Riding to the Start

On my tank of a Krampug (complete with frame bag, handlebar bag, "gas tank", and rear rack [that today was carrying a hammock and pillow]) it takes me about an hour and a half to get from our front door to Long Lake.  Maybe if I was so inclined it'd take me less but today I was just doodling along.  You see, I was riding there to meet up with a group ride, so I wanted to have some fuel left in the tank for that.  It only takes 30 mins to drive this but riding lets me, you guessed it, ride my bike (which I love) and not ride in a car (which I hate, especially when it's a bike able distance and I'm not hauling a cinder blocks or sheets of drywall.  Also: this is my little protest against having our society being virtually totally dependent on fossil fuels).  

Blueberries are ripe!

I wasn't sure, when I left, how long it would take me to get to Long Lake so I took my hammock so I could lay in it and kill time.

The wintergreen are ripe!

The ride to Horseshoe Lake started on some sandy ATV trails

Everybody swam in Horseshoe Lake.

After leaving Horseshoe the group rode back towards Long Lake where they were parked.  I rode with them most of the way and then turned around and headed home.

Shortly after I parted ways with the group it started to sprinkle.  It was light enough that just my wind vest kept me fairly warm and dry.

Mid August and signs of fall are around already here in northern Wisconsin.

Tour de France

The start of the very first Tour de France.

I first got into biking in high school.  Biking was an alternative to the classic football/basketball/baseball that all the 'cool' kids were doing.  I was coming to my senses and realizing that I didn't really want to be 'cool'.  And my brother-in-law-to-be was super into biking and got my brother and I hooked.  I rode thousands of miles each year (both off-road and on), followed the Tour de France, Giro D'Italia (Tour of Italy), Vuelta a Espana (tour of Spain), Paris-Roubaix (and other classics or one day races); on the off road side the UCI World Cup, NORBA.  My brother and dad and I spent many, many weekends driving to and participating in WORS (Wisconsin Off Road Series) events.

In my high school mind alternative was good, and biking was alternative.  Then along came the Festina Affair in '98 (the Festina Affair is a bit complicated but the gist is that the entire Festina team was kicked out of the Tour de France for systematic doping and a couple of other teams were kicked out or left in protest - things were messy in professional road racing for months after.  It makes me sick re-reading about it now).  There seemed to be doping scandals everywhere, including many American riders.  Tyler Hamilton, Floyd Landis, to name two prominent ones.  Maybe this wasn't the alternative I was looking for.  By the time Lance Armstong's doping came to light I was thoroughly bored by all this and had stopped even paying attention to professional road biking...the only reason that I was aware of it was because it was a big story and everyone even remotely interested in silent sports had it shoved down their throat.  Mountain biking is a little less scandal-ridden but not enough to hold my attention.  Cycling is an incredibly popular sport in Europe (not alternative at all like in America) and though it took me a while to realize, many of the top racers were kinda like those 'cool' kids in high school.

I've never stopped loving biking though.

Over the years I've almost completely lost interest in racing (and not just because I suck at it).  But I've taken to keeping updated on races like the Tour Divide, the Iditarod Trail Invitational, or the Trans Am Bike Race, and - new this year - the American Trail Race.  Epic stories are what draw me to these races: pushing a loaded bike through knee deep snow for hundreds of miles (ITI) or riding a few hundred miles a day through mountains, catching a few hours of sleep and doing it all again the next day (TD).  Don't get me wrong: I have zero interest in ever doing these races but at least they hold my interest.  And at the end of these races is the finish line, maybe a few fans, and that's it.  No podium, no prize money, no throngs of fans, no big-time media attention, no pretty girl to kiss you while you spray everyone with champagne.

I have no idea how it happened but the other day I got looking into the old Tours de France, like before WWII (it started on 1903 and skipped the war years - fun fact: the very first stage of the first TdF stage was 467 km/290 mi long and took almost 18 hours).  Occasionally over the years I have seen pictures of these old ones, and heard a story or two (you know the classic ones: the guys sharing a cig or drinking wine while riding).  Maybe it was because I was too distracted by the modern day Tour and all it's glitz (when I first started following it) or maybe I was so appalled by all the doping scandals (later, in college and beyond) that I didn't really get into the old Tours.

The same epic-ness that draws me to the ITI, Tour Divide, etc. showed up in those old Tours.  And as I looked at old pictures of riders going up steep mountain passes on dirt or gravel roads without gears (often pushing) this correlation dawned on me.  It has been hiding behind all the flashiness of the modern Tour.  But things used to be very different: I read about the 1913 Tour de France when Eugene Christophe's fork broke and he had to walk 10K to fix it and then continued on and finished the stage nearly 4 hours down.  The stage was 326 km long (203 miles) - and the racers had 4 major mountain passes to climb.    And many of the roads up the passes were dirt or gravel.  And, since derailleurs weren't reliable (and were banned by the race anyway) they did it all on single speed bikes (The TdF organization first allowed derailleurs in 1937).  Oh, and there were strictly enforced rules barring outside help so when his fork broke Christophe had to forge himself a new one at a blacksmith's shop - and the kicker is he got a time penalty for having someone work the bellows for him.  Nowadays he'd just get a whole new bike from the team/neutral support vehicle and be on his way and probably have won that year (he still finished seventh [a remedial Tour de France lesson in case it's needed: each rider is timed each stage and then at the end the aggregated time is added up and the lowest time wins.  So you can never win an individual stage but win the race general classification]).  Christophe broke his fork again at the tour in 1919 but he "only" had to walk about 2 km to a town where he fixed it himself at the blacksmith shop - losing two hours.  Then in 1922 his fork broke again (you've probably guessed it already but fork strength wasn't the strong suit of bicycles in those days).  He never did win the Tour de France - maybe he deserved to, but we wouldn't be talking about him today if nothing had gone wrong and he'd won.  Because of his misfortune he's a bit of a legend.  If things had gone smoothly and he'd won chances are slim that anyone would even know his name outside of a handful of Tour de France fanatics.

During a stage of the first Tour de France

According to theracingbicycle.com:

"With up to three gear cogs on the rear freewheel, a gear change could be affected by dismounting the bike, loosening the wingnuts, sliding the rear wheel in the frame dropout to release the chain tension, placing the chain on the new cog, repositioning the rear wheel to gain proper chain tension, remembering to retighten the wingnuts before remounting once more."

In 2016 Chris Froome broke his bike, (after a run in with a motorcycle, which had slammed on the brakes as fans were blocking the road) discarded the bike (which is against the rules) and started running until a support vehicle could get to him through the thick crowds 45 seconds later.  They gave him a new bike and off he went.  He wasn't happy with how it was working so they gave him another.  He finished the stage 1 min 21 secs down and lost his yellow leader's jersey.  An hour later the race officials reconsidered and gave the lead back to him.  Chances are slim that much of anyone will remember this in 100+ years.

The longest Tour de France was in 1926 at 5745 km (3570 mi) covered.  The longest stage in that race was 433 km (269 mi) and took 17 hrs 11 min 14 secs.  Contrast that with the 2016 Tour de France at 3,529 km (2,193 mi) long.  The longest stage was 223.5 km and took 5 hrs 59 min 54 secs.  To be fair the old Tours had a rest day every other day - often several rest days between stages.  The first tour had 4 rest days before the last stage (which was 471 km/293 mi long and took over 18 hrs).

The Trans Am Bike Race is self supported (no team cars nobody to give massages and meals or even shelter over your head.  You're on your own).  The clock starts when you leave Astoria, WA and stops 4300 miles later when you get to Yorktown, VA.  It's basically one big time trial.  The 2016 winner was a woman (I think that's so cool), Lael Wilcox, who did it in 18 days 10 mins.  That's an average of 239 miles a day for the better part of 3 weeks.  Once, during college spring break, I went with a small group of guys to Austin, TX where the main thing we did was ride our bikes - between 80 and 100 miles a day for a whopping six days.  I might try that again sometime but it'd take some pretty slick convincing.   Well, now that I think about it the riding we did in Austin was on the road and often in traffic.  I hate riding in traffic - so I actually probably would take a bike vacation (where the primary thing was riding) if it were mountain biking or bikepacking.  Anyway, back to Austin: by the end of that I was tired, sick of riding, and wanted to go home.  That's why races like the Tour Divide and the Trans Am Bike Race sound so abhorrent (in terms of doing them myself).  But, oddly enough and in a way I can't explain, they're still interesting.  

See if you can spot the differences in this picture vs. the picture above
from an early Tour mountain top.

The point is not that today's pro bike racers are a bunch of weenies.  The 2016 TdF may have "only" been 2,193 miles but I'd have to be a special kind of stupid to argue that that's not a helluva long way - especially when you throw in a couple of mountain ranges and do it in less than a month.  It's not that things are worse today, just different.  For me it's not so much the race as how it's packaged.  It's kinda like NASCAR, a circus, (come see the freaks!) and a bike somehow had a child.  NASCAR and circuses aren't really my thing and so - hard as the modern TdF may be - it doesn't really hold my interest.  



It comes down to, I think, money.  People like fast, people will pay for fast.  Epic schmepic, who's going to watch a dude on his single speed crank his bike down a gravel, mud, road for over 10 hours (to get the answer to that ask a single speed Trans-Iowa rider)?  Now we've got a very fast, intense, high-stakes, drugged, popular race that has lost touch with the things that drew fans to it over a century ago.  How much longer can this go on until it collapses under it's own weight?

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Superior Vistas: Waterfalls, Roses, and Fishing Boats and Bikes

I first started biking seriously when I was 17.  A couple of years later I rode my first century (100 miles) at the Platteville, WI Dairy Days Festival.  One thing led to another and in '09 and '11 I finished the Arrowhead 135 a 135 mile race on snowmobile trails held in late January in northern Minnesota.

This is not to toot my own horn but just point out that I've done a fair amount of endurance-type stuff on a bike.

Cut back to 2010:  I had just met Jenny and floated the idea of doing the Superior Vistas Bike Tour's 40 miler.  Despite it being farther than she'd ever ridden and having not ridden in years, since life got in the way, she agreed and we had a good time taking our time and enjoying the ride.

A year or two later I floated the idea of doing the 70 miler of that same tour.  She agreed.  We rode slowly and by the time we got to the end they were out of ice cream sandwiches to give the riders.  Despite that we still had fun.

Cut to early 2017:  My birthday is close to the scheduled tour date and I told Jenny that what I really wanted was for her and I to do some rides together this spring to train for the full century at the SVBT.  I'm sure you've done the math - this was the farthest she'd ever attempted.  But she didn't say, "no" and so I kinda kept talking about it like we were committed a little more each time I brought it up.  Worked like a charm.  Mwhahaha!  (I've written blog posts about some of our rides here and here) 

Selfie at the start.  The lake behind us is Lake Superior.   

The tour begins and ends at the same place - a park in Washburn, WI.  There was some road construction on the usual route so this year we were going to be ending a kind of out and back course.  Sort of.  Let me explain: we rode out what I'll call to Point A and then straight on to Cornucopia, WI (also right on the shore with a height of land in between).  Then we rode back to point A turned here and rode for quite a ways to Delta, WI.  Then we turned around and rode the same route backwards to A and then back to Washburn the same way we started.

Since, 'round these parts, when you're on the shore of Lake Superior you're as down as you can get (barring SCUBA gear), the ride started uphill.  And into a fairly stiff headwind.  For reasons I'll get back to this made me happy.  The first checkpoint that we stopped at (about 10 miles in) was about 400' above our starting spot and was virtually all uphill and/or into a stiff headwind.

Jenny's bike is a old Trek mountain bike that she got on sale for $75 over 15 years ago.  My rig is a beast of a touring bike that I put straight bars on.  This spring we got slick tires for Jenny's bike but the vast majority of bikes were road bikes with a good chunk of those being carbon fiber racing machines that were probably well under 20 lbs.  We didn't weigh ours but they were probably well over 30 lbs.

The next rest stop was also on the shore of Lake Superior and and after a few relatively small ups and downs we began our 400' descent into Cornucopia.   Of course, this also meant a 400' climb out but let's not think about that just yet and just enjoy a few pictures of old fishing boats, roadside roses, and waterfalls.

Selfie by an old fishing boat.  There were several old boats here but we chose this one in honor of our twin nieces.

Near Corni (that's what us locals call Cornucopia) the route takes you right by Siskiwit Falls.  It's more a fairly long series of cascades than a classic waterfall but there's a good view of a little bit of it from the road.  

After our rest stop in Corni we had to climb those 400' back to Point A, turn and ride down a beautiful forest road for 20 miles to the town of Ino.

This picture kinda misrepresents this road.  It's beautiful and almost all wooded but this picture makes it look flat.  It's emphatically not flat.  No huge hills but they're pretty constant.

This stretch is about 20 miles.  About 18 of those miles were neutral elevation wise.  And by that I do NOT mean flat - I mean that at Point A where we turned onto this road elevation as 1234'  and at 18 miles in it was close to the same.  Virtually none of that was flat.  According to the all knowing internet we climbed over 600 feet in this stretch when you add up all the small hills.  The last two miles drop in Ino where the next rest stop was.

We were riding on the slow side, especially for the 100 mile route which is generally tackled by svelte guys and gals who are also quite quick.  This is all a nice way of saying we were dead last.  By a loooong way.  They were about to start taking down the rest stops.  Which was fine with us - we couldn't expect them to stay open indefinitely for two slow bikers.  So I stocked up on mini PBJ sandwiches and cookies to fuel me through to the end (we were at about mile 50).   It also started to rain at this rest stop.  It was 8.75 miles to the next rest stop and it rained the whole way (and it was pretty open and the wind got a good sweep at us - most of the time it was in our faces) and, of course, quit like clockwork as we stepped under the tent at the turn around point.  The turn around point was at the Delta Diner and the tent was theirs - there was no sign of a rest stop organized by the bike tour.  I'm not suggesting that it was never there just that we were so slow that it got taken down before we got there.

Rain on the way to Delta,

In Delta the nice employees of the Delta Diner offered to give us water.  And we ate a few cookies that we had gotten at the previous rest stop.  Now it was back to Ino.  Aside from a bit of spitting, the rain had stopped and the howling headwind that we had pushed into was now a howling tailwind.

We made it to Ino and the start of the Forest Road back to Point A.  It was virtually all uphill for the first two miles and then, well, I already explained it for the way down.  Elevation neutral but far from flat and all that.  The last few miles to Point A seemed to take a bit longer than we hoped - but we had a tailwind so it wasn't that big of a fuss.

Although the rain had stopped it was still blustery and threatening.

Finally we made it to Point A (which was mile 10 on the way out and was now mile 90).  Remember how I was happy to have a headwind and be riding uphill at the start?  There is a method to this madness.  I was hoping the the wind direction would hold (I was pretty sure that it would still be downhill and so didn't worry about that.  Wind can change pretty quick but topography usually takes a few thousand years.  Thankfully both held).  The wind didn't shift or lose power which meant the last 10 miles, which on a flat course would be the hardest, were dead easy.  They were pretty much a coast - as in we didn't pedal much or all that hard when we did.

Jenny descending the last little bit into Washburn.  Lake Superior in the background.

It was not fast.  The world record time for a century is under 3 1/2 hours.  Most mortals do it in twice that time.  (Actually scratch that, most mortals don't even try it.  ...Sorry to be a little snotty but I think we earned a little chest thumping)  I started my timer when we left, didn't stop it at rest stops or for any reason.  It took us 10 hrs and 52 minutes.  Probably about 10 hrs of that was spent pedaling a bike.  We might have been slow but, pardon me, I don't care how in shape you are, ten hours is a long time to be sitting on a bike seat.  And we were still smiling by the end - and not just the 1/500th of a second when the camera took the below picture.  We genuinely had a great time from mile 0 through the uphills, downhills, headwinds, crosswinds, tailwinds, rain, and sun all the way to to where the number of miles ridden rolled from double digits into triple digits.

When we rolled into the parking lot where we had started there was no sign of anyone else.  They had torn down hours ago - as they should have, we were hours behind anyone else.  And so we were able to share this accomplishment just between the two of us.  

Elevation profile of the course.

Father's Day Ride - Horseshoe Lake

For my Father's Day ride Jenny and I saddled up for what turned out to be a three-hour ride on the Forest Roads in the Chequmegon-Nicolet National Forest.  Although technically my bike is a 29+ it is close enough that, to me, it is a fat bike.  Jenny has a Surly Wednesday so this was a fat bike ride.

When people talk about fat bikes quite often it is about their amazing float.  You can ride them on terrain where a regular mountain bike would sink into snow/sand/mud - they can truly go where other bikes just can't.  And, yes of course, this is amazing.  But one thing about fat bikes that doesn't get much press is just how comfy they are.  Sure you can ride a regular mountain bike down a gravel road...and it'll bounce you around quite a bit.  Enter the low-pressure, high-volume tires of a fat bike and things smooth out.  The bumps get swallowed by the huge tire.  When it really comes down to it I am a lazy, comfort loving animal.  Fatbikes for me!

Tracks of a mama and fawn (and, of course, bikes)

Mama and fawn ran together down the road in front of us and around the corner.   We couldn't see exactly what happened next but they got separated - and went a little frantic trying to get back to each other.

We came around a corner and there was a bear in front of us.  The wind was at our backs going directly towards it.  It not only didn't run but sauntered first away and then turned back towards us.  It was a ways off and never acted even slightly aggressive and Jenny and I weren't nervous (we've both had enough experience around black bears to know that they're almost always weenies and/or bluffers) but I must say I was happy to see it turn off the road - like I said, it was a ways off (the picture below is as far zoomed in as my camera would go) but if it had kept coming much I would have started to get a bit antsy.  We waited a bit, mainly in case it was a mom with cubs who were trailing behind, and then continued.

I guess if I was a mama deer I'd be frantic too knowing that there are bears around to eat my fawn.   

As I was riding along I glanced down and saw a curvy green stick that was evenly tapered on one end.  As it was about a foot or two off to my right side I didn't run it over but didn't notice it until it was about even with my bottom bracket.  It couldn't see what it was but I knew immediately that it was worthy of a turn around.  They saw to embrace your inner child and it might have been a really good stick.  I'm not totally sure but I think it's a Smooth Green Snake (I'm not being smartass that really is what they're called - Google told me so so it must be right)

In the three hours of riding we covered just shy of 21 miles.  Not all that fast - but since we care more about enjoying the ride that doesn't matter.  We saw so many interesting things that we may have just either blown by or had oxygen-debt induced tunnel-vision and missed.  (I've done both of those things far too often back in my racing days)

More Than Just a Ride

The last several rides I've done have been just that - just riding my bike.  Of course if there's anything wrong with that and if there was I'd be in deep trouble as that's what the vast majority of my rides have been in my 20+ years of riding.  But I'd like to make rides into something a bit more substantial.  This one turned out to be that.

Heading north into the CNNF under blue skies.

This ATV trail heads up into the CNNF and I decided to take that instead of the gravel/sand road which I usually stick to.

Sometimes the ATV trail is a narrow two-track winding through the woods.

Catering to ATVs is big business up here.  This means that the ATV trails get torn up and washboarded from use so every couple of years they run a bulldozer over them to grade them.  The end result is a an sandy, ridiculously wide trail.

If you look closely through the trees you can see Sunken Camp Lake - a small (3 acre) lake in the middle of the CNNF.  I bet there's a good story behind it's name.  

On the way back from Sunken Camp Lake I stopped at Horseshoe Lake...

...and did a little wading.  (In case you are wondering my left ankle is recovering from some poison ivy)

It doesn't really look like it but this is a loon head down looking for lunch.

As I was sitting on the bank of Horseshoe Lake waiting for my feet to dry in the sun I heard a boom of thunder off to the south.  Although it was perfectly sunny where I was a dark cloud was rolling south of me.  When I left the lake and started riding south - the direction of home - this is what the sky looked like.

A little further down the road.  I was heading right into this and though I was pretty sure it would be gone by the time I got  to it (things were moving pretty quickly from west to east) the trees generally don't let you see much of the sky at once so it was a bit of a roll of the dice.  I did end up getting rained on a bit later but it was a warm day, it didn't rain all that hard, and it only rained for 5 or 10 minutes.

Mini sinkhole in the road.

 The day before this ride I had spent some time online looking at maps.  I love maps and Google maps cover everything - so I tend to spend longer than I need to.  Anyway, Google maps has a feature that you can get GPS coordinates for a point on their maps.  I found a little lake ("lake" might not even be the right word as it was probably less than an acre in size) away from the road.  I entered coordinates for the "lake" as well as where to park my bike.  I got the the parking spot, hid my bike in the bushes, got out the GPS receiver, and took off hiking.

Further back into the woods was somewhat more clear but right alongside the road opening it's pretty brushy.  Maybe I'll be back when these flowers have turned into blackberries.  

The bugs have only been out here for a couple of weeks and they're really not bad right around our house.  Anyway, when I left the house bug dope wasn't on my mind.  When I got here it sure was.

I counted just shy of 90 growth rings on these pine trunks - they were sprouts during the Roaring '20s.  What I have trouble wrapping my head around is that - as huge as these trees are in comparison to most modern trees - not that long ago, in the scheme of things, a 90 year old tree would have been young.  Hartwick Pines in Michigan has about 50 acres that are virgin and resemble today what much of the northern midwest looked like before the logging wave hit.  Most trees in the virgin part of the park are between 350 and 375 years old.  [just for reference my wheel (with tire) diameter is 31"] 

Back on the Corridor and nearing home

In addition to the good fun of riding my bike today my bike was also the vehicle that got me to places I could wade, birdwatch, hike, explore, ponder old growth.