Author:

Phew! Tatonka the bike thankfully showed up on the next flight from San Francisco. Spent half the day fretting about the bike (Sun Country air offered me no way to track where it was), but the other half was a relaxing tour around Minneapolis with M-swob. Tomorrow, we ride!

We got a great start yesterday. Rolled out of Minneapolis on its amazing bike infrastructure. It was all bike lanes and cycle paths for at least 30 miles. We already ran into other cycle tourists – one guy was in his 60s, going solo from Washington to Maine, and averaging over 70 miles a day! Overall it was just a full day of really pleasant, easy riding. We ended up camping on the Saint Croix River, at a site that would have been perfect except for the crack force of mosquito commandos the patrolled the area. I knew we wouldn’t make it through the north woods without getting a few bites, but I guess I forgot how aggressive Midwestern mosquitos are compared to their western counterparts.

Got some rain last night, but thankfully it didn’t start until we were snug in the tents and stopped just as we got up. We skipped making breakfast given that we would likely eat less than we would be eaten, and instead grabbed some pastries from the bakery in (sugar) Rush City.

One more comment about the Moose Lake brewery: they have probably the best nut brown ale I’ve ever had. Just don’t feed the loudmouth and you’ll have a great time.

We had a killer breakfast at the lazy moose: wild rice + mushroom omelette, along with wild rice and candied pecan pancakes. 6 thumbs up.

As we headed north along more glorious paved bike path, the weather got cooler and the terrain got a bit more mountainous. By the time we got lunch in outer Duluth, it was downright chilly.

We got the red carpet treatment at the Thirsty Pagan brewery in Superior. Lots of good advice, and the owner even gave us free bike jerseys.

I celebrated our entry into Wisconsin by making a bee-line for some Culver’s frozen custard – it’s no Strickland’s, but it’s pretty dang good. Had a wet ride to a state park and nestled down for the evening.

more to come!

Well, we’ve clearly fallen behind in the blog updating. Just posting here to confirm that we are still moving east through the beautiful upper peninsula. Good times have been had, characters have been met. No problems so far, though last night we learned that neither of our tents are as waterproof as we remember. We’ll have a longer post soon…

yeah, so we’ve gotten really bad updating this blog… But we promise, stories and photos are coming soon. Had a great meetup with Mike Bush, Clair, and their energetic children, Rosie and Sylvie – much fun was had, but now we are on our own again, drinking away our troubles at the ByGeorge brewery in Munising. Stay tuned!

6/30 Thursday

• Hot riding
• Beautiful rolling countryside down to lake – reminded me of the bodensee in Germany
• Pub crawl in port wing
• Local drunks are astonished and amused by the dumb things done by people on a show called ‘dumbest things done by people’
• Got to cornucopia aka corny just in time for weekly town live music party
• Shout-out to the whitecaps – men our age playing music for boomers
• Watched local witch dance with abandon
• Zach’s drawers were rescued by good samaritans with bad judgement
• Camped at amazing spot 20 ft from Lakeshore
• Took first dip in the lake – 5 stars

7/1 Friday

• Bayfield was busy with tourists
• Great bike shop right outside of town – unfortunately the attached brewery was not open yet
• Greg nearly experienced death-by-hammock
• Great little coffeeshop in Washburn
• Took another dip in the lake, taking care not to disturb any fortnight birthday cakes
• Great bike trail through Ashland
• Camped at frontier campground/bar/grill/gas station
• Had post shower nightcap at bar, but any conversation was inhibited by gambling machines

7/2 saturday

• Rode to cute Finnish museum – learned that the word ‘sisu’ is only for Finns
• Learned that the next town, hurley, used to be known as a wretched hive of scum and villainy
• Picked up some Finnish salty licorice – yum
• We just barely missed embarking on a life of sin in Hurley, thanks to the bike path
• Crossed into Michigan – again, no sign
• Began amazing 20 miles long bike path in ironwood
• Met loquacious local who has mastered the art of comedic indirection. Met him several times on the trail – he cannot drive for medical reasons, so the trail is his lifeline. He’s never left the area, and is a local celebrity – he truly is ironwoods ambassador. And, as Randall would say, there’s some humor in that, if you think about it
• Stopped at visitor center in Wakefield – friendly volunteer advised us that ‘da yoopers’ are not appropriate music for Sunday school
• At pizza pub, met previous owner, who used the proceeds from selling the bar to buy a house down the street from where she grew up
• The bar’s new owner is still figuring out what kind of wine “piñot” is
• Great ride through forest to campground on the lake – gorgeous sunset was observed.
• Weren’t even bothered by the outhouses that were just upwind

7/3 Sunday

• Another great ride through the forest
• Another great swim in the lake
• Another mediocre square-cut pizza
• Met tandem cyclists on a day ride – one reviewed our entire route, and gave ‘no opinions, only observations’
• Had ice cream in Ontonagon before making a delicious curry at the very nice town campground
• Another great lake sunset

7/4 Monday

• Wet
• Wet
• We both woke up to find the waterproofing on our tents did not stand up to the rainstorm
• Everything we own was wet and filthy, including our souls
• Added 20 pounds of water weight to our bikes
• Soggily dripped into Syl’s for breakfast – towels were provided
• Zach procured ill fitting pvc hazmat suit from ace hardware, which would keep him wet, dry, hot, and cold simultaneously for the rest of the day
• Rode through the rain all day – it was quite a slog
• Disappointed that beer belly bob’s was closed, along with the rest of the town of Greenland
• Greenland’s fourth of July festivities appeared to have been washed away
• Made burgers at convenient pavilion in Laird township – 5 stars
• Finally made it to Baraga, where we had a hot meal, but they were out of everything from a busy weekend, including humanity
• Decided that, rather than set up our soaking wet gear in the rain, only so it could get more wet, to just stay at the hotel where we ate
• Celebrated our nation’s birthday in the best way possible – watching Independence Day between commercials
• Absolutely destroyed the bathroom trying to clean/dry our gear

• Woke up early to deliver bagels to Nick to coax him into riding with me
• After loading us up with cake and cherries, The McRays gave us a great sendoff replete with a shofar blast
• We met Jim up on the Greenway.. To no one’s surprise, he had been patiently waiting for 1.5 hours
• Had a pretty chill ride out of the bay area, over the carquinez bridge. Well, chill except it was actually hot
• Straddled the border of Vacaville sprawl, betwixt the burbs and the bluffs
• Drank a gallon of ice tea in Cordelia – it was not enough. I knew this was going to be a hot bike tour, and it really wasted no time getting toasty
• Once we were free of Fairfield, it was a nice rolling ride through the countryside to arrive at our camp on putah creek
• But wait! There’s a brewery just down the road. Beers were drank, fries were eaten…a great end to the first day of the tour

• Woke up to early morning Jim/peacocks on Saturday morning
• Headed towards Davis on a lovely road made filthy by weekend warrior cyclists
• Got waylaid in Davis as Jim was on a quest for new panniers to replace the ones that had been destroyed by the sun.
• Davis remains both hot and kinda weird. We observed Xenials from afar… First use of ‘TBH’ in the wild
• The causeway between Davis and Sacramento pretty much sucks. I’m glad it exists, but riding 4 feet from oncoming I-80 traffic is not pleasant
• Possible slogans for West Sacramento include:
  • A fate worse than death
  • Hmm..it could be worse
  • At least it’s flat
  • Wet sac o’ cement: West Sacramento
• We pulled into Sacramento in the early afternoon, into the welcoming embrace of the Snavely/Greenbergs. After some lovely pool time, we decided to end the day early and stay there. The heat had nothing to do with this decision
• The evening entertainment was provided by young Edie , who performed the best tooth-brushing dance I’ve ever seen – followed by a flossing encore!
• We got on the road even earlier today in an attempt to beat the heat. Lovely early morning ride through the tree-lined streets of Sacramento and up the glorious American river bike path
• We had a brief jaunt through the burbs and then quickly found ourselves into the rolling golden foothills of the Sierra. Very lovely riding, although a truck did try to introduce us to its RV trailer in a non-consensual way
• Once again the heat fizzled our stamina early (though 55 miles by 3pm ain’t too bad. Nick rolled high on a charisma check to get us a deal at the wine-tourist hotel, which is where we are living it up right now. And, conveniently, there’s a brewery just down the street!
• Tomorrow we start our ascent of the Sierra in earnest, but the good news is that the forecast calls for much more humane temperatures. See ya on the other side!

• Left Plymouth bright and early on Monday morning, to begin our climb through beautiful Shenandoah wine country
• In River pines, we meant John who preached the virtues of “blue energy” aka hydroelectric power. He had to move to the middle of nowhere because he had crossed the men in black in proselytizing against wind energy. He even had a jaunty little tune about hydro, which I regretfully did not record.
• we continued our climb up omo ranch road, which was quiet, beautiful, and steep
• All three stores on our route were closed, so we did our best with the meager offerings from the Aukum grocery/hardware store
• Fate did smile upon us in that Gary, owner of the closed Ham’s station bar/restaurant (closed), allowed us to pitch our tents behind the store, which proved to be a gorgeous campsite

• Glorious egg and processed tomato breakfast burrito
• Absolutely beautiful bike riding into the mountains along highway 88
• The lack of open restaurants or bathrooms continued to plague us
• The weather turned shortly after silver lake, transitioning quickly from blue skies to a thunderous hail storm
• For a brief while, we had to find respite under some trees to avoid being pelted by the hail
• as we rolled our soaked carcasses down the hill to Kirkwood, my thermometer read 38 degrees
• We had been looking forward to warming up with some hot grub at the Kirkwood inn, only to be denied by a sign saying they were closed today for a ‘maintenance issue’
• We dejectedly roamed the potholed streets of Kirkwood village in search of any shelter, but alas all doors were closed to the bike bums
• The lack of food, the exhaustion of back to back days of solid climbing, and the fickle mountain weather led us to the decision that our best course of action would be to hitch a ride the last 30 miles into Tahoe in lieu of attempting two more mountain passes
• We quickly found a ride from a woman who worked at Kirkwood, who somehow crammed us,our gear, and our bikes into her hatchback and shuttled us into Tahoe
• We joined up with Andrew, who had been patiently waiting, and are now warming up and drying our gear in a hotel
• Tomorrow Jim and Nick venture on to Truckee where Amtrak awaits to return them to Urban Ore, whilst Andrew and I will continue on into Nevada and parts unknown

• Managed to find laundry and breakfast within walking distance of hotel
• Parted ways with Jim and Nick after breakfast – a fine pair of bums if ever there was
• Andrew and I headed around the south end of Lake Tahoe and up to spooner summit. It was a combination of quiet, wooded bike path and busy highway, but the scenery was outstanding the whole way
• After the summit we had a fast, long 9 mile descent down to the Carson valley…wheee!
• Stocked up in Carson City and rolled through town
• Downtown Carson City was pretty nice looking, but heading east out of town on 50 was about 7 miles of sprawling strip mall with a ridiculous amount of traffic
• The traffic slowly dissipated as we headed further east on 50 – so begins our adventure in the loneliest highway. The stark desert scenery and long sightlines were beautiful
• Just as we approached our camping spot – a campground on a silty reservoir on the Carson River – we had a bike bums first: a dust storm! It wasn’t too bad though
• We made gourmet (beyond) burgers with mushroom, onion, and cheese on ciabatta rolls for dinner, and now are tucked away for the night. Tomorrow after we pass through Fallon will be our first long stretch without services.