Picnic today featured guacamole and chips along with quesadillas. That, of course, brought to mind the Texas Tornados.
the Texas Tornados included Augie Meyer, Doug Sahm, Flaco Jimenez, and Freddy Fender
I tried to sleep in, since I had no tent to pack up. Didn’t work – I was still up at 5:15, but I read the paper before getting out of bed. We’re now in the glaciated eastern side of Wisconsin, with more flat land, fewer and gentler hills. We headed northeast and through the Horicon National Wildlife Refuge (in which the sky becomes invisible with migrating geese in spring and fall), then turned more easterly. The “flat” ride included Breakneck Road with a short but steep climb – one switchback, so I didn’t know how long it would be until it was nearly over. I almost wanted to go back and do it again. Later was a series of four straight climbs – no surprises, but they always look more daunting on the approach.
I do not recommend riding like the person on the left. If a car comes over that summit, he and the next two riders will look like bowling pins. He was doing what folks call “paper boying”, meaning weaving back and forth to make the hill less steep (like a paper boy going back and forth across the street making deliveries).
We rode the Kettle Moraine Scenic Drive. “Kettles” are created when a melting or retreating glacier leaves behind a block of ice which becomes covered by debris. When it melts, a depression is left behind. “Moraines” are created when the glacier pushes rock and debris ahead of it, then retreats, leaving a ridge of rock behind.
Being a short day, we were in Plymouth before noon. Some headed to a bar. Those of us whose drinking before noon involves coffee headed to a coffee shop converted from a bank. The vault is a little private room. This is the same shop where I met my friend J for a cortado four years ago after a failed attempt to ride the Kettle Moraine Scenic Drive together – he couldn’t get out of work early enough. After a couple of cortados, a bagel and cream cheese, and a coconut gelato with chocolate shavings, I headed to the nearest credit union for some cash before arriving at the school. We are camped on a wooded knoll.
Plymouth claims to be the Cheese Capital of the World. There may be other towns that would dispute that.
Tomorrow is a 40 mile ride to Manitowoc, the home port of the SS Badger, a coal-fired steamship that will take us across Lake Michigan. The boat is chartered on Saturday. As a result, we will have a long afternoon and evening in Manitowoc as well as a long morning Sunday before boarding the ferry. A laundromat will be in the plan somewhere in there. We’ll arrive in Ludington, MI at 7 PM with barely time to eat dinner and set up camp before it gets dark. It will be a short night before we start across Michigan Monday morning. We will cross Michigan and Ontario next week.
As usual, I have invited Jef Mallet and Frazz to join us in Michigan. Since Frazz is two-dimensional, he may have joined us last time and I just missed him because he was turned the wrong way.
One of the half-fast cycling club graduated from UCLA. It was tough getting through college with dyslexia. He told me they gave him a sweatshirt. It looked like this:
Image from Pinterest
That’s not what we came to talk about today. We were riding in the Baraboo Hills and it got me thinking about places. Much of what I know about the place I call home came from the book The Physical Geography of Wisconsin.; and the physical geography of this place is one of the reasons I love to explore it by bike.
A question from a reader led me to realize I live in paradise.
Fifty miles to the west of me is Spring Green, home to Taliesen (the home of Frank Lloyd Wright) and American Players Theatre (one of the great classical theatres in the US – one of the founders was Randall Duk Kim – you may know him as The Keymaker from The Matrix Reloaded. I know him for playing Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and the titular Titus Andronicus on back-to-back nights).
Spring Green is in the heart of the driftless area. Much of north central North America was covered by glacier in one or more previous ice ages. The driftless area in the southwest corner of Wisconsin was missed by every glacier. It is a land of steep and craggy hills. The eastern edge of the area is rich farmland (hence the town of Black Earth), whereas farther west it is too steep and irregular to support much farming and leans more toward wooded hills and dark valleys. The driftless area is home to the Dells of the Wisconsin River, known to geologists for its rock formations; known to the rest of the world for its waterparks. Much of my time on a bike is is the driftless area.
Stand Rock (WI Dells) image from Science Source. Don’t try this at home.
Fifty miles to the north are the Baraboo bluffs, home to our annual fall ride. This is on the edge of the driftless area and home to Devil’s Lake and the Circus World Museum, as well as Dr Evermor’s Forevertron. Devil’s Lake (roughly translated from Tewakącąk, the Ho-Chunk name, which may be more accurately translated as sacred lake or spirit lake but, due to the racism of European settlers who deemed anything sacred but not christian to be the work of the devil, was translated as “Devil’s Lake”). The lake was formed by a terminal moraine which trapped its outflow. While the bulk of Wisconsin drains to the Mississippi River and then the Gulf of Mexico, this lake drains slowly into the underlying bedrock. A drain was added in 2002 to remove years of accumulated phosphorus from runoff. The hills are Baraboo pink quartzite, and estimated at 1.3 billion years old.
Devils’ Doorway -Devil’s Lake. Image from journaltimes.comDr Evermor and the Forevertron image from Madison.com
Fifty miles to the east is the Kettle Moraine State Forest. A “kettle” is a depression left by a melting ice block as the glaciers receded, while a “moraine” is a ridge of rock pushed along by a glacier, then left behind as the glacier receded.
Ride one way and I can see what Wisconsin looked like before the ice age. Ride the other way and I can see how glaciers changed the landscape.
Hiking along a moraine. Image from u/alrobertson on reddit.com
Fifty miles to the south is New Glarus, home of my favorite of the Wednesday Night Bike Rides. (Actually, this one is closer. Fifty miles gets you past Monroe. New Glarus is only about 25 miles.) New Glarus was settled by Swiss immigrants who found the verdant hills and valleys reminiscent of home. It is one of the few places you can still find dairy cattle that are not Holsteins.
Contour farming near New Glarus. Image from halffastcycling.club.
Smack dab in the middle of all that is Taychopera or DeJope, AKA Madison, WI, AKA home sweet home. I can walk less than a mile to see an effigy mound that reminds me that this was sacred space long before I (or anyone who looks like me) was here.
The greatest hits and worst miseries of the tour, not necessarily in order of how good or bad they were and not necessarily ten of each:
Tour top 10:
New York week (after the first 50 miles) -Finger Lakes/wading in Lake Ontario after a cold front came through, temperature and humidity went down, tailwind all morning; up and down through the Adirondacks, beautiful day in Lake Placid. If you took away the first 50 miles and replaced them with the first 50 miles of the next week, this could be #1.
Wisconsin week – Cannon Trail, the Great River Rd., Baraboo Bluffs/Devils Lake/Merrimac ferry, Kettle Moraine Scenic Drive. Great roads and no traffic all week. (Visits from family and friends put this one over the top, but it was already great.)
The ride into Baraboo contained the single steepest climb of the entire trip ( a short stretch of Terrytown Road).
The Sparta to Elroy Trail, while the first Rails-to-Trails conversion, has been surpassed by several others. It was actually the low point of the week. While the tunnels are a novelty, riding for 30+ miles on gravel is not my cup of tea and takes a toll on the bike. I know, gravel riding is the new thing, but I’d rather ride on pavement if given the choice.
I’m almost reluctant to admit that the area I ride regularly was the high point, but it also assures me that I live in the right place.
Needles highway/Black Hills/Badlands – The Needles Highway was the single high point. This was a magical fairyland, otherworldly in its beauty. I am amazed that I never knew of this place. I could ride that road ten more times and still see new things. The area was phenomenal and the road was the best we rode in >4300 miles.
The Badlands are also otherworldly. Different, in that they can be seen as bleak in broad daylight, but change minute-by-minute in early morning light. Like Needles Highway, I wanted to ride that same road again at sunset after riding it at sunrise.
Bike path through Grand Teton National Park, climbing Teton Pass, descending to Jackson Hole and a great bike path. The path through the park kept us away from traffic and in view of the mountains. I met Santa Claus at the foot of Teton Pass, along with a group riding from Texas to Alaska. The pass was steep and tough, getting steeper as it went. Standing at the top of the pass was a feeling of accomplishment and gave a great view of the valley below. After descending to the valley we were led on a secluded path into town. The valley is well set up for bicycles, with paths connecting the towns.
Thompson Pass – first time over the continental divide and first big pass, descent into Thompson Falls, a town mostly owned by a single family, where we saw their bar, ice cream shop, catering service, and bus service.
Devils Tower. A campground situated right at the base of the tower. The tower itself rises out of nothing. It is not part of a mountain range but, like Ayers Rock in Australia, is just there. It is no surprise that it was used as the backdrop/centerpiece of “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”.
The margarita party was our first real chance to sit down as a group and just hang out together.
Smugglers Notch. A day that started with threatening weather that never fully materialized. The pass enveloped by clouds as we ascended, never really sure how high it was, on the approach or while actually climbing it. A climb that was over before I realized it; not because it was easy (it wasn’t) but because the top was invisible until we were there. The steepest descent of the trip, made hazardous by the wet pavement so we took it slowly.
Bottom 10:
Riding 105 miles in 40° rain. The camaraderie made it tolerable. A day that I would have stayed in bed had I been on my own.
Climbing a mountain pass in a hailstorm. Another day saved by a group – the same group. As Greg told me before the trip, the 70 degree and sunny days will all blend together, but it is the days like this that will make lasting memories.
72 mile ride that turned into 102 mile ride, the last 1/3 into a brutal headwind, finishing with a helmet splitting crash in an endless industrial waste land. The only day that I wanted the van to stop for me. I got back on the bike and rode the final ten miles, so I did ride EFI. We stopped at a convenience store for a cold drink and found other riders draped over coolers and freezers. Misery loves company.
The first half of that day was actually really nice.
Mile after mile of horrendous pavement,90+ degree heat, and endless headwinds across the Great Plains.
Mile after mile of flat and boring countryside in Michigan with bad highways and rude drivers.
Re-entering the US at Niagara Falls and riding 50 miles before getting into the countryside.
Bone jarring expansion cracks through Central Minnesota.
Hill City to Custer – uphill, bad headwind, relentless sun/heat, horrendous traffic, grooved pavement causing painful whining noise – and there was a reasonable alternative route nearby.
A few random thoughts:
I had some great encounters with bikers (of the Harley persuasion) – both on-the-road salutes and chats at the roadside.
In the first week I waved to a Corvette behind me to acknowledge it and, as it passed, I saw a peace sign flashed out through the T-top.
A random motorcyclist flipped me the bird for no apparent reason.
A friendly bar owner brought watermelon out to us on a hot, dry, and windy day.
On another hot day I stopped in a coffee shop for an iced coffee and the air conditioning was so cold I just hung out for awhile. It was a day when I realized getting somewhere was only a small part of the plan.
When I walked into a brewpub, I was met by applause. Another rider had arrived before me and told our story and they knew I was part of that group.
Greg repeatedly referred to the Lake Michigan ferry crossing as “The shortest longest day”. We rode only 40 miles but got into camp with just enough time to pitch our tents before it got dark.
Somewhere out west (I think on the Tetons day) a Russian couple riding from Denver to Seattle stopped in and joined us for lunch.
On another day, in the middle of nowhere, I happened upon a scruffy-looking guy walking his bike in the opposite direction. I asked if he needed help. He said, “Is the next town about 4 miles ahead?” I agreed that it was. He thanked me and kept walking. (Only 4 miles from town it wasn’t really the middle of nowhere – it just seemed like it.)
The look of incredulity when I told some kids at a lemonade stand (on our last day) that I had ridden >4300 miles for that lemonade.
That’s it for now folks. Daily life is intruding on my writing time. I have a sewer line to clear and more. Posts will be a little more irregular after today. Maybe when my bike gets here I’ll look at the odometer and give you my total mileage. Maybe not. Numbers don’t really say what I want to say. Thanks for joining me on this journey. It’s been real.
Today we rode through the Horicon Wildlife Preserve, a major flyway for geese. At non-migratory season, it is much quieter. When I was there during the fall migration, a flock came in overhead blackening the sky. Nothing like that today. Here is some arrowroot. If you find yourself stranded in a marsh, the root is edible. If you want to get really fancy, you could catch and stew a muskrat, dry and powder the root, and use it to thicken the stew.We rode north to the marsh and it was breezier than anticipated for that early in the morning. The wind was from the northwest. From there we alternated north and east so the wind was on our shoulder one way or another – seldom directly in our face, but seldom directly behind us.
It stayed cool and cloudy all day. It felt more like September than July.
We meandered through the Kettle Moraine Scenic Drive.For those with a geological interest, our first couple of days this week were in the driftless area, the part of Wisconsin never touched by glaciers. Terrain tends to be craggy. The glaciers smoothed things out, so the glaciated parts of the state are more rolling. The area we are in today is where the last glacier stopped, so there are glacial features like kettles (what they sound like), moraines (hills made of glacial debris deposited when the glacier melted), and eskers (ridges of material left behind).
We had several short and steep climbs and descents, so you could be forgiven if this didn’t seem all that different. A bonus was a stretch of new and smooth asphalt that immediately turned into a double digit climb with a sharp switchback. Scenic Road was just that, with lots of rolling hills, of the roller coaster variety. Great views at the tops.
Arriving in Plymouth I stopped into a cafe to use the bathroom and get a shot of espresso with a morning bun. I was going to text my friend Jeremy to tell him where I was when I got out of the bathroom. I didn’t have to. He had spotted my bike and was waiting for me.
Jeremy started a biking group at work last summer (?). We had a couple of rides together and he moved away. Some of the others in the group did things like move away or get pregnant, so we didn’t ride together this year.
Jeremy was not able to get off work in time to ride with me (though his new bike was in the back of the car), but we hung out in the coffee shop until it closed.
Google Maps told me there was a hardware store a block away and I needed a battery, so I walked down there. It is no longer a hardware store.
My bike computer was getting erratic and didn’t respond to moving the sensor closer to the magnet, so I assumed the sensor/transmitter battery was low. I replaced it with a new one and quickly got a “low battery” signal. It is now completely dormant. My new battery was apparently not so new, though I bought it just before the trip. According to my computer, we rode less about 7.5 miles, though it was closer to 75.
Saturday is a short day of riding but a long day due to the ferry. We’re supposed to arrive in Ludington, MI around 7 PM.
We rode north to the marsh and it was breezier than anticipated for that early in the morning. The wind was from the northwest. From there we alternated north and east so the wind was on our shoulder one way or another – seldom directly in our face, but seldom directly behind us.
For those with a geological interest, our first couple of days this week were in the driftless area, the part of Wisconsin never touched by glaciers. Terrain tends to be craggy. The glaciers smoothed things out, so the glaciated parts of the state are more rolling. The area we are in today is where the last glacier stopped, so there are glacial features like kettles (what they sound like), moraines (hills made of glacial debris deposited when the glacier melted), and eskers (ridges of material left behind).
Half-fast Cycling Club 