coming of age – Half-fast Cycling Club

It’s all fun and games until…

Some time back (March 24) I waxed rhapsodically about my first bike tour and fresh roadside asparagus. As we get closer to departure day, I remember my first planned long-distance solo tour to remind myself why I chose to make this a supported tour.

I outlined an epic journey. Several variations awaited me. The trip was to start by riding west from Madison to the Mississippi River. I would head upstream to the confluence with the St Croix River, following that up toward Lake Superior.

At that point my first option arose: I could turn east and head along the south shore, with a plan of circumnavigating the state of Wisconsin, or I could keep going north and follow the north shore of Lake Superior in Canada with the aim of making my way down the west side of Michigan and ferrying back to Wisconsin. (Check out Google Maps to follow that route – easier than trying to link to a map of my route, and that way you can scout around.)

If I took the shorter route, I could also choose whether to merely circumnavigate Wisconsin (said to be about 1400 miles), or continue along the shore into the UP. Hah! So much for plans.

Less than 100 miles from home I spent my first night with friends on their farm. It was to be my last night sleeping in a bed for a while. Unfortunately, they were all sick.

I hit the road next morning. Now, southwestern Wisconsin (the driftless area) is pretty hilly. Still, it seemed hillier that morning than the day before. I struggled up climbs. I decided to cut my day short and settle into a semi-secret campsite along the Kickapoo River. (Don’t look for a map link here, I said it was semi-secret.)

A little aside: the Kickapoo River valley was to be dammed as a flood control project. (It would, incidentally, create new lakefront property for resorts and rich people’s summer homes.) The federal government took title to many acres of farmland (140 farms) that they intended to flood. The locals rose up and the plan was scuttled. The land went wild.

I didn’t leave that site for the next few days. I was lucky to make it out of my tent for a while each day. On about the third day I decided I was too sick to not be around other people. I packed up my camp and got back on the bike, riding to the top of nearby Wildcat Mountain, where there is a state park campground.

I sweated up the hill, got to the park, put down the bike, and lay supine under a hose bib, running cold water over myself. A park ranger came by and asked if I was OK. I said, “not exactly, but I’ll be okay in few minutes.” I went into the office and reserved a campsite, set up my tent and went back to bed. It rained for the next three days or so.

By the time I was well enough to get back on my bike, I had lost weight and had no energy left. Plus I’d lost about a week of riding time. Time for a new plan.

I was digitizing slides today when some of the images reminded me of the next phase of the journey.

Upstream I came to the town of
Maiden Rock. I’ll let the historical marker tell the legend of the rock (follow the link). I made it to Winona MN and met a community of folks living in houseboats in the backwaters of the Mississippi. One of them was away and they were kind enough to lend me his houseboat for the night.

I took some photos at dawn, and here it’s time for another aside: Years later I was working at a cooperative community and one of my neighbors (an evangelical Christian) showed me a “picture of Jesus”. Her church did full-immersion baptisms and when she developed the film of her friend’s baptism, there was a foggy spot on the picture. She solemnly assured me that that was the image of Jesus. I told her I had a picture of the Buddha. She had to see it. It was one of my sunrise photos of the backwaters of the Mississippi. Here it is:

The reddish orb at the top looks to me like a head. Just below the head you can see shoulders (at the upper points of the star) to each side. The light emanates from the belly. Less obvious in this small reproduction is the appearance of two knees just below the belly (at the middle points of the star), as though of a figure sitting cross-legged. She studied the picture for a long time, then earnestly pronounced it to be a picture of Jesus.

I rode up to St Paul, stayed with friends and ate until I felt semi-human again, then packed the bike into the cargo bay of a Greyhound bus and returned home. So much for circumnavigating Lake Superior, or Wisconsin, or much more than my campsite.

P.S. I forgot to mention last week that spring ended abruptly a week and a half ago with a temperature of 95 degrees and the hatching of millions of mosquitos that know nothing except the sucking of blood.

The good side of summer arrived today. Sitting on the Terrace,

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA from Madisonstories.com

my feet in the water, sipping a beer, listening to live jazz. A breeze off the lake, temperature down to a totally reasonable 78 degrees. This may detract from the universality of the image, but was the icing on the cake for me – FaceTime with my Officially Adult child – college graduate last weekend, first day in a new city, first day of a new job, first day in a new apartment. Life doesn’t get much better than this; and I haven’t even started riding…

Getting paid to ride

We tend to romanticize getting paid to do something, despite the fact that “amateur” comes from the Latin root “amare”, “to love”.

Bicycling is no different, with movies such as Quicksilver, with Kevin Bacon starring as a stockbroker-turned- bike messenger. (Or my personal favorite, Major Bedhead the unicycle courier from the Canadian children’s TV show “The Big Comfy Couch“.)

I guess I was a professional bicyclist a long time ago, without thinking about it. When I was 12 I began delivering newspapers by bike. Like mail carriers, “neither rain, nor sleet, nor gloom of night stayed [me] from the swift completion of [my] appointed rounds”.

There was one day when it was too icy to ride my bike and I streetskate skated my “appointed rounds” and there were a few days when it was colder than -20 degrees, which entitled me to a ride in a car according to house rules. Otherwise, I rode 364 days per year (no newspaper on Christmas in those days). When it was a little less cold, my eyelashes would freeze and clink when I blinked. The lenses of my glasses would fog, then freeze, and I’d have to take off a mitten to scrape the ice off with a fingernail. For those who doubt it was really that cold, I offer this:

On the other hand, there were beautif Glenn-Shil-web ul summer days when it was not yet hot, though you knew it would get that way. The lake was like glass and I dreamed of what it would be like to be skiing as the sun rose. (I suspect those who lived on the lake would not have appreciated it in the same way.)

At 5 AM, the only people out on the streets were the newspaper carriers and the milkman. Milk was delivered to our house every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. Bread was delivered Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. The “Omar Man” had a handy carrying rack for bread. It was cleverly designed with an upper rack for breads and a lower rack that cantilevered out with pastries. It was right at eye level for little kids so we could beg mom for pastries, which we could never afford. He never gave up.

I did my best thinking when I was out early in the morning on my bike. I wished for a portable tape recorder and a microphone mounted on my handlebars so I could record my thoughts as I rode. Alas, my best thoughts are lost to the world. I would probably be a famous inventor now, retired and living on my royalties, had I been able to record those ideas – or at least that’s what my 12 year old self thought.

I spent some time as a bicycle traveling salesman. When I was in Cub Scouts we had an annual candy sale to raise money. My dad encouraged me to venture farther from home to hit territories other kids wouldn’t get to. When I was 9 he dropped me and my bike at an apartment complex 6 miles from home and told me to hit all 216 apartments, then ride home. I found my way home (without a trail of bread crumbs) and won a prize for the most sales.

Now I am an amateur – unless you readers want to pay me for this ride.

My origin story

My first cycling memory is from the winter of 1956. I was three years old and we were building an attached garage to the house we’d lived in for a couple of years. I can remember riding my trike on the new concrete slab in a partially-framed garage, bundled against the winter cold.

Fast-forward to the spring of 1958. I was five. I was the proud owner of a two-toned green-and-cream Columbia bike, 20” wheels, single-speed with coaster brake; a hand-me down from my cousin in Milwaukee. Left is a reasonable facsimile of that bike. Sorry, I have no actual pictures of that or my old trike.

Riding a bike is a lot like reading or learning a foreign language. You can imagine you’re doing it before you can really do it. Once you actually learn, you realize you’d been deluding yourself.

When I first learned to read, I fooled myself by reciting books I’d memorized, even knowing when to turn the pages. One day I actually learned to read and that was a totally new experience.

When I first learned to speak Spanish, I thought I was speaking Spanish, but I was really translating other people’s words into English in my head, formulating responses in English, then translating them to speak. It is slow and cumbersome and doesn’t work in the real world. The day I began to think and dream in Spanish was the day I realized I’d been deluding myself.

Riding with training wheels is a lot like that. I could pretend I was riding a bike but I was always riding at a slight angle so the rear wheel and one training wheel were touching the pavement. When the training wheels came off, I realized I couldn’t really ride.

The day I actually rode started at the top of a slight incline in front of our house. My dad had his hand on the back of my saddle and ran along beside me. When I got to the Iverson house, I thought I was really riding. I yelled to my dad but he didn’t answer. I yelled again. In front of the Benisch house I turned to yell again and he wasn’t there. I crashed into the ditch. When I picked myself up, I realized he was back in front of the Van Epps house. I was like the cartoon character who runs off a cliff and doesn’t fall until he looks down and realizes what he has done. (The clip is not the best example but the best I could find today.)

It would be nice to say that I rode off and never looked back, but that crash spooked me and it was still a struggle before I really learned to ride; but I now knew what riding was.

The bike gave me a new freedom. My dad was infamous in our neighborhood. When it was time to come home he whistled, an ear-piercing sound that involved his thumb and middle finger in his mouth and a distinct three-note sound heard for blocks. When he whistled, we ran. I remember playing baseball in a friend’s backyard and being at bat. At the whistle I dropped the bat and ran home. My friends thought I should finish my at-bat. I knew better. But on the bike, I could get beyond earshot. I could ride to places where I could honestly say I didn’t hear him. That was not always considered a legitimate excuse.

I rode a variety of bikes after I outgrew the two-toned Columbia. None was actually my bike. My sisters both got new bikes. My older sister had a single speed 26” wheel Royce Union; a beautiful, lightweight, dark blue, lugged steel frame; cottered cranks, single speed with coaster brake. My other sister had a powder blue 24” wheeled bike, Montgomery Ward, if memory serves. My brothers had various black English 3-speeds. I rode them all whenever someone else wasn’t riding them.

Awaiting restoration. Anybody have an extra-long reach Weinmann sidepull from the ’60s? This one is missing its brake and the one on it is too short.

We also had a Schwinn Twinn single-speed tandem. It was particularly fun to ride from the rear (standing on the pedals so I could reach the front handlebar) and watch people stare, especially when I changed from back to front while riding or when someone told me I wasn’t supposed to ride like that. Plus I could pick up a friend to go for a ride.

The next bike that was my very own was a Western Flyer by Western Auto. I took over a newspaper route when I was 12 and the previous owner of the route sold me his bike. It was black and cream with huge front and rear baskets. It was the bike that taught me not to dismantle a coaster brake and how not to true a wheel.

Once I sold that bike (along with the paper route), it was back to the various black English 3-speeds. The first new bike of my life came in the spring of 1974. I had just turned 21. I was recovering from ankle surgery and being mobile was very important.

I drooled over a silver Masi, Campagnolo-equipped;

but I bought a Motobecane Grand Jubile, red with black trim and gold pinstriping. It was on that bike that I did my first loaded tours, camping with my friend Al. On our first tour we spotted some wild asparagus growing in a roadside ditch. Fresh asparagus for dinner sold me on bike touring instead of motorcycle touring. (Another reasonable facsimile, thanks to Google image search.)

When I was in my early 30s I had a neighbor who was in law school. He told me that, upon graduation, he was going to cross the country by bike and invited me to join him. I had a job I wanted to keep so I turned him down. He made the trip without me. But someday, I thought…

In October of 1989, a few days before the Loma Prieta earthquake, my beloved Motobecane was stolen from my office in San Francisco. I later found out who stole it but it was too late to do anything about it or prove it. I embarked on a serious bike-buying mission and, on my 37^th birthday, bought myself two new bikes – a 55 cm Davidson road bike and a 56 cm Bruce Gordon touring bike.

The Davidson is Shimano 600-equipped (the name changed to Ultegra the next year). It included a tied and soldered rear wheel, which is still true after 28 years. The wheels were built by Vance Sprock at Cupertino Bike Shop. Bill Davidson is still building bikes in a small shop in Seattle. http://davidsonbicycles.com

Davidson2 — with detail of hand-tied and soldered rear wheel

The Bruce Gordon is Shimano Deore XT-equipped, with Bruce’s own steel racks and half-step plus granny gearing with bar-end shifters. (For explanations of half-step plus granny and a host of other fascinating topics, see http://sheldonbrown.com) It was to take me on that US tour. As of this writing, Bruce is having a retirement sale in his shop in Petaluma, CA. By the time you read this, he may be out of business, or you may be able to buy a fully-equipped frame building shop. http://www.bgcycles.com .

Gordon2 — with detail of half-step plus granny gearing. Two larger chainrings are close together in size (50/44) with a much smaller “granny” ring (28). Note the Bio-pace chainrings.

It is now 28 years later. The tour is going to be for my 65^th birthday. The bikes are getting a little old to trust on a coast-to-coast trip. I’m getting a little old to want to do a self-contained tour. That means it is time for a new bike again. If you remember back to that Masi in 1974, my other dream (besides the US tour) was for an all-Italian bike. That was the dream of a lot of riders of a certain age. Most bikes are now built in China, most parts come from the Japanese industrial giant Shimano, and Campagnolo, once the gold standard in bicycle components, has been reduced to a small niche marketer.

Since I don’t plan to carry a lot of weight (this being a supported tour) and I probably won’t buy another new bike after this one, I have joined the 21^st century with a Wilier Triestina Zero.7, Campagnolo Super Record-equipped. Wilier is an Italian company founded in 1906. The name is an acronym (in Italian) for “long live a free and redeemed Italy”. (Though the name predates the acronym by 42 years; don’t ask me to explain that.) It is my first carbon fiber bike and probably weighs about half as much as the Bruce Gordon. This is the mount that will take me across the country. I had Yellow Jersey Bicycles in Arlington WI build me a new set of wheels, so I won’t actually ride across the country on the carbon fiber wheels in the picture. Pictures of the bike as equipped for the tour will come once I’m on the road.

Wilier2 — Head joint detail. The original owner went for subtlety on most of the decals. The orange ones are the only ones you can see.

Yellow Jersey, by the way, began life as a co-operative, without a building, in Madison . They ordered bikes through a co-op in Chicago. The bikes were delivered to Whole Earth Co-op, and Yellow Jersey called members (especially those who had ordered bikes) to come and help assemble them when shipments arrived. They later had a series of storefronts and ultimately the co-op’s assets were sold to some of the employees. The proceeds funded the Dane County Bicycle Association, a local advocacy group. Yellow Jersey is now owned by Andy Muzi, one of those employees. He has been with Yellow Jersey since the beginning of the co-op, or close to it. A few years ago he closed the store in Madison and moved to the small town of Arlington. Drop in for a visit!

03BOTTLE Yellow Jersey water bottle. Don’t make me explain the logo. Wisconsin law forbids the use of the word “co-op” by any entity that is not incorporated as such. When Yellow Jersey was sold, they ground the word off of the existing stock of bottles so they could still sell them.