Smoothing It

The wise old woodsman, George Washington Sears, wrote, "We do not go to the green woods and crystal waters to rough it, we go to smooth it."  

That quote has been used to justify all manner of camping excess.  I suppose it could be taken to mean Bring everything you want, and be 100% comfortable at all times.  To do this you'd need, of course, to be car camping.  Car camping, glamping, and other super plush forms of camping have their place but for the most part this kind of outdoor experience is not for me.

But I love the quote - and that love relies on an interpretation of the quote that's about as far from promoting glamping as you can get.

The quote is from the book Woodcraft and Camping which also includes a chapter titled: A Ten Day Trip in the Wilderness - Going It Alone.  In this chapter Sears traverses, by foot, a 60 mile chunk of Michigan (this was written in the 1800's so it really was a wilderness). Something tells me that when he refers to "smoothing it" he wasn't talking about hauling a two-burner stove with him.

Another tip off is that, still in the same book, he says, "Go light; the lighter the better, so that you have the simplest material for health, comfort and enjoyment."

Is it possible to go light and still smooth it?  Sure.  But it requires knowledge of how to do more with less, and most importantly, a definition of smoothing it that doesn't include being perfectly comfortable at all times.

Referring to the "smoothing it" quote, he also says, "To this end you need peaceful days and pleasant nights.  You cannot afford to be tormented and poisoned by insects, nor kept awake at night by cold and damp, nor to exhaust your strength by hard tramps and heavy loads.  Take it easy, and always keep cool."

I should mention that Sears was a slight man, 5'3" and weighing slightly over 100 lbs.  He wasn't some big brute that considered a 70 lb pack light.

I guess the next question is: what does all this have do with biking?  Many riders strip down the things they carry to maybe a granola bar and various tools to fix their bike.  If that's your style then by all means, go for it.  My frame bag lives on my bike and carries: a map, folding saw, poop kit (trowel, TP, hand sanitizer), extra cord, sheath knife, lighter, and a tool kit and pump.  Depending on what kind of ride I'm doing also included could be a lock, pot, stove, fuel for the stove, SPOT GPS device, chain lube, clothing layers.  Every single one of the things I carry sees at least occasional use - and I carry them because they make my rides better.  Maybe carrying around the extra weight slows me down, but 1) we Americans have an unhealthy obsession with speed.  I go on bike rides to interact with the outdoors, not to blast through it as quickly as possible.  2) If you enjoy riding you're probably going to do more of it, which makes you faster.  The things I carry make riding more enjoyable.

An example: last week I did some bikepacking, and took with me more than I technically needed in order to stay warm at night.  It was forecast to get down to the high 30's but I took my 0˚ sleeping bag and a sleeping pad for sleeping on snow.  I didn't think that my summer top quilt and under quilt would keep me comfortable.  Of course the warmer gear was bulkier and heavier.  I'm still glad I had it with me.

Hot Cocoa Video

You may remember that last year I made a New Year's Resolution to drink less Hot Cocoa.  I was only to have it while out on a bike ride, heated over my woodstove (none of this heat-it-at-home-and-stick-it-in-a-thermos crap).  

We mix up all of our hot cocoa mix here at home.  It's roughly a 2:1 mix of sugar and cocoa powder.  (and I've found that adding a little milk makes it about 10 times as tasty).  It's appalling just how much sugar it takes to make a mug of cocoa, and since back in 2016 I was having a few mugs a day it was really adding up.  Plus it was getting expensive.

This year I've been less strict with myself than last but I still have most of my Hot Cocoa out on rides.  

I've taken some snippets of video out on those "Hot Cocoa Rides" and a few days back I edited them into a video I put on my Youtube channel.

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.

Get Going Already! Bikepacking, Beaver, and Barbecue

For an embarrassingly long time I've wanted to do more bikepacking - but for some reason I have not...at least not much.  I've really got no excuse: public land (and free camping) just a few miles away, a flexible schedule, supportive family.  I really don't have any (good) excuses.  I finally got my act together enough to get me out the door for a quick overnight.

It was threatening rain all day and though I took my raincoat and tarp (which I would have even if it weren't threatening, in case you're wondering) it only sprinkled a bit the next morning and so lightly I didn't even bother to put my raincoat on.  But we all know that if I hadn't taken rain gear it would've poured.

I was heading to a small lake in the CNNF so first thing I had to do, besides packing, was climb the hill.

The majority of this hill is not steep (and past the pines there you can see it dips a bit) but from the Tri-County Corridor at the base of the hill it rises about 400' up to most of the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest (CNNF) north of HWY 2.

Nearing home for the night.

Several weeks ago I made some Barbecue Spaghetti to dehydrate for bikepacking sorta following this recipe.  Here it is on my alcohol stove starting to heat up.

This is where I cooked and ate supper but then moved a few hundred yards to the place where I'd sleep.  I've only ever seen a handful of bear and the ones I've seen have just about turned themselves inside out putting distance between us (this is bear hunting area) - but still I'd rather not have a solo, up-close, after-dark encounter - so I took some precautions.

While supper was festering/rehydrating I had some time to kill so I wandered around and took a few pictures.

...and gathered some water from the lake to sterilize for drinking.

...and checked how things were going in the pot.  Pot cozy design patent pending.

Thankfully once things have finished rehydrating/sponge-ing up the hot water it looked much more appealing.

View from my campsite.

As things were getting dark I was fiddling with something on my hammock when a large sploosh sounded behind me.  A beaver was letting me know that she didn't appreciate me hanging around.   

My nifty little solar light hanging from the ridgeline for the tarp (that I didn't put all the way up but if I had been awaken by rain it'd be much faster to drape my tarp over the ridgeline than start from scratch) lighting up my bed for the night.

I slept well during the night.  There aren't yet many bugs.  I saw two mosquitos - the very fact that I could count them is testament to how few there were.  Despite it dropping to around 40* F my feet stayed warm.  My feet almost always get cold - but this time I took an extra pair of thick wool socks and zipped my down vest over my footbox - that worked.

The lake is not very big (you can see almost all of it in the previous picture) so soon after I woke up (or, more accurately I should say "when I got up" because the hammock was so cozy I stayed there a while after I was awake) I took a hike around the lake.

Even if I hadn't seen the beaver the night before there was plenty of evidence of them being around.

Add caption

When I got back from my quick circumnavigation of the lake I cooked breakfast down by the lake and sat there long after I had finished eating just being at ease with the wild-ness of things.  While cooking I noticed a loon out hunting for breakfast and watched for a long while.

Add caption

After loon-watching I packed up to go.

Bike loaded and ready to rock

There are some trails nearby here that are made for horses but (as I had seen no horse trailers and had seen no horses) I went ahead and rode on them.  For the record: 1) I'm not a fast rider (and these trails were rough which slowed me down even more) and was never close to going so fast that it would have been unsafe if I had seen a horse on the trail (and there were no blind corners or hills) and 2) I'm not going to ride them again and I'd encourage other bikers not to ride them at all - if you need another reason besides that it's not a trail for bikers they're too rough - it's not a pleasant ride.

The ATV trail as it nears the Corridor and home.

SaveSave

Altitude Sickness

As the crow flies it's a little under 3.5 miles to the sandy roads of the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest.  And though it's about 400' higher than here my thought process went something like this: It's been warm here for weeks (several days pushing 60 and most of the rest have been well above freezing and the snow is virtually gone and has been for some time), it's been mostly dry, sand  drains fairly quickly.  What could go wrong?

Well I started to get an inkling as I was climbing those 400'.  But I told myself that this road had been plowed all winter and so had been deep piles of snow in the ditches that had just been slow to melt (this was true but roads down by us had been plowed all winter and the piles of snow had melted  long ago but, darn it, I just wanted to go for a ride and didn't really want to think about just what this snow could mean).  

More indications that weird things, things that I didn't completely understand, were going down.  "Neato," I thought as I stopped for a picture and then blundered on.

By now I had realized that the roads up here had not had the frost go out of them (I'm not a total moron sometimes I just act that way), the top several inches had thawed but below that was still frozen and so things couldn't drain.  I had found that riding down the side of the road - in the leaves - was better but that it sometimes unexpectedly got soft.

In what could be fairly accurately described as doofu-ness, I kept moving forward, farther away from home.  I told myself that there was a chance that the next road could be different.

I was a bit chagrined when I got to the intersection of the next road only to find this:

It might not have been muddy but it was obviously soft and soft = slow, tiring, and frustrating.

At that intersection a sane person would have cut their losses, turned around, and ridden the soggy road back towards home.  For some reason I decided that it didn't look that bad and continued on.  Doofus-ness. But - surprise, surprise - it just kept getting worse:

Most of the time the ice was surprisingly hard and, even though it was quite rotten, made for comparatively firm riding (although since we are comparing it to several inch deep muck that's not saying much).  Suddenly, and with no visibly change in the ice that I could see, you'd break through - which is what happened here.  I broke through, wallowed to a stop and had some soul-searching to do.  I was riding a loop and I was nearing the part of it where it's as far to go back as to keep forward - and, well, I just didn't want to turn around.  I was feeling fine, my hands/wrists didn't hurt (I was trying out some Jones Loop bars and had been off the bike pushing fairly often) it was a beautiful day.  Behind me was known: sloppy, tough, slow riding.  Ahead of me lay a similar distance of unknown (although, in all probability, things weren't going to change).  After a few moments of indecision I kept going.

Not too long after that my heart soared when I saw this:

It's a bit hard to see in the picture but the grey rock is coarser and made for a nice, firm road.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My heart sank when not 50 yards later I came to the top of the hill and was greeted by this scene:

All our snow back at home has been gone for several weeks.  It's just a few degrees cooler up here (because of the elevation) but it's amazing what just a few degrees can mean.

Completely dry sand directly next to sand so wet that  it was splashed out as this truck tire track was laid.

Although there are worse ways to spend a gorgeous afternoon than outside doing something you love, I was still happy to get back to firm ground.  It meant more riding and less slogging.  This road had been plowed regularly all winter.