetrate the metal. Given enough time and pressure the four holes were drilled, not perpendicular to the surface but through both sides of the door.
Now I had to ream out the hole as best I could to get the 3/8th hardware to fit in the 1/4th hole. I got six of the eight holes pretty much reamed out to fit and the other two were close, but the bit was finished. The holes were not quite lined up but they went “straight” through, so they did line up each in a different plane. Unfortunately that fine point does not always count for much in the world of home repairs. The two pieces of the frame, inside and outside, were pounded in the rectangular cuts in the door but the hardware and bolts did not make it to mate with each other nicely, or at all. Hammer time!
Idiot! Two of the holes that were not reamed out were on the outside of the door and that was the only place it really mattered. The only four holes that needed to be 3/8th inch were the outside where the female part of the hardware set into the door. Oh, well, muddle on and get a bigger hammer. When the bolt finally met the female part I cranked it down with a worn out Phillips screw driver. Why does the worn out part matter? The screw driver would not give enough force to the bolt before it slipped in the socket. Before the thing was all set, the screw was stripped out. Good enough. Hit it with a hammer and it looked pretty good from outside even if it was loose as a goose. I will caulk it or glue it or something.
I straightened the hinges of the door (remember they were they one of the first casualties of my home repairs) with a hammer and beat the door into place on those twisted hinges. The cat would have nothing to do with the newly installed cat door. The beast yowled for half an hour while I stood outside with the flap held open calling him. He was pissed and finally escaped when I open the door to try to grab him and shove him through opening. After three hour without access to the food bowl, the cat came back for a snack. I scooped up the feral beast and pushed him through the plastic flap in the cat door. Claw marks were left in the metal of the door with his passage. Once the front feet hit the sidewalk outside the animal shot down the driveway, across the street, between houses and disappeared on the next block. Maybe I won’t have to feed him now.
I am left with a thing of beauty in my garage door on the outside. The cat door has an artistic slant making it a rectangle not in line with any other part of the universe. In fact maybe it isn’t even a true rectangle but more of an irregular polygon, a quadrilateral of indistinct description. The gaps at the top left side between the metal of the door’s surface and the cat door frame, should not collect much debris before the snow flies. Caulk it, pack it with newspaper and caulk the space. I will have to paint the door to remove the scratches and paint scrapes from two days of building pains or maybe not. The garage door does not squeak anymore, it groans as effort is put into swinging the door shut. A hammer should be able to straighten out the hinges and tune the noise but I am definitely not in the proper mood for such subtle adjustment. Should have gone with my gut and used an ax to cut the hole, then duct taped the frame in place.
Well, it has been two weeks now and I got a report on the cat. Seems there is no sign of the cat, however there have been raccoons, woodchucks, and possums traipsing in and out of the garage partying hardy. They have dumped over the huge plastic tub of food, scattered it all over the garage and have eaten to the point of vomiting which the ants seem to be taking care of. From the looks of the droppings, the mice have been snacking heavily between parties.
After three weeks away I drove up to the house finding a large woodchuck basking in the sun on the sidewalk near the cat door. Inside the garage the food was gone and the beast has shit in the water bowl. The cat is gone, driven off by competing wild life. There is one animal I will not have to make arrangements to take care of when I leave again.
Monday, February 22, 2010
Winter Hike in the Sierra
The winter hike was the idea of someone in the group, either one of the two Garys or perhaps Peter or Stacy. It wasn’t my idea, I wouldn’t have thought of it. We had all been raised in the valley of California where the winter time temperatures sometimes plummets to below 32 degrees for a few consecutive hours. Yes we had been exposed to sub freezing weather. Once in my life it even snowed at my house and the snow stayed around for almost three days. All five of the intrepid winter hikers had walked to school in freezing temperatures and once I remember it dipped down to 28 so we had all hiked to school in subfreezing weather. Five times in my 14 years of life I had experienced ice on puddles around my house. We were all seasoned cold weather survivors.
As the senior members of the Boy Scout troop we came up with a plan to hike into the Boy Scout summer camp on the far side of Pine Crest Lake in the Sierra of Central California to get things ready for the troop who would hike up the following weekend. We thought that maybe if there was enough snow, we could even “break trail” for the troop so that even the little kids could make it around the lake easily. We could at least hike around the lake and have a roaring good time away from the world and in the snow, if there was any snow.
The paved road ends at Pinecrest Lake in the Sierra Mountains at about 8,000 ft. The lake in the mid 1960’s was partially surrounded by a smattering of summer cabins. These cabins are being removed as the 99 year leases on the National Forest Land expire. In fact the Boy Scout summer camp has now been dismantled and all evidence of it is gone for a couple of decades. Except for the area by the parking lot near the “store” and the bar/restaurant, the whole area was pretty much deserted of humans at this time of year. During the Fall the Pinecrest Lake level is lowered exposing the huge boulders in the bottom, and the stumps of the trees that use to be the forest before the lake was filled sometime in the 1950’s. At this time of year the lake was not only nearly dry, lowered for the winter at the dam, but what was there was frozen over and covered with five feet of snow.
During the summer a “barge” took equipment and supplies across the one point two mile alpine lake to the Boy Scout camp docks directly across from the now nearly deserted parking lot at the end of the road. There would be a plethora of speed boats and fishing boats on the lake and docked around the lake in the summer. All of these boats were gone now leaving the permanent docks running level out to a drop off into the rocky ground hundreds of yards from the frozen surface of what was left of the winter lake. In the warm summer months scouts would heft their back packs and hike the almost two miles along the edge of the lake filled to near the top of the dam and make their way to the campgrounds on a rocky trail that wound among the huge house sized boulders of granite, towering sugar and Jeffery pine trees, past the occasional dock or steps to the dock down by the edge of the summer lake and through the forest surrounding this mountain lake.
A parent, Gary and Stacy’s father I think, had dropped the five of us and our gear at the parking lot about 9am on a Thursday morning. With a total of six people including the driver and all the backpacks we had our excursion, we definately needed a station wagon (mini-vans or even passenger vans were ten years away). Gary’s dad was the only parent who had such a vehicle. There was some sort of a double holiday and a Monday in-service for the teachers so we were clear for a long stay at the camp after our hike in. Gary D. had secured the key to the dining hall and we had instructions of how to turn on the lights and the stove for the dining hall. We had plenty of food in our packs and knew there was wood for the dining hall fire place already split and stacked up there. This was going to be a great trip.
Every year that I could remember my family would trek up to the Sierra once and “go to the snow”. This entailed putting the seven person toboggan on top of the car that my dad had made, throwing on several car tire inner tubes, and a metal saucer or two. My mom would make hot chocolate and put it in a thermos for us to drink after sledding for a few hours. We drove to the point where chains were required and found a hill to sled down. Usually there were hundreds of other people from the valley sledding down the same hill. Now this isn’t your subtle Midwestern little mole hill. I am talking about a full on half mile run down a suicidally steep slope that usually ran out at a flowing stream alongside the highway. Depending on the size of your cajones, each sledder would drag their sliding vector as high up the hill as they dared and then jump on and shoot down the hill. Of course that meant that there were people above you who had larger cajones and so went much faster shooting by you as you walked up or stood getting guts to start your run. There were also weenies below who timidly pushed off on the near flat part of the hill. There was a hill with a hundred people all moving at different velocities on different lines down the hill while an equal number were trudging up the hill with their heads down pulling their sled, tube, toboggan, or saucer behind them. Ambulances made continuous round trips to the hospital in Sonora and back up to the hill transporting people who became victims of cajone size variation or down cast eyes while trudging up the hill. As a kid we would spend a couple of hours trudging up the hill and sliding down, then eat a couple of sandwiches and make a few more runs after lunch. Now this is the Sierra so the temperature was always above freezing during the day, up to 50 degrees sometimes, with a very hot sun shining down making you warm even if the temperature was not very warm. By 3pm most kids were exhausted, freezing cold and soaking wet from sweat and melted snow. The drive back to the valley was spent asleep from exhaustion, wrapped in blankets with the heater on full blast. Sometimes it took two days to warm up. So that was my, and I assume the other four intrepid hikers’ experience with prolonged exposure to the snow. Basically I had learned to look up the hill while walking pulling a sled, say a prayer when a clear line down the hill is found, have a warm dry blanket and a heater available after a few hours in the elements and get out of the snow for a week.
With that base of knowledge off the five of us trucked around the lake, spirits high, not as high as the snow, but laughing and throwing snow at each other none the less. Hiking near the parking lot was a snap. There was a base of snow about two feet deep with another foot or so on top of that which was very crusty and had to be broken through to find footing in the base. Near the parking lot the snow was trampled down by hundreds of kids running and rolling in the snow. Snow men were standing among the trees and sled trails were apparent down to the edge of the now frozen nearly drained lake. Within a half a mile of post holing through the foot or so of crusty snow, we encountered virgin snow that came up to my knee before it compressed enough to support my weight. When the virgin snow was reached each step was real work, pulling a foot out of the knee deep hole with a boot full of snow on top that had fallen in. Swinging my foot clear of the top layer of snow I would then crunch down to knee deep, finding purchase on the harder base snow below. This method of progress took about ten times the energy of just walking. Occasionally the base would break through and my foot would sink down to my crouch which pitched me forward into the snow where I became buried three feet below the surface squirming like a turtle on its back trying to right myself only I was face forward with a backpack pinning me into the frozen substrate. Of course this fall would fill my clothes with snow that melted when it hit the heat and dampness of my inner layers. I had invested in cotton long Johns to keep me warm not realizing that they absorb and retain sweat very well. They also wick heat away from the body when wet. Most of the time my jacket was unzipped because of the heat I generated post holing in the snow. When I fell, which was occasionally, the loose snow would pack inside my shirt and get down to my skin. When a spill happened there was about fifteen minutes of work to take off the back pack, stand while everyone tromp down a platform hard enough to support our weight so I could swing up the back pack. Standing on this tromped platform was the only time the snow was not directly against my pants. After righting a fallen hiker, I was not then only one to fall, we would head off again usually with a new leader.
I wasn’t the only one that was breaking trail into the camp. Each of us took our turn and each of us was challenged by the snow’s depth and the problems that the rocks and boulders would produce. The huge rounded granite rocks and boulders shed some of the snow from their sides so the white frozen bounty built up deeper near these large house sized monoliths than the trail wound around. The rock also holds heat so the snow sometimes melts around the rock making softer snow or deep holes near the rocks. If one was not careful, stepping near a large boulder could send the hiker down into the snow that might be chest deep when they reached the ground or the firm, frozen base beneath. From this hole the group would have to dig a ramp out of the pit to free the fallen hiker. We learned after several problems and avoided any mound of snow that looked like it might be in the snow shed of a giant granite boulder.
Our choice of clothing was not the most well thought out. But maybe it was as well thought out as we could manage; we just did not have the knowledge about cold and snow to make the best decisions. Because we seldom experienced prolonged cold or even prolonged wettness, we did not know much about this new venue. If my clothing got wet at home, I went inside my house and changed clothing. If I got chilled because of the wetness, I took a hot shower or stood on the heater vent inside the house. I think all my clothing on this trip was made of cotton with maybe one wool sweater. I had cotton long johns top and bottom and felt pretty tricked out by those while standing in the parking lot snug and warm. Of course after five minutes of hiking my sweat had soaked my long johns and made them functionally worthless and perhaps even turning them into heat wicks that move my body heat to the layers above and out to the air. The layers above my long johns, blue jeans, a long sleeve cotton shirt and a cotton jacket rapidly became both full of snow and soaking wet from the melting snow. None of us had thought to knock the snow off our bodies before it melted. My cotton socks, two layers, that stuck out the top of my boots and just melted the snow and wicked the water into my boot where it tried to freeze around my toes inside the boots that were always packed in a snow hole. I think I had on a polyester knit cap that did not absorb water but then again it did not retain heat with any efficiency. This was, after all, the early sixties when equipment was not well developed for the common man. And we were valley kids with no experience with the snow or the cold.
I remember my boots. I was proud of them. The guy who sold them to me pointed out the soles and said they were made of very hard vinyl. The soles were guaranteed to last the “life of the boot”. What did that mean? When the soles wore out the boots life was over? These were leather topped boots with woven cotton shoe strings. The soles were so hard they did not give much and so when standing on a rock, log or ice they gave as much traction as ice skates on a frozen pond. The soles never did wear out because they were so hard, somewhere around 9 on the mohs scale, but they nearly killed me many times because they were so slippery. The leather had been treated with Neatsfoot oil water proofing. That stuff was so bad that it only lasted for about ten minutes in the snow and then was all washed out allowing water to soak the leather increasing the already very heavy boot to about double the starting weight. When I pulled out the shoes lace at the dining hall (I don’t know why I did that), the end of the laces had frayed. They would not go back into the eyelets in the boot and it took me about an hour and the awl from my Swiss Army knife to lace my boots.
Normal summer time hike time around the lake with a full pack was about an hour and a half or little more for the whole troop. A group of senior scouts could get around in 45 minutes with full packs. There were reports of a few motivated souls making it to the camp from the parking lot in 30 minutes when all went right and no pack was carried. The winter trek into the camp took us almost six hours getting us there around 3pm. The sun was low in the sky when we spotted the dining hall with about an hour or so until it would be seriously dark. Whipped from the trek we just wanted to lie down and rest for the night. That wasn’t in the cards. We had to run around tuning on the electricity, the gas, find the wood for the fireplace and establishing our camp inside the dining hall before it became really dark (we carried flashlights but they were so sorry that they always had burned out batteries and never seemed to work). By the time dark had full surrounded the dining hall the lights were on, the fire lit and food was cooking on the stove in the kitchen. What an incredible meal we had, nothing ever tasted better and I cannot remember what it was. We had made it around the lake and were set for several days of fun and adventure.
Before going to bed for the night in front of a blazing fire in the fireplace of the dining hall, Peter went outside to answer the call of nature. He yelled for us all to come out. It had started to snow. Although I had seen snow in my life and snow had actually fallen in my town once when I was ten, I had never seen the flakes fall from the sky. When the snow fell in Modesto once, it fell in the dark of the night while everyone slept so I actually didn’t see the snow falling. None of had seen it snow before. This was incredible, huge flakes drifting down in the light from the open doorway. The night was still and quiet outside as this amazing phenomenon of nature happened around us. Well, we all donned our available clothing and ran out into the snowy night to “play” in the new snow. Snow was covering the trees and came off in an avalanche when they were shaken or kicked very hard. New snow filled the holes our feet had pounded on the way in.
The new snow made great snowballs and we threw a lot of them hitting each other, knocking the snow off the limbs of the tall pine trees causing the accumulated snow to slide off. On the roof of the dining hall the warming roof (there is no insulation in the roof or the walls since this was a summer camp) would melt the accumulation and it was coming off is huge avalanches. Later that evening we were exhausted from the hike, the prep of our camp and playing in the snow, so late into the night we retired to the warmth of the dining hall and the fireplace. Now we had two sets of clothing that were soaking wet and hanging on lines in and around the fire place. Down to our tighty-whities we crawled into our sleeping bags for a long winter nap.
Now this is a story from back in the day. I might have heard of a sleeping bag made with goose down, but had never seen one or knew why someone would want one. All of us had good boy scouts cotton sleeping bags. Gary Dull had a cowboy print on the inside of his bag. I never saw the technical data on these sleeping bags, but I assume they were rated down to maybe 68 degrees when they were new and all of these bags were very well used. Since most or all of our clothing was wet and drying there was nothing to help retain our body heat inside the cotton batted bag. We were also sleeping directly on the floor which had no insulation and sucked the heat out of the building and our bags much faster than the fire or the body heat could make new calories of heat. The dining hall was a summer camp so insulation against cold was something that was an option that had no use here. The huge dining hall became about as cold inside as it was outside as the fire burned down a bit. Night time at altitude in the Sierra would dip down to the teens. Someone had to constantly feed the fire through the night, usually the coldest of us. That was one freezing miserable night trying to stay warm, getting up to put wood on the fire, trying to get comfortable and shivering uncontrollably between.
The next morning came early because basically no one slept. One of the Garys built up the fire in the fire place and then went into the kitchen, turned on the burners of the two professional stoves and turned on the four ovens to high and opened their doors. We stood around in our underwear with our jackets on inside our sleeping bags waiting for our clothes to dry in the open oven. On the stove we had a huge pot of instant coco heating before we made our breakfast. After about an hour of baking our clothes in the oven they were dry, a bit singed in places, but warm and dry. With warm clothing on and the kitchen heated to above freezing we fixed our breakfast and ate hungrily replacing all the calories we had burned in the night trying to stay warm. It was time to start the day.
Back at the fire place the blaze we had stoked before going into the kitchen had died down to a controlled inferno and had heated the space in front of the fire place to tolerable temperatures. Unfortunately three of the ten leather boots drying in front of the fireplace had been scorched and burnt making the leather brittle and stiff. The laces in those three boots had also been burn out and were unusable. Bummer. One sleeping bag had the bottom burned exposing the chared cotton batting and the inside lining of cowboys. We fashioned shoe laces from string found in the kitchen braiding it to make it strong. The stiff burnt boots were loosened up with bacon grease rubbed into the scorched leather. The grease also made the boots a bit water proof, something that had been missing before the trip. In fact all of us smeared and massaged bacon grease into our boots to make them water proof. (This proved to be an error when a pair of boots was eaten by a porcupine in the night during a subsequent camping trip and the other boots were pestered and nibbled on by mice until the boots were given to the Salvation Army clothing drive or just dumped in the trash).
Gary C and I were going to hike back a couple of miles to the “Dry Lake Bed” which was a day hike destination for the summer camp program. We were able to get into another of the buildings, the directors cabin, and take down the wooden snow shoes on the wall above the fireplace. There was another pair over the fireplace in the dining hall. These were the long wooden snow shoes, fully four feet long, made with spruce wood and reindeer guts for the netting. There were leather thongs to tie these babies onto your feet. Gary C showed me how to tie them onto my boots and off we trucked to the dry lake bed. This was excellent. The snow shoes kept us on top of the snow and except for learning how to keep from walking on the shoes as we shuffled along, it was pretty easy going sliding along the top of the snow on the trail to “dry lake bed”. We cruised to the “dry lake bed” in just about the same time as it would have taken in the summer. Our steps only sunk down to about the top of the boot so the going was much easier than post holing through the now mid-thigh deep snow. We were even warmer when we got there because our clothing was not soaked from melting snow that was in constant contact with our leg on the hike around the lake.
In the dry lake bed we threw snow balls, followed tracks of animals and had a great time exploring in the snowy ecosystem we knew only in the summer. After a lunch we brought with us we headed back for the dining hall, some two miles away. Immediately upon deciding to return to camp, my pair of snow shoes crumbled into bits. The wooden frames were worm eaten through and through and it was amazing that they lasted as long as they did. Without the snow shoes the snow was up to my mid thigh and there was no way I could make it back to the dining hall before night fall. I joined Gary on his snow shoes and we set a rhythm, “lift left, step, lift right, step, lift left…” as long as I lifted and stepped the same distance as Gary I could ride the back of his snow shoes. We covered the whole dry lake bed before his ornamental snow shoes also fell apart because they were equally worm eaten. Gary didn’t panic and after slapping me around to keep me from freaking out, he said we could just make some snow shoes from the willows that grew all over the lake bed. We gathered switches of willows about as thick as a pencil and four or five feet long. When we had a bunch the willow switches they were bundled loosely and bent around and tied in the back with pieces of the broken ornamental snow shoes moose gut webbing. The willows spread out a bit and allowed for shorter sticks to be woven across the two foot long tear drop shape of bundled willow switches. Then we tied the things to our feet and walked off. While they weren’t as good as the ornamental ones, these sunk in deeper and gathered more snow on top; they allowed us to make very good time on the hike back. We more than made up for the hour or so spent making the snow shoes with the speed we were able to maintain on the trail back to the dining hall. By the time we got back to the dining hall the improvised snow shoes were pretty broken up and we were sinking in deeper and deeper with each step and carrying more and more snow out of the hole, but we made it back to the dining hall well before dark.
Did I mention that it has snowed the night before? There was about 8 inches of new snow on the hand rail in the morning. Well it sort of snowed all day on and off, not heavy but flakes falling all day. In the evening as the temperature dropped it began to snow again very hard, huge flakes falling silently straight down. Again we all went out after dinner and made snow forts, rolled some snow balls the size of Volkswagens, and generally ran amuck. What fun.
In the evening we figured out we needed insulation beneath us to keep from heating the dining hall floor. We actually found some cotton mattresses in the attic of the dining hall over the kitchen. (We also found some gallon cans of pudding and I love pudding). After the morning experiment of using the ovens to dry our clothing, we had perfected the technique of baking our wet clothing without burning them. In a short time before bedding down we had some dry warm clothing to stash into our sleeping bags to put on the next day. The extra dry clothing inside the cotton bags also helped to keep us warm by providing more insulation. Gary C had a great idea of heating up big rocks and put them in our sleeping bag to warm the bags. Gary D., whose bag had been burnt up a bit on at the toe by the fire in the fire place in the morning, had sewed up the end and was the first to throw in a large hot rock. The rock was a bit too hot and started the bag smoldering on the inside. He rolled the rock out onto the floor and it scorched the floor before we moved it to the stone hearth. Eventually we got the temperature right and we all crawled into bags that were heavy with hot rocks but very warm. That night we all got many hours of sleep before the fire went down in the fire place and the stones cooled and water in our canteens started to freeze.
Early the next day we fixed our breakfast and went outside to greet another 8 inches or so of new snow. What fun. We were going to go sledding on the dining room trays. Much of the day was spent sledding down a steep hill into the parade ground and making forts to have snow ball battles. It snow lightly all day.
In the evening we built a sort of shelter in the dining hall to isolate the heat inside a sort of tent we made with blankets, sheets and the dining room tables staked up. The tent inside the dining hall kept the heat very well and became a toasty place to hang out, drink coco, eat pudding, tell stories and eventually sleep soundly and warmly all night. Again it was snowing hard when we went to bed. By the morning of the second day there was another 8 or so inches of new snow on the hand rail when we woke up. All day it continued to snow lightly.
During this third morning we finally noticed that the trail we had broken on our way in to the summer camp was now completely gone, not just the footprints but all evidence of us having walked there. New snow and blowing snow had filled all our foot holes and erased our passing. This seemed to be a problem because the next day we were supposed to hike out. It was still snowing and continued throughout the day. Gary D. suggested we make snow shoes out of dining hall trays. This was a bust. The trays were too wide, sunk into the snow too far and collected tons of snow on top when we tried to walk. Much of the day we tried different things to make some snow shoes. There were no willows or willow like plants here at the dining hall but we experimented with a variety of things. Nothing really worked like the willows. As a step to making the next day a little easier we spent some time breaking a trail to the “trail” around the lake beyond the camp.
The next morning we got up early to see there was another six to eight inches of fresh snow had fallen and filled our broken trail. We packed up, cleaned up the dining hall and ate a huge hot meal. Off we trucked into the snow. Now the snow was up to my stomach. When I broke trail I would dig with my hands, lift my feet as high as I could and kick into the new snow, then step down falling forward crushing a space in front. Then start again by digging down to my knees, stepping and kicking forward and falling forward into the bank of snow. I could do about 50 steps before the next person took over. We rotated breaking trail taking about 20 to 50 steps on a rotation at the front. Now when someone fell down with their backpack the hiker was in over their head before they found a solid perch. Sometime about noon with only about half the distance to the parking lot traversed, I noticed that my boots were untied. I could not bend over to ties them and when I did find a rock or hard place to try to tie them, my fingers were so cold I could not grab the laces. The laces were frozen stiff and didn’t work. My boot was packed with snow which forced the boot open. Fortunately I had put plastic bags on my feet. I had figured out that plastic bags next to my skin, a layer of socks and another layer of plastic bag would keep one pair of socks dry and functional in keeping my feet warm. My feet were cold, but they were dry enough to not be frozen.
The hike was long and hard. We got to the parking lot before dark, but not much before dark. It took us about ten hours to “hike” or dig out. I know I had never been more tired than when we reached the parking lot. All of us were wet from sweat and wet from the snow we had been packed in for the last ten hours. Gary D called his father to come and get us in the station wagon. It was two hours before he arrived and then two more hours before we were home. It took a week to get warm and two weeks to make up for the lack of sleep.
That was one of the best trips of my life. It was maybe a near death experience looking back at the mistakes and looking at it as an adult. So many things could have gone wrong and we were so naïve about the cold. We were naïve about the snow. In fact we were downright ignorant and could easily have been another group of hikers stranded and frozen in the Sierra. Happens every year and happens to hikers much smarter and more prepared than we were. The snow god smiled on us and just made us a little cold. Sometimes I also wonder what were our parents thinking in letting us do such a stupid and dangerous thing? I guess they were as naïve as we were about snow and cold.
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