Duluth, MN to Kingston, ON
The story of my Great Lakes bicycle trip begins and ends with the emotions connected with a tragedy. This is not one of my usual travelogues. I suppose it mirrors more of what must have been on H.D. Thoreau's mind when he sat down to write A Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers. That was an homage to the memory of his brother John. He wrote it while sitting in his cabin at Walden Pond. It was his first published book and it was a financial failure.
He had been encouraged to publish by his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson but no publisher wanted to touch the thing so, on Emerson's urging it is suggested, he put up the money to self-publish. It's failure to earn back his investment was a strain, so it is said, in his relationship with R.W.E.
When my most honest critic, Faye, to whom I have been married now 37 years, reads the beginning of this trip report, she will tell me I'm wasting mine and everyone else's time. It will be longer and more involved than any other trip report I've ever written. I know this before I've written even 200 words. I realized this would evolve into more than the usual travelogue because of what I witnessed and because of the change that has occurred so recently in my life.
Thoreau's older brother John was a hero to him. It was probably mostly at his brother's urging that they had built a dory and launched it on the Concord River. They rowed it downstream, reaching the Merrimac, and then followed that upstream to Hooksett, NH. They left the boat to journey to the White Mountains by stage and on foot, later to return and travel in it back to Concord. I have read only the abridged edition of the book. I loved it because of its travelogue features, its descriptions of the surrounding countryside and the portraits of the people living on and along the two rivers in the early 1800s. Thoreau mixes travelogue with philosophy in the book. Even the abridged edition allows digression into his philosophizing about the “Hindoo” religion and other topics. Thoreau was a philosopher but I must think that his first book was neither fish nor fowl, neither travelogue nor philosophic treatise and that must have been why it wasn't well received.
I am not a philosopher. I can't turn a phrase with Thoreau's eloquence and that is why this will probably be a waste of time in terms of its readability. Those who have liked my past trip reports will be put off by the rambling and those who look for philosophy will find mine to be fairly plain spun. So be it. I attribute the desire to depart from my more traditional approach all to those thoughts sent swirling in my mind because of the incident and, as I said, the recent change that has occurred in my life. I am writing this more for my own sake, to sort things out as I go along and if it intrigues you to follow me on that kind of journey, so much the better.
Two years after their Merrimac River trip, John Thoreau Jr., Henry's older brother by three years, took his last agonized gasps of breath as he died from tetanus while being held in Henry's arms. The effect that had on H.D.T. is said to have been profound. I make no claim to anything quite so demoralizing as that in drawing parallels between our two experiences. The one and only parallel I wish to lay claim to is that, because of my own internal struggles, I too have succumbed to writing something that is neither travelogue nor philosophic treatise. It could be one long rambling stream of consciousness. It will likely suffer the same fate as A Week... which Emerson is said to have called “a very slender thread for such big beads & ingots as are strung on it,” though I am willing to accept that the beads and ingots of this particular thread probably lack that kind of magnitude. The one important difference is that we now live in the age where self-publication is a fairly inexpensive gamble. I can indulge my desire to share my thoughts widely without fears of becoming a debtor.
My name is Philip Keach Lussier. For the present what I am going to tell you is the account of a 14 day bicycle trip from Duluth, MN to Kingston, ON that I made during the end of August and the beginning of September in 2014. The account needs to start somewhere and to set the stage for this one I should explain that two week trips are something of a modus operandi for me. I'm not sure how they evolved exactly but I know I am drawn to them partly because my late maternal grandfather, Leon Keach, was one who also took two-week vacations in the White Mountains, though he referred to them as “fortnight cross-country adventures.” He too had a self-published work called Glencliff to Gorham: A cross-country adventure with the League for Leaner Loins. In that particular case he describes a hike that he and two companions made along what is now largely the route of the Appalachian Trail from Glencliff, NH to Gorham, NH in 1927. The “League” he refers to is a limited membership society created back in those days by my grandfather and a few of his hiking friends. It was always tongue in cheek serious and even has its own coat of arms registered with the Royal College of Arms in London.
One continuing reason for a two-week time limit is the need to be around home during the summer haying time. My wife and I have a farm. As a teacher, with time off in the summer, the usual order of events ran as: school year ends in late June, first cutting of hay begins immediately and, weather permitting, is over by early July. There has been a Scottish festival that we participate in by bringing our Shetland sheep as part of the “Animals of Scotland” exhibit that happens the third weekend of July and then I'm cleared for take-off. Two weeks later it's time to start the second cutting of hay and at the same time get ready to go back to teaching, while working in a possible third cutting during the first weeks of September. Two weeks is also the limit of time Faye wants to be left alone to cope with the numerous responsibilities associated with managing the farm and its many animals consisting of: sheep, cows, horses, chickens, dogs and cats.
I've used the two-week window to take long hikes on the Long Trail in Vermont and Cohos Trail in New Hampshire as well as bicycle rides to the north and west from my home in Ashfield, Mass. The most recent ride, during the summer of 2013, was north to the Gaspe penninsula in Quebec and a return via rail and bus as far as White River Junction, VT where Faye picked me up.
The big change in my life recently is that I retired from teaching at the end of the past school year. It changed the formula in that I did not need to work my two-week absence in between the first and second cutting but could shift it to the time between the second and third cutting because the beginning of school, at the end of August, now held no particular significance for me. This summer's trip had actually started out as a sequel to my time in the Gaspe and a desire to revisit Nova Scotia and see Prince Edward Island for the first time. It coincided nicely with the revival of ferry service from Portland, ME to Yarmouth, NS that began this summer. I balked when I discovered the cost of the round trip fare for the ferry however and began to wonder where else I could go for that much money. It turned out that one-way bus fare to the western end of the Great Lakes was not much more than half as expensive as the ferry ride to and from Nova Scotia and so the plan shifted to driving as far as Kingston, ON and taking buses as far as Duluth, MN.
I picked Kingston as the starting and ending place for the bus and bike journey because I had already pedaled through there two summers ago. That trip had Algonquin Park in Ontario as its hoped for turnaround point, though that particular objective was never achieved. The planned for return to the U.S. was via the Wolfe Island and Cape Vincent ferries, the first of which starts from Kingston. That much of the plan was realized and if you enjoy travelogues, without much of the digressive philosophy you will be experiencing in this account, you can read about that trip here: https://sites.google.com/site/twodaysonthekickandpush/
My thinking was that with Kingston as the ending place for this summer's bike ride it would then be possible to say that I had ridden (in sections) from Duluth to my home in Massachusetts and, if combined with other rides I've done, really from Duluth all the way to the eastern shoreline of the continent. If I was to map out another two-week ride for next summer it might possibly be from Calgary to Duluth. If that worked, the following summer might be from Vancouver to Calgary. With all of these sections combined I could then say I had ridden from coast to coast. At any rate this trip by itself had significance in that Duluth was at the extreme western end of Lake Superior and Kingston is at the extreme eastern end of Lake Ontario. By riding from one to the other I could say that I had traversed the length of the Great Lakes on this ride.
The bus ride, as it finally evolved, meant an 8 p.m. departure from Kingston on either a Tuesday or Thursday in order to achieve a 1 a.m. transfer in Toronto for a bus to Sault Ste. Marie, ON. That bus would arrive in S.S.M. at 11:30 a.m. and, if I could get across to the city of the same name on the Michigan side of the St. Marys River, there was a connection at 1:13 a.m., the following morning, that would take me to Duluth by noon of that day. Getting across the Canada/U.S. border in S.S.M. seemed a bit of a challenge but I discovered there was an hourly “Bridge Bus” that traveled between the two city centers. It was complicated, but no where near as complicated as trying to travel entirely via U.S. bus lines.
For starters, there are no bus lines serving Cape Vincent, which is the closest place to Kingston on the U.S. side of the border. Syracuse and Utica, two of the cities traversed during the 2012 ride, have interstate bus connections. But, starting out from either of them would have required returning there to recover my truck, adding an extra day to the total, while forcing me to cover ground I'd already ridden. As messy as the eventual bus route came to be, it was still the best of many alternatives including rail and air travel. I am partial to using public transportation as much as possible. When my grandfather made his fortnight journeys he always traveled by train. The North Station in Boston, MA was his connection to the trains that ran daily to the White Mountains of New Hampshire. The two towns mentioned in his 1927 account were both train stops of that era. Those days are now long gone, brought about by the American infatuation with the automobile.
The U.S. is unique among nations for its relative lack of public transportation options (at least over the ground). Canada remains slightly better, though the spell of Henry Ford seems to be very powerful there as well. Is there any reason to hope for a change in the future? Advocates for improved rail and bus transportation certainly exist but the lobby against government subsidies for such initiatives is strong and the marketplace is a long way from providing the required impetus. What prevents people from choosing public means of transportation? It certainly can't be the accident rate.
A recent study in Research in Transportation Economics, “Comparing the Fatality Risks in United States Transportation Across Modes and Over Time,” which I found reviewed on the Internet in Journalist's Resource, (see: http://journalistsresource.org/studies/environment/transportation/ comparing-fatality-risks-united-states-transportation-across-modes-time#,) gives the following interesting statistics: in terms of increasing risk one has commercial airline travel at the bottom with 0.07 fatalities per billion passenger miles (f/bpm) followed by commercial buses with 0.11 f/bpm, and trains with 0.15 f/bpm. Cars come in at 7.3 f/bpm. The article says: “A person who is in a motor vehicle for 30 miles every day for a year faced a fatality risk of about 1 in 12,500. Relative to mainline trains, buses, and commercial aviation the risk was 17, 67, and 112 times greater.”
The most sobering statistic had to do with motorcycles. They had a fatality rate in 2013 of 212 f/bpm. That's a 29 times greater risk than automobiles, 493 times greater risk than trains, 1945 times greater risk than buses and 3252 times greater risk than airplanes.
When I was 15 years old my family moved from the eastern side of Massachusetts to the extreme western side, called Berkshire County, and to the town of Lenox. On one of my first days there I was quite astounded to see someone my own age, whom I did not yet know, shooting baskets using the net that was suspended on the side of our house above the garage door. Who he was was Timothy Stearns and he grew to be one of my best friends over the course of the ensuing 41 years. The friendship came to a premature end when he was killed in a motorcycle accident on May 31, 2009. It is hard to put into words the effect that has had on me. It is also hard to sum up succinctly the connection we had made in our lives but the easiest way to do that is to reproduce here, in its entirety, the eulogy I shared at his memorial service. You can easily skip it if it appears to be too much of a digression but since digression is the theme, here it is:
Speaking about Tim is both easy and difficult. Easy, because he was so unique. No one I knew had a friend like Tim. I could share Tim stories with everyone and no one could ever seem to top them. Talking about him really borders on the realm of telling tall tales.
It’s difficult to speak about him because you can’t sum him up in a few words. His life was not a single thread but more of a whole cloth and the threads run in too many directions and make too many intersections.
I’ll try and grab just one of those threads and follow it a short way. It started when, at the age of 15, and newly moved into a house in Lenox, I saw some kid ride his bike into our driveway and start shooting baskets against the backboard on the side of our house. I was prepared to not like someone who, uninvited and unannounced, decided to take advantage of our hoop. I can’t remember how long that resolve to not like him lasted. I don’t think it outlived the first meeting and in fact I’m prepared to say it probably didn’t make it past the first couple of sentences.
The Cabin on Lily Pond
Tim was the kind of person who immediately let you know he had your best interests at heart. It probably became obvious to me within the first minute of our first meeting that the whole reason he was at our house was to welcome us to the neighborhood and introduce himself as a possible new friend, though knowing him now the way I do, there were criteria to his selection of friends and how I reacted in those moments went a long way toward determining the length and depth of that friendship.
Fortunately there were many common interests that we shared and the most important at that early stage was the cabin that he and a select few of his friends were building in the woods above the shore of Lily Pond. I don’t remember how long it took for me to be brought into that inner circle of friends but for the first epoch in our friendship the cabin was the focal point. If Tim and I had later grown apart with age and only rarely kept in touch over the years the cabin could still have served as the foundation for a rich and well-remembered experience. How often do teenage kids follow through on their dreams of having something like their own log cabin in the woods? It may have been the combination of all our efforts but I have to believe that Tim was the linchpin that held the group together and kept us working at it.
I returned the favor by introducing Tim to my family’s love for canoeing and backpacking. When I learned to rock climb he became one of my steady climbing partners. Perhaps the biggest favor we did was introducing him to sailing; a seed that grew in such rich soil that there are not many of us here that don’t think first of Tim’s love for the sea and the boats that have carried him upon it.
But that came later. High school drew to a close. During my senior year Tim, Steve Crowe and I did two multi-day winter trips together, one in Vermont and the other in New Hampshire. It was the first of many winter trips that he and I would do over the years, the most recent having happened just this past February.
To Israel and Europe
But still I keep following the intersecting threads and I need to get back to the one I am on. Tim and the family went to Israel. I corresponded regularly with him and learned of his plan to travel through Europe. I dropped out of UMass halfway through my sophomore year and went to Europe to be with him and hopefully travel that part of the world together. I finally tracked him down living in a room at Frau Weigle’s house in Kafertal near Mannheim. Tim was working for Uri Bessler helping in the installation of lightning rods. There are some very funny stories from that experience but telling them would take me off of the thread that I’m on.
Try as I might I could not find work to stretch my meager travel budget long enough to tide me over until he’d earned enough money from his job for us to set out on what would have been the adventure of a lifetime: riding bicycles from Europe to Israel. I left Germany and eventually found myself living in a Christian commune in Geneva. By the time Tim came through, on his way back to Israel and then the States, I was very committed to the work I was doing there and our paths looked as though they were parting for good.
And though we did reconnect when both of us were back in the States a couple of years later there were no more multiday shared adventures for quite a few years as Tim made his way south on board I.I. and settled for a while in the Chesapeake, started a family and lived the life of a waterman; yet other threads we could spend time following.
Faith and Acceptance
The winter trips did eventually resume with an ascent 23 years ago of Camel’s Hump in Vermont that brought Tim, Steve and me back together again. After that, these trips became annual events and Tim was there for the majority of them. They became important platforms for dreaming about other shared adventures as well, such as the transAtlantic passage and the North Sea trip.
The thread that I am following is about his life of adventure. Tim was my ideal when I think of that kind of life, as he was with very many of us. In Edward Kennedy’s eulogy for his brother Bobby he quoted Shaw’s statement to say of him that: "Some men see things as they are and say why; I dream things that never were and say why not?" The same can be said about Tim.
To launch out into the unknown, to tackle seemingly impossible tasks, to continue on in the face of setbacks all seemed to be a natural part of Tim’s constitution and he was able to do it, most of the time, in good humor; and even when not, the dark clouds seemed to pass quickly enough. I loved adventure too but early in our mutual relationship there was something lacking in my background that prevented me from adopting Tim’s easy acceptance of whatever life happened to dish up.
'Oh Ye of Little Faith'
I think I found out what I had been lacking the day I became a Christian. Tim had been giving me hints all through our high school days together but I was pretty resistant to them. There were two though, that will stay with me forever.
The first time was on our high school wintertime Vermont Long Trail trip. We had planned to reach a cabin for the night but found ourselves woefully short of our goal when night closed in. There was no trail to follow once we lost the daylight and our equipment was inadequate for the bitter cold we were in. I openly despaired of our eventual survival and told Tim so. He turned to me and said “fear not little children” and when I reacted unfavorably, responded with “Oh ye of little faith!”
Not long afterward, on a warmer trip to the summit of Mt. Jefferson, I wanted to proudly share my appreciation of the magnificent vista that was laid out before us as we gazed toward the north from above treeline in the White Mountains. Tim was able to put all of my, at the time, agnostic skepticism into a neat little package for me to weigh when he responded, “And you think all of this happened by accident.”
For those of us here, adventures await; some that are even “Tim-sized.” But big or small, there is an ultimate adventure that still awaits every one of us. I would desperately have loved to follow Tim into many more adventures like the ones we’ve already had but he has left me behind for now.
Leading the Way
If Tim was the skipper and I could be his crewmate, all was right with the world.
When I left college and went to Europe to meet up with him it was during a period of intense confusion in my life. I was reluctant, but Tim insisted, writing that I would forever know “only the taste of American apple pie” until I tried something different. I also went there because Tim had led the way out of some tricky places before and I felt he had the ability to help lead me out of that one too.
Tim didn’t directly lead me out of that morass but he more than anybody was the one who had first shown me the path to Him who leads us all out of our morass. Our friend Steve later found the same path when he came to Europe in a similar frame of mind to see me. So in a very real way those words of Tim’s, to fear not and keep faith, have continued to point the way for both of us during this whole adventure we call life.
My favorite picture from our winter traverse of the Mahoosuc mountain range last February was of Tim leading the way up the final pitch to the summit of Goose Eye Mountain. The sun was just breaking over the summit and he appears to be climbing right into it. The stunted trees on both sides of the trail are covered in rime ice and snow adding a startling antiseptic whiteness to the scene. It’s another picture of Tim leading the way, just as he is right now, going ahead on our way toward that ultimate adventure.
There is a blogspot dedicated to his memory. If you are interested in seeing it the url is: http://timstearns.typepad.com/captain_tim/
Tim, all by himself, could be the subject of an entire book. Suffice it to say for the purposes of this narrative, his interest in motorcycles was one that I shared. He led the way in that department too, being the first one of all of my friends to own his own motorcycle which, in his case, was a Yamaha 350 2-stroke that he acquired, in very used condition, while still in high school and fixed up and got running with the help of his friends.
He took it on a trip to the Cape and I was so envious of his new-found independence that I announced that I was going to use the money I had been saving for an Outward Bound course to buy a motorcycle instead. My father was adamant that I would do no such thing as long as I lived under his roof. He was not a fan of motorcycles since he had lost a good friend to one earlier in his life. Not willing to call my father's bluff, I went to Outward Bound as planned and remain grateful that had been the outcome. I discovered more meaning in a single day at North Carolina Outward Bound School than I would have gotten with a motorcycle in my remaining three years as a teenager.
I finally did get a motorcycle, a Yamaha 650 4-stroke, when 21 years old after spending a winter in Aspen, CO and needing a means for returning to Massachusetts that spring. I rode it across the country, stretching the ride out into a 3000 mile journey by traveling first to New Mexico and then to Michigan, starting the final leg of the journey riding through Canada and reentering the U.S. at Niagara Falls. My courtship of Faye began on that motorcycle and when it was worn out I replaced it with a newer version of the same model. I've never outgrown the desire to ride a motorcycle but economically they have ceased to be a practical addition to my life and I have not had another since I sold that second one.
I am very sympathetic to motorcycle owners among whom I number many of my students and fellow faculty members and other friends. I too, have taken a motorcycle up to 100 mph to see what it was like and I am now quite attuned to the dangers of the things and have had my own close calls and have been with other riders at the time when they were not as fortunate to escape their's less scathed. I believe Tim was a responsible motorcycle rider but the circumstances surrounding his death are sketchy. It involved a collision with an oncoming car and a sudden downpour was also supposed to have been a factor. Beyond that I do not know. I asked his son to give me the details when the police report was released but either it never did reach his hands, he forgot my request, or for some reason has declined to share it with me. I've wanted to know. It would help me get a bit of closure on his death, but I don't want to bring it up with his family. It is probably very painful for them. All the same, the vagueness of the actual circumstances of Tim's death make dealing with the experience I will now recount that much more difficult.
I figured it might take about five hours of actual driving time to make the journey from home to the bus station in Kingston. I padded that amount by a couple of hours just to make sure I didn't miss the bus. I had over $200 worth of non-refundable bus tickets, all purchased on-line, and I did not want to waste that amount of money. By leaving on Tuesday, in this case August 27, I expected to arrive in Duluth midday on a Thursday. That was important because one of the first things I planned to do was mail my travel clothes, shoes and hockey bag back home from Duluth. I didn't want to take the Thursday bus (the only other weekly option) from Kingston because that would have landed me in Duluth on the following Saturday. I wasn't sure about the mailing situation after noon on a Saturday.
Before departing I noticed the oil in my truck hadn't been changed in over 4000 miles. Ooops! I Googled “oil changes” and found a Valvoline in East Greenbush, NY that could do a while-you-wait oil change. I allowed a bit of extra time for that as well.
Things seemed to be going very smoothly until I was 3/4ths of the way to my destination, while traveling up Rt. 12 north of Utica. It's mostly farm country with the road alternating between two lanes and divided four lanes. At some point I saw a county sheriff's cruiser parked conspicuously on a high point on my side of the highway. If I wasn't already going at it, I probably slowed down to the speed limit at the sight. I can't remember for certain but that is my usual reflex. The speed limit was 55 for all the open stretches of that highway.
I don't think it was more than five or ten minutes later, while on a section of the highway that may have been divided or not, still going, as I assume I must have been, about 55, the doppler-effected scream of a redlined motorcycle engine snapped me to attention and I looked up the road to the left catching a fleeting glimpse of a kid on a crotch rocket, who had been the source of that noise, as he disappeared around a corner at what seemed to be faster than 100 mph. It happened so quickly I was deeply shocked. He was out of sight almost instantly. I say “he” and “kid” only from body type. I didn't have a really clear sense of the rider at all. What I did have a clear sense of was that this was a seriously dangerous situation that I could do nothing about except dread the outcome.
Things were not helped when a couple of minutes later the sheriff's cruiser came roaring by at a high rate of speed with lights flashing. I can't remember if the siren was also going. I just thought this could be like throwing gasoline on a fire and I hoped the officer would break off the chase to allow this kid a chance to slow down. I even hoped I'd see the kid coming out from hiding after ducking down some side road and I kept looking for that with earnest desire.
What I did see, another ten minutes or more up the highway, was a plume of smoke rising just beyond a rise in the road. I recall distinctly that this was a section of two-way road and after cresting the rise I could see up ahead a smallish car with a heavily damaged right front end. It was steaming or smoking from the front. The sheriff's deputy was approaching the car with a fire extinguisher in hand and there was a woman standing near the deputy and two men had stopped to render assistance. I passed the scene slowly with my eyes on the people crossing the road and not on the vehicle.
Just past the car I could see portions of the grassy shoulder that looked scorched or covered with black oil. I couldn't tell exactly which. Mostly obscured from view in the ditch was a blackened, crumpled, and twisted collection of tubes that possessed one bent but clearly visible NY state license plate. I looked into the rear view mirror as I got beyond that point and noticed flames were now coming out from underneath the hood of the car.
I would like to have said that all of my years of EMT experience and training kicked into gear and I stopped to help out. Instead I shuddered at the thought of adding another view of a dead body to the collection of such sights that reside in my memory. I was just a passing traveler. I had no “duty to act” as a paid or volunteer member of the local rescue service. It looked like there was already enough help on hand to do whatever needed doing. I did not have a fire extinguisher and so I kept going.
During the subsequent few miles, until I reached the next town center, one rescue vehicle after another approached from the oncoming direction. I slowed and pulled over as each one passed. When I did reach the town I drove into an empty parking lot behind a building and sat for a while with the engine off. I couldn't really believe what I had seen. I prayed. I expected at least one person had died back there. I prayed that there were no others. I prayed that the families involved would be able to deal with their loss. I prayed for the courage to continue.
Was this some omen for my journey? Should I turn around and go home? I couldn't know the answer to that without continuing on and so I did, slowly and deliberately. Because I was so distracted at that point, I felt nervous about driving over the speed limit and was very cautious for the rest of the drive which involved a wrong turn while leaving Watertown and an unscheduled drive by the entrance to Fort Drum. Other than that there were no other issues except some minor confusion following the last mile of Google directions to the bus station.
The attendant at the counter in the bus station reaffirmed what I'd been told about leaving my truck for two weeks time: put it in the gravel lot behind the Tim Hortons next door. Tim Hortons, for the uninitiated, is the ubiquitous Dunkin Donuts cum McDonalds of Canada (or at least of the eastern provinces since I have yet to travel west of Ontario). There were two restaurant franchises in Labrador City when I went there in 2010. One was McDs the other a “Tim's.” I suspect the Tims was there first. They are ostensibly a doughnut shop but have expanded over the years and fill a niche similar to a full-sized Dunkin Donuts here in New England. I'm not sure what other analogues exist outside my home region.
I unloaded my stuff and stacked it against the wall of the bus station. I parked the truck and double checked the location since the little lot was actually paved, à la chip seal (oil and stone), and not strictly “gravel” as I understood a gravel lot to be. It was the right place. I paid a $33 luggage surcharge for the bicycle and received a receipt for it. I went over to the Tim's and got a coffee and then waited for the bus. I called Faye on the payphone in the bus station. Now that I was in Canada my cellphone, a no-contract, pay-as-you-go Tracfone, was no longer able to obtain a signal. This has been the case every previous time I've been to Canada and I'm used to it. I have a calling card that allows me access to a toll-free number and a very inexpensive calling rate. As long as I can find a payphone I can easily stay in touch with home.
Fortunately the frequency of payphones in Canada is much greater than it is in the U.S. All the same, they are disappearing there as well; such that small towns in which I could have found a phone during my 2008 ride across southern Quebec probably no longer have them. I have asked Tracfone if they have any kind of international dialing plan but they don't seem to understand what I am asking for, either deliberately or because of poor English comprehension on the part of their information providers. They cheerfully state that they have a number one can use to make international calls. The problem is that in this case my phone can't dial any numbers since it can't obtain any service. The best I can figure is that it means you can save money making international calls with your Tracfone while in an area where you already obtain service.
The bus arrived and I had no difficulty loading my bicycle and hockey bag, containing the panniers and all the gear for the trip, into the luggage compartment underneath the bus. There were only 5 people on the bus which was bound for Toronto. I had a seat all to myself. I sat for a while reading Jeff Shaara's Gone for Soldiers about the Mexican-American war. My handlebar bag was serving as my carry-on bag. It has a removable shoulder strap and works well for this purpose. I was carrying a bottle of water as well as fruit and various snack food items for eating during the journey. It was too dark to see anything outside the bus and after a while, using a stuff sack with some extra clothes as a pillow, I went to sleep.
I woke up as we were approaching Toronto. The city is very large. I wasn't prepared for the scale of it. I have since learned that it is the fourth-largest city in North America. Only Mexico City, New York and Los Angeles have more people. We seemed to spend quite a long time approaching the city on the divided highway we were following. Eventually we reached an exit and entered the downtown area. The bus station was not correspondingly large but it was quite busy. My transfer was scheduled to leave at 1:00 a.m. That represented about an hour and 35 minute wait. I found a spot off to the side for my luggage and stood nearby. There was a long line for a bus to New York City. When it arrived it was a double-decker; a sort of a jumbo jet of buses I guess. The company that runs it is called Megabus. It appeared to be an express to NYC.
When my bus, a Greyhound, arrived it was towing a trailer, a distinctly non-U.S. sight to process. The trailer was labeled as a “package express.” When the driver saw my bicycle box he said it posed a problem for him since he was driving a handicapped lift capable bus and the lift mechanism robbed him of the adequate amount of space to accommodate the bike in the bus's cargo compartment. He told me he was going to load it into the trailer. There was no problem with that except the fact that he was not driving the bus as far as Sault Ste. Marie and, when it was time to disembark, I would need to tell the replacement driver that the bike was back there.
I helped him load the box into the trailer and took a seat on the bus a few seats back on the driver's side. The bus filled up and eventually a young Pakistani-Canadian, as I later learned, asked if he could sit next to me. I said sure. We didn't talk very much at that point since both of us were anxious to get to sleep but in the morning, approaching Sault Ste. Marie I learned that his name was Habil and he was bound for Calgary to stay with some friends of his wife's family. He wanted to take the bus out to Calgary to see the country. His plan was to fly back to Toronto. We shared an interest in hiking. He told me of some of the areas he'd hiked in Ontario. He was interested in my plans and I gave him some contact info so that if he was interested in getting the trip report at some later date he could contact me. We parted company in S.S.M. and wished each other good luck with our respective adventures.
I, for one, felt it might be necessary to cash in on that wish. The road shoulders I'd witnessed as we approached “the Soo” were not very wide. I did see one cyclotourist going east. I couldn't exactly see the expression on his face but I imagined it wasn't a smile. I guessed I'd find out in a week's time how much fun he was having.
Probably the crux of the bus journey was getting from the Canadian side to the U.S. side of S.S.M. I wasn't at all sure that, first, the Bridge Bus could even accommodate my bike box and, second, that U.S. customs would understand my reasons for such a convoluted route of travel. I had called ahead to the city chamber of commerce on the Michigan side, who was responsible for the operation of the bus, to determine whether the bike box would be allowed. They were never completely reassuring on that score but never said no either. Failing that, I hoped that my ace in the hole would be finding a cab company to take me across the bridge.
The first cab company I called informed me they no longer took passengers over the bridge which had something to do with “insurance” issues. They thought Yellow Cab did still take people across. I stored that name away just in case. I had also posted a question to an Internet bicycle forum on the subject of the Bridge Bus, hoping someone from the area had some sense of what my chances were for getting the bike across. No answer was ever forthcoming before I left however.
I borrowed Habil's phone to make the call to Union Cab, the first company on my Googled list. I informed them of the need for a cab that could accommodate a bicycle-sized box. Almost immediately a minivan from that company arrived at the bus station but since I'd been told I had a 15-20 min. wait I figured, rightly, that the cab was for someone else and it was. Habil however who hadn't heard the other side of the conversation I'd had with the company was astounded at the rapid service until he saw them pick up a different passenger and depart.
It was the same cab that came back later to claim me. We had no difficulty loading the bike into the back with the seat down. I sat up front with the driver. The $10 fare for getting me to the Station Mall was more than I had expected but the Bridge Bus was only going to cost me $1 because I now qualified for their “senior” fare being over 60. I figured I'd need a cab on the U.S. side. I hoped it wouldn't also cost more than $10. First, however, I needed to get onto the bus.
The Station Mall entrance had a sign indicating it was a stop for the bus to the U.S. A bus schedule downloaded from the Internet stated an arrival at the Station Mall at hourly intervals at 20 min. past each hour. I had nearly one hour to wait. At almost precisely 20 min. past 2 p.m. I saw a handicapped accessible van arriving. I figured that could be it and started dragging my box and bag toward the curb. The bus didn't even stop but continued on past me too quickly to hail the driver. I was quite perplexed. Was that the bus? Nothing else came by and so I mentally prepared myself for another hour's wait. Normally something like this in everyday life would lead me into a towering rage. I realized in this case that since my bus to Duluth was still nearly 11 hours away I didn't really have any pressing alternatives for my time. I did need to use the men's room.
I took a nearby shopping cart and threw my hockey bag into it. The bike was just going to have to look after itself. I went into the mall entrance looking for the restroom sign, found one and returned to the bike with a short stop at a payphone to leave Faye a message regarding my current situation. I hoped to soon have cell service and talk with her directly. Since this was a Wednesday she would be working out of town at a farm which produced yogurt. She was the yogurt boxer.
She's been doing it for about five years now having started out when the farm was still located in our town and just beginning to find a market for its products. Now it was located in the next town to the west high up on a hilltop which made its name, Sidehill Farm, a bit of an anachronism. She's done a number of different jobs with them over the years besides the boxing: milk bottler and production assistant among others. The level of production had increased to a point at which she had gone from a two-day per week part time job to a four-day per week nearly full time job. Her commitment had grown to where she couldn't devote enough time to our own farming and needed to scale back, which she has done for the past year.
At almost precisely 20 past the hour the same handicapped accessible van appeared but this time I was standing on the curb waving when it approached. The driver seemed surprised and double-checked with me that I was interested in going to the U.S. I said I was and dragged my box into the van and took a seat next to it in a space that could alternatively have served to accommodate a wheelchair. I paid my $1.00 fare and we went to the second stop on the Ontario side and waited a few minutes before continuing on. As we left, he informed me we would be needing to stop at Canadian customs to claim a passenger whom the Canadians had detained for additional questioning before they would be willing to allow entry. We stopped and he got out to ask about the status of his passenger. The individual in question was a fiftyish, somewhat overweight, guy who climbed onto the bus holding a sheaf of papers and lugging a couple of duffel bags.
He'd been refused entry into the country. The driver had earlier informed me that should that be the case this individual would also need to answer questions before being readmitted to the U.S. He needn't have told me. I already knew the drill. About 10 years ago Faye and I had rented an Enterprise cargo van and, along with our border collies, driven out to Allegan, MI for the Michigan Fiber Festival. Faye was newly elected to the North American Shetland Sheepbreeder's Association's board of directors and recently accepted the appointment as its secretary. Other board members were traveling to the fiber festival and it seemed like a good reason to go since she was interested in acquiring some Shetlands of different genetic background than our current ones in order to augment her breeding program. There was also some business items before the board which could be more easily handled on a face-to-face basis.
To make the journey a bit more scenic I suggested we travel through Ontario for the outgoing trip. On the return journey we were obligated to stay in the U.S. since we'd be transporting sheep. There was an outright ban on the transport of sheep and cattle between the U.S. and Canada as a result of a recent outbreak of foot and mouth disease in the U.K. To save time and expense we had fitted out the van for transporting the sheep before departure including putting a couple bales of hay in the back. We chose to enter Canada via the Rainbow Bridge in Niagara Falls. When asked if we were bringing anything into the country I innocently mentioned the hay. The customs agent took a moment to check with her superiors and then told us we would be refused entry until we disposed of the hay. We would have to find someplace on the U.S. side of the border to do that.
They turned us around but upon arriving at the U.S. customs checkpoint we were told to pull out of line, park the van and come inside the facility. There were a few questions asked and then we were told to wait and wait and wait. Faye was full of self-recrimination because she had been very careful to obtain all of the necessary paperwork that allowed us to bring our dogs with us and had checked and rechecked the restrictions on agricultural products. The Canadian website she'd consulted did not specifically mention hay being prohibited though it did have a long list of things that were. In the end we were allowed reentry into the U.S. but for a while it seemed as though we might be forced to live an existence similar to Viktor Navorski, the Tom Hanks character in The Terminal, in our case being neither able to enter Canada nor return to the United States. Needless to say we kept the hay and abandoned the idea of reentering Canada, traveling exclusively in the U.S. for the remainder of the trip.
I expected my fellow passenger to undergo the same scrutiny. I asked him what had happened and he launched into a harangue of the manufacturing sectors of Canada and the U.S. for not recognizing Costa Rica as an important market for their products. Something about a wood chipper factored into the monologue. He was trying to gain access to Canada to spread the word and also find work. He had recently returned from Costa Rica where he had seen the need for well-manufactured products first hand and wanted to sound the alarm that the Chinese were making attempts to fill the vacuum. He was a self-proclaimed representative for the Deuteria Corporation (or something that sounded like that.) He attributed the difficulty he'd just experienced in entering Canada to a “tiff” that had developed between the two countries. And so on. It was obvious within the first few minutes of the conversation why the Canadians had detained him, though he seemed harmless enough as a fellow traveler.
We stopped in the pre-customs line of cars waiting on the bridge. I turned on my cell phone and was pleased to see it was able to obtain service. I dialed Faye's cellphone number and she answered. There was an immediate problem in her hearing my responses. I raised the volume of my voice. I yelled for her to turn up the volume on her phone. I hung up. I redialed the number. Same thing. I tried again. This time I was able to make myself heard but the conversation had to be kept short because we were approaching the customs window. I told her I'd call her back once I was through customs.
I handed the driver my Mass. driver's license and passport card. My fellow passenger, who I came to learn was named Neil, did the same. There was some delay but the agent returned to the window making a laughing statement that our driver was to be detained but the two of us were free to go. “Ha ha!” Both Neil and I were asked to disembark. A somewhat burly agent informed us that our luggage was going to be searched and we would need to wait inside. I think I might have been asked for my relationship with Neil and I informed them I was just a fellow passenger on the Bridge Bus and had no prior contact with him. I told them what my plans were and what was in the box labeled “bicycle” as well as what was in the hockey bag.
While having a flashback to my stay in Niagara Falls the two of us were given a seat on the “Group W” bench and told to wait. Various other travelers came and went from the windows interspersed along a counter that stretched the length of the room we were in. Bear hunters were asked to declare their possessions before being allowed reentry into the country. A college-aged kid was being informed that his arrest record for some offense had placed him in a persona non grata category and he would have to correct the record before he could travel between the two countries. All the while Neil and I sat and watched people come and go. Neil continued to attribute it all to the manufacturing tiff that he said was making it difficult for him to speak to the necessary people to achieve his objectives. Neil wondered why we were still sitting there. I suspected our conversation was being monitored and I was reluctant to say anything about why we should be detained, drawing on any prior experience of such things. It wouldn't do to have some customs agent hear me say how I'd been through this before and that I suspected they just keep you waiting to see if you sweat or crack under the pressure. All I did say was I doubted whether U.S. customs supplied complementary duct tape to allow one to reclose his bicycle box once it was opened for inspection. I had visions of having to repack my bicycle once they had opened the Pandora's box of carefully loaded pieces including my bicycle helmet and additional extra items of luggage.
At some point an agent came to a window opposite our bench and asked for a Philip “Lusser”, mispronouncing my name. Correcting his pronunciation I walked up to the window whereupon he commenced to interrogate me on the nature of some “seeds” he'd found in my luggage holding forth a baggie of what looked like moldy corn kernels. I was dumbfounded. I couldn't think of any seeds I'd been carrying. I did have some repurposed shavings bags from the barn that I was using as waterproof liners for my panniers. I was trying to imagine how some of the cracked corn from our chicken feed might have infiltrated the shavings bags. Then Neil came up to the window claiming ownership of the seeds. The seeds he told the agent had come back with him from Costa Rica and they were in his possession because he wanted to study them for their therapeutic properties. According to him customs in Miami had been informed of their existence and had allowed him to bring them into the country. This customs agent insisted that would have been impossible and that he would have to surrender the seeds. Neil seemed strangely compliant with the request given the importance he seemed to attach to them.
This did nothing to increase my confidence that we'd be allowed to depart when the Bridge Bus made it's next pass heading south. I wasn't very impressed with these border guys who couldn't keep me and some psychotic guy separate in their minds. I'd seen the bus make its pass heading north. I knew it wouldn't be long before it reappeared on this side of the bridge. Would they let us go?
All this time I'd been wanting to call Faye. She would have expected a call before now but as I was being ushered to my place on the bench I had asked the agent escorting us if I was allowed to make a phone call. “Yes,” was his answer, only I couldn't leave the bench to do it and cell phone use was prohibited. Hmmm?
My nervousness reached its peak when the bus made its reappearance on our side of the bridge. Neil seemed oblivious to the fact. It was now or never. This was possibly the last run of the day for the bus. If we didn't get on it now I wasn't sure what that meant. Then, without much fanfare, we were told we were free to go. The agent telling us that, did not seem to have my license or passport card however. Would they remember to return them before sending us off? I'd like to think these guys were only acting as dumb or as bored as they seemed and that it was just carefully scripted to throw all would-be terrorists and bicycle smugglers off guard.
Our documentation was returned to us as we boarded the bus. Nothing more was said. No “sorry to detain you, have a good day,” or anything else. It was all supposed to seem routine I guess. The driver recommended we go with him to the Norris Center on the Lake Superior State University campus. It would be easier to catch a cab to the Indian Trails bus station from there. My heart sank a bit when it became obvious that Neil and I were hoping to catch the same bus. He seemed chagrined that he couldn't ride this bus right to the station. The driver admitted that the Indian Trails bus station would be his final destination for the day and if Neil was willing to wait while he attended to some of his end of the day requirements he'd come back and pick him up. I spoke up that I'd like to also be included. Since I'd previously mentioned expecting to catch a cab, he suggested that perhaps Neil and I could split the cost of it. Without saying so I was skeptical that Neil would ante up his share of the cab fare. I was also skeptical that a cab could accommodate both of us and our luggage and my bike box all in one run. I just repeated that I hoped the bus driver would agree to take both of us. He seemed willing to do that and so we waited near the entrance to the building on the LSSU campus for his return at about 7 p.m.
He returned as promised. We loaded up and gave him additional fares for the ride. When we arrived I was so grateful he'd been willing to take us I gave him a $10 tip saying I'd probably have spent that much on a cab anyway. He accepted it with thanks. The station was closed for the day. Neil wondered how he'd be able to purchase a ticket but a sign on the closed door of the station seemed to indicate the driver of the bus would be empowered to sell tickets. Neil's destination was Escanaba so we wouldn't be together all the way to Duluth but the prospect of another six hours in his company while waiting for its arrival was a bit daunting. I looked for an excuse to get away for a while. There was a convenience store next door to the same building. The coffee seemed to be stale and the options for eating were limited. Neil got himself something to eat but I resolved to go searching further afield. There was a Wendy's up the road. I asked Neil if there was anything he'd like from the Wendy's. He said “No,” but graciously offered to keep an eye on the luggage in my absence. I thanked him for that and set off walking across a couple of entrances to gas stations and one cross street as well as a grassed traffic island to reach the Wendy's. It's always instructive to see how little thought is given to pedestrian travel in most suburban sprawl shopping strips.
The young staff at the Wendy's was friendly. I got a crispy chicken caesar wrap and a cup of coffee. The kid at the register must have given me the senior discount since it came in at less than the advertised price. I was given a free coffee refill as well. At least no one called me “gramps.” I read for a while from my Jeff Shaara book and then trudged back to the bus station for another round of listening to Neil tell me how he was hoping to get accepted to medical school to study the disease fighting properties of Central and South American fruits and nuts. He was full of testimonials about the relative scarcity of certain diseases among the peoples of that area due to their steady diet of some fruit or other.
I didn't particularly mind listening to him. What became annoying was his inability to listen to himself. He repeated himself. Often. Did I mention that he repeated himself? There seemed to be no internal monitor of his outward display. At one point during our wait I made my one and only attempt at opening up a dialogue versus being the straight man for a never-ending monologue. I told him about the motorcycle accident. He didn't miss a beat. I can't remember if he even tried to relate it to his own personal experience. It was more along the line of a “whatever” response and he was off again repeating himself.
I confess to baiting him on one occasion when he started talking about the discovery of an energy recovery process that supposedly obtained enough energy to allow the original production to continue indefinitely. I didn't mention the second law of thermodynamics but did say that it sounded like a perpetual motion machine. He happily announced that that was exactly what it was. I think I responded with a “how interesting,” or something similar.
Fortunately his rambling never stirred up any of my own personal demons. I realize in retrospect how possible that was. I have a cousin with schizophrenia. We are both the same age. We are both the first born of our particular families, he is my father's next oldest brother's son. We therefore share the same last name. I've known him from very early in my life. Even though his family lived in places like Buenos Aires and Caracas over the years, we saw each other during the summer months nearly annually and we'd palled around together during our early years in college, I at UMass and he at Holy Cross.
It was during those college years that he began to show the symptoms of the disease that was to rob him of his future. It was also during those years that I too began a struggle against madness of a different sort. I think in both our cases experimentation with drugs had a catalyzing effect on those struggles. In my case, and perhaps in his as well, I can't know since his own struggle seemed to be so impenetrable to me, the crisis was an existential one. I had no firm foundation for understanding my own existence. Under the influence of drugs I began to seriously ponder that question and it led me down a slippery slope into solipsism. I think that mindset must represent the ultimate state of loneliness. It is a perfect analogue for hell in my opinion.
It was, in fact, at the point of concluding my third semester at UMass and having already made the decision to “stop out” and travel to Europe to see my friend Tim that I found myself one night in a friend's dorm room (the Steve C. of Tim's eulogy) asking for proof that I wasn't trapped in some kind of hell and listening to the resulting responses as though they were just projections of my own consciousness trying to bolster the illusion that I wasn't. There was a steady stream of visitors to his room that night. All of them offered me arguments to offset the torment I was in. I had announced that if no proof could be given, my next move would be to test my thesis by attempting suicide. I reasoned that if my own consciousness was all that there was, extinguishing it was impossible. Without revealing it to my listeners my intention was to leap from the top floor of my own dormitory.
All of the arguments against my hypothesis were empty and unacceptable. They rested on nothing more solid than a happy disposition and could not possibly stand up to any real challenges from my perspective. I did not say it in so many words but I was looking for an argument that claimed to base its existence on an eternal and absolute premise. It had to be something that could invade my own sense of entrapment and possessed the power to burst the bars of that cell. Well past midnight another visitor came into the room. His name was Mike Crandell and the others said “here is someone who can give you some answers,” with a certain facetious tone. Mike was the resident member of Campus Crusade for Christ and his proselytizing had earned him the nickname Mike “Cramdell.”
He listened to my plea and then shared C.C.C.'s “Four Spiritual Laws” with me which briefly state that 1. God has a plan for each of us, 2. Our sin separates us from God's plan, 3. Jesus is God's remedy to that state of separation and 4. We merely need to accept Christ's sacrifice on our behalf to reestablish contact with God and his plan. He invited me to pray and make that acceptance which I did. Nothing much happened. He prayed that I be freed from any demonic interference. I immediately became happy. It was like the flip of a switch. I tried to relate what it felt like for the benefit of the onlookers as “being stoned.” It was very much like the contentment that washes over the consciousness when in the company of friends under the influence of a good buzz.
Mike and I walked back to my dorm room after that. I had indeed been transformed to the extent that my friend Steve had felt comfortable enough letting me leave. He revealed to me later that he had been in contact with UMass Health Services who were giving him advice on the proper procedure for performing a suicide watch. Whatever had happened to me was enough of a puzzle to get Steve thinking that perhaps this notion of Mike's had some substance. Mike left me in my room at around 4 a.m. after a bit more coaching on the next steps to take, with the advice that nothing about this “new life” that I had begun was going to be as easy to understand as it was presently. Confusion was the inevitable sequel to the state I was in. He used the analogy of a magnified image to help me understand the reality of the Christian existence. The edges will always be more blurred and out of focus than the center of the image, being Christ and his existence. That analogy has been a powerful antidote to much of my confusion and doubt over the years. I still cling to it.
There is certainly a long post script to this story. Perhaps more about that later. In the meantime, Neil and I waited patiently for the arrival of the Duluth bus. Another person, a young woman, also waited during the last hour before the bus arrived. A group of Michigan corrections officers congregated at the bus stop waiting for a bus to take them to work. Once our bus arrived we were able to board it with no complications. No trailer for my bike this time. Neil and I sat separately, on opposite sides of the bus, but I bid him a good night and good luck and probably good bye since I didn't know if I'd be able to rouse myself when the bus reached Escanaba.
I did say good bye when he got off. It was still in the pre-dawn hours. The bus never got very full and most passengers had two seats each to stretch out on. We were about an hour behind schedule when we arrived in Duluth. Fortunately I wasn't one of the people who had needed to make a connection. The woman who'd gotten on in Sault Ste. Marie was going to North Dakota. She and I conversed briefly as I unpacked the bicycle from its box and started organizing my gear. Interestingly enough there was another person at the bus stop, who had arrived on a bus from the south, if my memory serves me correctly, who also had a bike in a box. I tried to strike up a conversation but he was totally distracted with some kind of timetable he seemed to be on. Also his was a road bike with no touring gear. His only baggage seemed to be a small backpack. He demanded that the bus station store his empty bike box announcing he'd be back in three days to claim it for his return trip. He seemed quite arrogant and at the same time a bit at sea since he'd spilled the ball bearings out of his headset and was on the phone to someone who was giving him advice on what to do. In some respects it was quite comical because he'd placed himself beside a dumpster near the bus unloading area and was very shortly told he needed to move because “this space was needed for testing,” by a Minnesota drivers testing officer. He told her she'd just have to wait since he needed to assemble his bicycle. I didn't stick around to learn who won that argument.
I found a spot around the corner at the front of the bus station building. My spot was up against the wall of a vacant storefront being advertised for rent. No one bothered me and I was free to putter away on all of the details of getting myself ready for the road. Eventually I had the bike assembled. It took a bit of doing. For the trip out I had needed to get the bike as small as possible. I had removed the handlebar from the fork and had stowed it parallel to the frame. I had also removed the pedals and rear derailleur. Both wheels were in the box but stowed beside the frame and not within it. I had to reverse all of those steps once the bike was out of the box. The front rack also needed to be installed on the fork. The panniers needed to be packed and placed on the frame. The handlebar bag had to be converted from its shoulder bag status and slung on its frame.
The frame for the handlebar bag was still an original '70s Eclipse frame that had been on the bike since I stopped using it as a mountain bike and began touring with it back in the late 80s. The bag that had originally hung on that frame had succumbed to wear and tear after my 2009 ride to St. Damase, Quebec to visit the birthplace of my great grandfather; the return leg of which took me to North Grosvenor Dale, CT where he first entered the U.S. and was married, before I turned for home after going to Woonsocket, RI where he'd eventually settled, developed his business and is buried.
Eclipse has long been out of business. After the 2009 trip I had surfed the 'net looking for a replacement bag but all came with handlebar mounts that were incompatible with my present set up which consists of aero bars on the bike's original flat mountain bars. The mounts for the typical bags nowadays both required the same handlebar space as the aero bars as well as riding too high to allow the aerobars to stay on the same plane as they are. My eventual solution was to buy a bag from Jandd, remove the mounting attachment from the back, sew on nylon web loops that allowed it to ride on the old Eclipse frame and adopted Eclipse's shock cord system off the bottom to keep the bag from bouncing. So far, over the past three summer trips, it has worked out quite well. The shock cords on the bottom are so essential that I wonder how anyone can use a handlebar bag on any rough surface riding without something like it.
The fact that many modern innovations are not really improvements over “outdated” designs is a pet peeve of mine. I frequently become quite attached to certain features of equipment items that get lost in their superseding editions. Pullover anoraks have disappeared and only parkas with full front zippers seem to be available for wet weather wear. Winter backpacks seem to have lost their side pockets with ski slots that I came to regard as essential but now must find a way to live without when my current pack expires.
Many years ago Faye bought me an REI fanny pack that expanded into a day pack when a flap on its top was unzipped. I became quite dependent on that feature when I went backcountry skiing. The full pack contained all of my outer layers plus helmet on the approach and climb. Once all of those things had been donned for the descent I could collapse it back down to a fanny pack which is just the right size for my water bottle and climbing skins and doesn't encumber my skiing as much as a pack with shoulder straps. I nursed it along with replacement zippers etc. but it finally had too many split seams and needed replacing. REI no longer makes such a pack. Jandd seemed to be the only manufacturer of one that I could track down on the Internet. Though a bit more elaborate than the minimalist REI design, at least it was a reasonable facsimile.
Speaking of minimalist vs. elaborate, one of the items I take on most trips is an MP3 player. The one I've liked the most was a 4 GB Phillips brand model that also included a built in voice recorder and an AM/FM radio. It was powered by a single AAA battery. I'd purchased it at Walmart for a very small price and then misplaced it a few years ago. Phillips no longer markets it. Their current players all come with rechargeable lithium batteries. That sounds like an improvement to most people but for someone like me who spends very little time around electrical outlets over the course of two weeks but who constantly passes convenience stores which market batteries, it is a definite step backward. I remember one fellow I met on the Long Trail who was doing it end-to-end over the course of 30 days and whose Apple iPod was useless to him without a complicated recharging unit that ran off, guess what, AAA batteries.
I never, or rarely ever (and only on a bike path) use the player while I am riding but it is nice to have some music to listen to when I am falling asleep, especially if I'm near a noisy road as sometimes happens. This year I felt forced to bring three MP3 players: a Walmart iPod nano-like li rechargeable along with it's USB micro cord and a plug-in 120 v connection, an old MP3 player that predated the Phillips and has its battery duct-taped in and another AAA battery-operated MP3 player that I bought to replace the Phillips but which has begun to malfunction. Altogether they represent about four times the weight and bulk of the Phillips. The rechargeable player has a very short battery life so I didn't expect to get much listening time out of it but I hoped I'd find outlets I could use to recharge it from time to time. The other two were hopeful backups to the rechargeable but neither was very reliable so taking them was just a gamble. All of these items were carried in a small yellow stuff sack containing what I eventually came to call my indispensable items although, as it turned out, I learned to dispense with the MP3 players.
Once the bike was reassembled with panniers packed and handlebar bag all mounted I took my cycling clothes with me into Taco John's next door. I felt somewhat self-conscious using their bathroom and would have purchased something if they'd asked me my business but they seemed unconcerned and the place seemed to be pretty quiet at that time of day. The bathroom décor was interesting. Wall tiles in the men's room had an assortment of universal sign stick figures in various urinating postures with labels such as “marksman,” etc. The floor tiles in front of the toilet had an astronomy theme leading up to a central tile making some statement about the difficulty of seeing the rings around Uranus. I wasn't particularly offended or anything but it made me wonder what national percentile Duluthians may be part of regarding their preference for bathroom humor.
The bathroom was spotlessly clean and seemed brand new. I had no reservations filling my water bottles from the faucet at the sink. I was glad I hadn't been scolded for using the bathroom as a non-customer. I wanted rather badly to get going as I was about two hours behind my original departure schedule. One hour late arriving and nearly an extra hour longer preparing all of my equipment. I still had to mail my traveling clothes, a few tools, hockey bag and the first half of the book I was reading back home. The Duluth Pack & Mail Plus was next door to Taco John's. When everything was boxed up and weighed I had a bit of sticker shock on the price, just shy of $50.00. Perhaps the total cost of this bus ride wasn't much different than the ferry would have been. Oh well, I was seeing a new part of the continent on this trip and I'd had four previous visits to Nova Scotia already. I expect there would have been unanticipated costs to the ferry ride that might still have tipped the balance sheet in favor of this summer's plan.
I had printed out a detail of the map showing my route out of Duluth to complement the written directions. Even with both of those I had a difficult time orienting myself. When I did finally find the street I was supposed to take to the pedestrian/bike crossing lane on the Richard I. Bong Bridge that led to Superior, WI on the other side of the St. Louis River, I wasn't convinced I was on the right route until I came upon the bridge itself. The bus station had been less than one kilometer from the Duluth side of the bridge. I suppose starting in Duluth was mostly symbolic. I can't really say I got much of a sense of the city. Outside Magazine rated it number 1 in its 50 Best Places to Live cover story of one of the summer issues so it probably deserved a longer visit than I had given it.
After crossing the bridge my Google bike directions sent me on a very confusing course from which I eventually got lost and finally felt forced to stop to ask for advice. Sometimes the Google directions don't send you on any named road but tell you to “turn toward” a certain street presumably when directing one along an unnamed bike path or similar. I couldn't afford the space and cost of printing out all of the detailed maps that go with the directions I was carrying for the 1000 miles or 1600 kilometers. I did print out a map for the Ontario side of Sault Ste. Marie. Even with the maps it's not always easy to decipher the route. I have come to the conclusion that it's better to ask for directions from the local populace. It also can lead to some good conversations.
I got turned around and headed in the correct direction and found the start of the Osaugie Trail right beside the Richard I. Bong Veteran's Historical Center. A woman at the counter in the Center gave me directions to find the trail as well as a free road map of Wisconsin. Richard Ira Bong, I've since learned, is not the inventor of a possibly eponymous smoking device. He was the U.S.'s leading air ace in WW II. He remains, in fact, the leading U.S. ace of all time as well as a Congressional Medal of Honor recipient. Unfortunately he was killed while test flying one of the first jet fighter planes. The day of his death was also the day of the Hiroshima bomb drop. The headlines announcing his death topped that of the bomb in some newspapers. He was born in Poplar, WI and called Superior his home at the time of his death.
The Osaugie Trail was a paved bike path that took me to the outskirts of Superior. At a point beyond the city limits it transitioned to the Tri-County Corridor which made no pretense of being a bike path but serves rather as an ATV/snowmobile route. The surface was gravel, potholed and puddled enough so that when I encountered a paved road crossing a couple of miles beyond I opted to take a parallel road, called “County Rd. Uu.” To a boy from Massachusetts the road nomenclature in this part of the country seemed a bit strange. This road took me to the entrance of Amnicon Falls State Park and its campground. It wasn't particularly late but my legs were tired and I hadn't expected to put in long hours this first day, though the mileage I'd anticipated making was more like 50 and this was about 25. I asked one of the rangers manning (actually womanning) the desk what other options existed further along and whether there were any stores nearby. The long and short of it was that the nearest store was in Poplar but it would likely be closed by the time I got there. There were no other campgrounds in the vicinity. They were not going to charge me for a vehicle identification sticker which was a one-time annual purchase that allowed one access to Wisconsin state parks but I would still need to ante up the $14.00 for the campsite. There were no showers available but I was allowed to swim in the Amnicon River if I wished. All things considered it seemed like the best option and since I was able to find a good pair of trees at one of the two walk-in campsites I decided to stay. One of the volunteer park attendants allowed me to use his cell phone to call home and tell Faye what my plan was for the night. The park's pay phone was inoperative and would probably be left that way now that everyone had cell phones. Mine was still not working. I tried calling home but the answering machine cut out before I could leave a message which led me to believe it wasn't receiving any signal from my end.
The ranger informed me that the forecast was for rain starting at about 5 a.m. and continuing through the day. I suppose that might also have influenced my decision since they said I was free to use the picnic pavilion if I needed a sheltered place to get organized in the morning. My dinner that night consisted of some of the remaining cheese, crackers, fruit and nuts that I'd brought along for the bus journey. I also mixed up some lemonade from one of the drink mix packets I was carrying for just such an occasion. I finished up with some candy and a cup of coffee from a tea-bag-like “coffee bag” that I also had as part of my on-the-road emergency ration kit. I heated the water for the coffee with my alcohol stove.
I was able to scrounge enough downed wood to have a cheery little fire in the fire pit. I smoked a bowl full of tobacco in my pipe which is one of my tactics for keeping mosquitoes at bay while writing in my trip journal by the light of a tea candle. I'm not a smoker at home but smoking a pipe has become a ritual while in the woods. I attribute the urge mostly to my emulation of my grandfather Leon Keach, the previously mentioned self-published author. The hiking chronicle he wrote talks fondly about the three companions' nightly ritual sharing the “deacon seat” before a roaring fire while puffing on their pipes.
The rain did start at about 5 a.m. with a steady drumming on the tarp above my head. My sleeping arrangement consists of a hammock enclosed within a mosquito-proof “tube” that cinches tight with drawstrings on both ends and a waterproof tarp held taught by shock cords attached to the hammock ropes. It's largely a self-designed system that has evolved over the years. I started experimenting with hammocks before there were commercially available backpacker models like the Hennesey and its many imitators. My first hammock was a Yucatan cotton string hammock that was heavy but very comfortable. The next was a more minimalist nylon net hammock. The tarp had been fashioned to accommodate that hammock originally. I graduated to a nylon fabric hammock when the net hammock began to wear out and that current hammock is a bit larger than its predecessor. Consequently the tarp is a tad short on the overlap at the ends and I run the risk of getting the toe of my sleeping bag wet if I'm not careful to position myself correctly when its raining.
Normally the most comfortable position in a hammock is not directly in line with the long axis but rather oblique to it. In that position it is quite possible to lie nearly level, to sleep comfortably on one's side and to easily roll from side to side. I'm sold on the benefits of hammocks. They provide a more consistent sleeping arrangement than a tent which is always at the mercy of ever-changing surface conditions. Provided I can find two sturdy trees that have the proper spacing I will have the same level of comfort night after night. I do also use a foam pad which goes inside my down sleeping bag. With the net hammock it worked better on the outside of the bag. The pad, in contact with the weave of the net, usually remained locked in place. On the nylon fabric it tends to migrate and, over the course of the night, can work its way up and off to the side hence the need to keep it inside the sleeping bag. I've found by experience that it is usually necessary to have an insulating pad that doesn't compress as much as the down in the sleeping bag does. If the night is at all cool its easy to lose too much heat through the areas where the down bag is compressed to paper thinness.
The sound of rain always discourages me and provokes a greater than usual reluctance to get up and get going. I can too easily convince myself to wait for the rain to lessen before beginning the packing process. The unfortunate result is that when it is raining hard I'm usually lying awake waiting for it to abate but as that happens the relative silence lulls me back to sleep only to be reawakened the next time the rain starts pouring with intensity. As a result of this dynamic it was close to 9 a.m. before I emerged. The rain was fortunately in a period of remission at about that time.
I don't usually cook breakfast on my bike trips. On hiking trips I do, but I've become attached to a ritual served breakfast when on the road. It gives me a chance to eat a substantial meal, write in my journal, use a toilet and clean up. Whenever possible, the type of restaurant I prefer serves “slow food.” These types of establishments can very often give one a window into the soul of a town. William Least Heat-Moon was someone who demonstrated this very aptly during his circumnavigation of the U.S. as he told in Blue Highways. I was hoping to get to a restaurant that served breakfast sometime soon after leaving the campground. I wasn't exactly sure where one might be found. I expected to find one in Poplar. One of the rangers at the campground had also told me that Rte. 2 was off-limits to bicycles. I had trouble understanding why that would be the case. The section I was expecting to intersect was not divided highway as had been the case between the campground and Superior. I wasn't too concerned since the Tri-County Corridor also went parallel to the highway and if the latter did not look rideable I would go back to the trail.
It turned out that the trail crossing was only a short distance beyond the exit from the campground. It was blocked and a sign announced that it was closed to use. Looking at the highway revealed that it was in the process of undergoing expansion from two-lanes to four lanes divided by a median strip. There was a good deal of traffic and everything was being routed between orange traffic barriers. It did not look inviting to someone on a bicycle. There was a bar and grill on the same corner where I had stopped to study the situation. A woman was walking from the rear of the building to a dumpster in the parking lot to dump what sounded like a bag of bottles. I pedaled over and asked her if the restaurant was closed to which she answered in the affirmative. I asked where the nearest restaurant that served breakfast might be found in an easterly direction and she reported that Mother's Restaurant in Poplar served breakfast if I got there in time. I then asked what route I could take since the Tri-County Corridor appeared closed and she said to follow the detour signs that began on the opposite side of the highway. I thanked her profusely and started off following the detour.
At first everything went well with the only exception being forced to ride at right angles to my desired direction of travel. Roads in the areas I would be riding are laid out in grid fashion, a distinctly mid-Western, as opposed to New England, arrangement where topography dictated the placement of roads more than the optimum shape of agricultural fields. If I wanted to go east I was forced in this case to ride south for a distance until the next east-west road where I could take a left hand turn and resume travel in my preferred direction. The surface at first was firm gravel but only if I rode in the tire tracks. The shoulders were soft and when overtaking cars passed me I was forced to ride through what became muddier and muddier conditions. Except for a downtube mudguard, I don't tour with fenders as many cyclotourists prefer to do. I use them during my winter commutes to protect my frame from salt spray but find that they don't keep my legs much drier in rainy conditions than not having them does. Since I wear full rain gear, waterproof pants and top as well as shoe covers, I'm not likely to be any more or less comfortable with or without fenders. This was one situation I had not encountered before. The gritty mud of these Wisconsin back roads was caking onto my bicycle frame, splattering onto the gear tied onto my rear rack and coating my derailleurs and chain. This was the only time I've ever regretted not having fenders on a tour.
Beside the unpleasant mud bath I was receiving, the road surface was also barely rideable. My front tire refused to track a straight line and the back tire lost traction. I also discovered the front derailleur was not shifting onto the smallest inner chain ring without assistance. It's one thing to get off the bike and lift the rear wheel to allow turning of the pedal with your foot while unshipping the chain with your fingers when the bike is not loaded with 40 pounds of touring gear. It's an entirely different matter when it is. I struggled on without the small ring but with great difficulty when the road dipped down to cross a creek and went straight up the opposite side. I had to dismount and walk that stretch. I think I must have averaged about 2-3 miles an hour on that detour. It was highly discouraging at the beginning of 1000 mile tour to have done so few miles during the first nearly-24 hours. I was hoping that at the end of the detour I could take to the pavement. If I had to stay on the gravel Tri-County Trail it would only add more time to travel the required distance.
The detour ended in the town of Poplar. The restaurant that had been mentioned to me, Mother's Kitchen, was open but was no longer serving breakfast. I started with a cup of coffee anyway and got a BLT on rye instead. The bacon made it seem like it could still have been breakfast. I added a glass of milk to that. At least it was warm and dry inside the restaurant which was definitely a slice of small town America. The cook, a youngish woman, kept telling all of her familiar customers she'd started out the day cooking breakfast for someone who'd knocked on her door and asked if she could serve him. She said she cooked it while still wearing her bathrobe and pajamas.
One of the customers asked me where I was from and where I was going. When it became obvious I was headed east he told me Route 2 would be o.k. for biking from there on. That was reassuring to say the least. I really felt like I needed to make up for lost time. He said the shoulder should be wide enough for safety and that drivers typically gave cyclists plenty of room. He was a bicyclist himself though he said he'd been lax of late, and not done much riding, for which he felt a bit guilty. He wished me well and I thanked him for the info. He predicted an early stop to the rain.
It was still raining when I went back out to the bicycle. I used the water in both of my bottles to hose the mud off my drivetrain and panniers. I went back into the restaurant and they were happy to refill them. I hoped any residual mud would yield to the water I was sure to be splashing through as the day went on. The prediction for an early stop to the rain never materialized and it remained wet off and on throughout the day which was drawing to a close when I reached the center of Ashland.
At one point during the day I passed a sign indicating the road to my right would take me to the towns of Hayward and Cable. I was familiar with those names because of the American Birkebeiner which is a Nordic ski marathon that takes place annually during February. I have friends who have skied it. I suppose there was always a notion I would too. I've skied in a couple marathons in New England and while I'm proud to say I've finished them, I can't claim to have done particularly well. At this point it is enough to say I've ridden my bike through the area of the “Birkie.” I expect I'll leave it at that.
There had been a stop for pizza in the afternoon at Roberto's Chicago Style Pizzeria in Iron River. I guess Chicagoans like a very thin crust 'cause that is what they serve at Roberto's. It's always nice to get something warm to eat on a cold wet day. Toward day's end I stopped briefly at the Northern Great Lakes Visitor's Center to see if I could use a phone. There was no pay phone but they let me use the phone at the desk. I called home to give Faye a fix on my position and to say I expected to be spending the night in the Ashland area. I figured I was about a day behind schedule at that point.
When I reached the center of Ashland I started weighing my options for a place to spend the night. Ashland is a fairly large town right on Lake Superior. There didn't appear to be many options for “stealth camping” which is my usual preference for a night's sleep. On less settled stretches of road it is usually easy to find a roadside turn-off or rest area and locate a spot out of sight that will allow me to set up my hammock. “No camping or overnight parking” signs usually don't deter me. In my experience if I can remain invisible to detection from a passing vehicle I will not be disturbed. In the 20 some odd years of doing this I've never been asked to leave a sleeping spot and some of them have been less than “stealthy” as happened during my 2008 ride to Baxter State Park in Maine when I spent one night in the front portico of the Essex County Courthouse in Guildhall, VT. I was prepared to use the trees in an Ashland town park or cemetery if there was one that fit the requirements.
I stopped at the town chamber of commerce in the off chance they had a map of town that showed such things. It was closed and none of the free brochures out front gave me much of a clue but an employee of the chamber came out on her way home and asked me if I needed any help. I explained that I was a cyclist on a tight budget and was hoping to find an out of the way place to pitch a hammock. She was less than sympathetic to my requirement for free camping but did say that they allowed camping for a fee at the town-owned Prentice Park. I thanked her for the information and she gave me directions to the park but for reasons that later became clear I was unable to follow them. After asking a series of different people I eventually found the park and by reading the sign at the far end, where the campsites were located, learned that it would cost me $15.00 for the privilege of spending the night. Since I was able to find two properly spaced trees and sleeping in an approved location is always less worrisome than one that was not, I decided to stay there.
The park was interesting. One feature was an artesian spring issuing from a pipe. I did in fact discover more than one such pipe, but only one seemed to be regularly used. The others were located along a path that I found leading from my campsite back to the area of the bathrooms. It didn't look like these were visited much as they were in out of the way locations and there was vegetation growing up around them. The path itself looked like a work in progress with crushed gravel spread out from the area of the popular artesian source but ending quite soon after rounding a bend and becoming just wet, clay-rich soil.
The bathrooms were decent but there were no shower facilities available for the second night in a row. I'm not a slave to daily showers but I always feel a bit cheated if I'm paying for a place to sleep and not getting access to a shower. Stealth camping can really seem like such a bargain compared to that, especially if the campsite I'm being asked to pay for is deficient in the tree department and I'm forced to pitch my tarp like a shelter half and sleep on the ground. I will almost always go in search of something better in that case. I suppose I could have washed up using the bathroom sink but that never seems to produce anything in the way of a really clean feeling compared to the effort required. I'd rather use the disposable wipes I carry to get the grime off my neck and face. In either case, washing up in a sink or using disposable wipes to clean up are freebies that I can take advantage of without being forced to pay for the privilege.
I returned to the campsite and used the picnic table to cook supper which consisted of Dinty Moore canned beef stew. The alcohol stove is a champ for heating up canned stuff. The food gets bubbling hot on ½ oz. of fuel. Pouring a bit of beer into the pot gave the stew a little more flavor. Beef stew is probably my favorite dinner item but I don't use it as an option more than once in a trip if I can manage it. My culinary skills are meager, obviously, but I do try to achieve as much variety as possible and it's usually pretty easy to find something new every night. I rolled in to my hammock as dark settled in. The mosquitos in the park were pretty numerous so after taking pains to make sure my gear was well organized, in case of overnight rain, getting inside the netting was the best thing I could do. I listened to a little music as I fell asleep but the rechargeable player lost its charge and died out before I was done listening.
As dawn arrived so did the rain which was heavy at times. In a repeat performance from the day before it was later than it should have been before I was up and moving. Donning full rain gear and with panniers packed, I stopped to fill my water bottles at the spring and took the opportunity to ask some visitors to the park if they knew of any breakfast places in town that I could find if heading east. The one recommended to me, Golden Glow Cafe on the opposite side of town, was only a possible breakfast spot at this time of the day (it was after 10 a.m. approaching 11). I figured a questionable recommendation was better than none and thanked them for the advice. As I rode down a slope that took me back to the lake side and Rt. 2, I smelled the unmistakeable odor of frying bacon. I looked to my right and the Lake Shore Restaurant appeared to be doing a brisk morning business. Poking my head inside I was assured that breakfast was “served all day,” which immediately picked up my spirits.
Shedding my waterproof layers and wearing the billed mesh and nylon-panelled yellow and black hat that has become my preferred headware when off the bike during tours I went in and got a table near a window that looked out onto Lake Superior and the section of outside wall that my bicycle was leaning against. I hardly ever lock my bike on tours. I have a cable lock that might foil a thief with no cable cutters for as long as it takes him to find a pair. I will use it when I'm going inside a big store like Walmart for any length of time. It is probably more psychological protection than anything real because all of my gear is plainly accessible and my handlebar bag would be easy to rifle even if the bike was left untouched.
Better than locking it, parking a bike where one can keep an eye on it is probably the best insurance against theft, though I suspect I might have trouble running down a thief who chooses to ride off on the bicycle. In all my years of touring it is a formula that has continued to work so I will probably stick with it until I get burned. I have come to have such faith in the good will of strangers that I suspect that if I do get disillusioned by some incident it might take me a good long while to want to continue touring. I don't know exactly how I would react but I hope I never happen to find out.
Perhaps the closest I came to discovering that was on my way home from Canada three summers ago. My last night on the road was spent stealth camping in the town park in East Greenbush, NY but supper was obtained from the Black Bear Inn pub in Watervleit on the opposite side of the Hudson. I left the bike leaning against the outside of the bar until a customer who'd gone outside for a cigarette recommended against leaving it there since “everything gets stolen in this neighborhood.” The bartender and patrons all insisted I wheel the bike inside the bar and that's where it stayed while I had my roast beef on onion ciabatta with cucumber wasabi dressing washed down with some excellent craft-brewed IPA. Except for the preponderance of Yankees fans that frequent the place, I can think of no other reason not to recommend it to anyone as a fantastically friendly little watering hole if you are ever in the Albany area. And my faith in strangers lives on as a result.
I think I have my friend Tim Stearns to thank for this model. If anyone was a master at making friends with a complete stranger found on the open road, or sea, it was him. When I accompanied him and his four teenage crewmates from Kirkwall in the Orkney Islands of Scotland to Flam, Norway I brought along a Sony mini-cam that I borrowed from the school and used to record our journey. It was my intention to make an educational video that could be used in the school. There were many aspects of the trip that leant themselves to instructional application. One was a series of interviews I filmed with two French guys that hitched a ride with us from Lerwick, Shetland to Vik, Norway. I had some notion our French classes might find the interviews educational and entertaining.
Unfortunately the footage with the two French travelers never made it into a viewable form. I was using an early version of Apple's iMovie to do the editing. The iBooks that belonged to the science department were short on memory and long on frustration for use as video-editing tools. I managed to create a 30 min. video as the first half of the anticipated one hour long chronicle but after a software crash destroyed many hours worth of work on the beginning of part two, I lost my desire to continue. I always intended to return to it, but it is still awaiting my attention.
The theme for the overall video was: “Where can high school friendships lead?” I felt my friendship with Tim, spanning all the years since high school, would be a good hook for high school students. In addition to that, Tim's daughter Ari, who had just completed her sophomore year, had brought her friend Lindsay along for the journey. Tim's son Clem, who had just finished his freshman year at U Conn., had his high school friend Larry along as well. Tim's junk-rigged schooner, Hippo, was our mode of travel for the journey. When I arrived in Kirkwall, the group had already been together for a few weeks having sailed from the coast of Ireland, through the Caledonia Canal and then up to the Orkneys. I started the camera rolling almost immediately after introductions were completed and recorded Tim recounting some of the voyage's previous highlights. During the conversation, parts of which did make it onto the completed part one video, Tim was listing some of the talents that each member of the crew brought to the interactions they'd had with strangers along the way. He laughed and described it as something of a quid pro quo (my words for it). His crazy crew provided entertainment for the people they met along the way in return for the friendship and assistance they received from these newly found friends.
It was a very good scene with which to start the story since part one ended with us leaving the southernmost Shetland island of Fair Isle, the younger crew members having spent an evening jamming with some of the local musicians. The previous night we'd spent visiting with the warden of the bird sanctuary and his family on North Ronaldsay, the northernmost Orkney island. In a scene of the crew walking down to the boat after our time with them, during which Lindsay shared some of her magic tricks and Clem and Larry played their guitars, I remarked in a voice-over that traveling with Tim was always like that. If anyone visits the website dedicated to his memory, the testimonials contributed by those who knew him testify to the truth of that statement.
I left the Lake Shore Cafe in better spirits than I'd been in for a couple of days. I wasn't sure I would make much of a dent in recouping any of my lost time that day but the rain appeared to have stopped and I hoped at least it could be my longest day on the road thus far. The destination was Michigan. I had only budgeted two days to traverse Wisconsin and I was now starting day 3. Rt. 2 was not a problem. The pavement outside the white line was sometimes narrow, less than a car width, but most of the hills, and there were not many of those, had passing lanes and a wider paved shoulder. In the narrower sections there was an unpaved gravel shoulder that made me wonder how I would manage to steer a straight line if I felt it necessary to dive off the pavement in response to a warning blast from a truck's air horn. I can't remember any situation, crossing either Wisconsin or Michigan, where passing cars and trucks didn't gave me a wide enough berth. That situation was going to change in Ontario however.
One interesting phenomenon had puzzled me briefly. As cars passed me they made a throaty rumbling sound which I was associating with the noise of a sudden acceleration from a car equipped with a sport muffler. At least that was what I attributed it to until car after car produced the same sound, most of whom did not fit the stereotype of cars equipped with such things. It finally dawned on me that it was the sound of a centerline rumble strip that was being traversed as cars pulled back into their own lane after passing me. It was a bit annoying and I wondered if the drivers resented hearing it. Later on the U.P. when I met another cyclotourist coming from the opposite direction he expressed gratitude for the rumble strip since it assured him that the cars that were passing him were giving him some room. I don't think I ever interpreted that way. I remained grateful for wide paved shoulders that gave us all plenty of room but which were far less frequent, though welcome when they appeared.
The day was turning out to be overcast but without any steady rainfall. I traversed Ashland on the extension of the Tri-County corridor trail which here was a paved path within the city limits. It brought me down to an intersection with Rt. 2 on the eastern side of the city and a side path led into a Walmart parking lot. I wondered if I might be able to solve my communication problem with the purchase of a new phone. I reasoned that since Walmart was a Tracfone dealer it might be easy to upgrade to a new phone. They had a fairly large mobile phone department and the employee there was impressed with the venerability of my definitely “un-smart” old Nokia. He said it was such a reliable phone that it was unusual for it to give any problems. He thought something might be malfunctioning with the microphone circuitry and gave it a test. Remarkably it was working for the first time in three days.
He wondered if the problem had just been a result of poor connections. I doubted that but did say that, when I still couldn't use the phone to speak with Faye the previous evening, who would answer on her end and hear only silence and then begin speaking into the void to let me know everything was o.k. and expected that to be the case on my end or otherwise I wouldn't be calling her, I hung up and rapped the phone in disgust on the picnic table at Prentice Park. Whatever had changed to allow the phone to work didn't matter. I just hoped it would continue to work, otherwise I would test my rapping theory with a second trial.
My ride for the day ended at dusk with entry into Michigan at Ironwood, current home of the Stormy Kromer hat. There was a Warm Showers host in Ironwood but since I did not expect it to be one of my overnight stops, I didn't have contact information for the family. I needed to call home and ask Faye to ferret out the information from the Warm Showers website. That wasn't happening because I didn't seem to be able to get a good connection with my phone. Warm Showers is the cycling equivalent of Couch Surfing. It is a network of individuals who will open up their homes to touring cyclists providing them with hospitality in return for stories of their journey. I came with a list of possible hosts and their contact info and an ancillary list of locations along my route that contained hosts but, as in this case, nothing more. The one drawback to my utilization of the system is my unpredictable travel. Most hosts want more than last minute notice and unless I change my mode of operation that is probably all I will ever be able to give them.
I was also interested in finding a cycle shop that could examine the spoke tension on my front wheel. I could feel vibration in the steering when I was at speed on downhill stretches of road and there was also an annoying creaking being produced by the spokes. I was used to such creaking from my rear wheel, which would usually quiet up with a few drops of oil at the spoke intersections, but it was something new from the front wheel. That had never, up until now, given me any problems from the time I'd purchased it as a replacement for its predecessor which was the victim of a catastrophic rim failure twenty miles outside of Baie Comeau, Quebec as I started out on my roundtrip circuit of Quebec and Labrador during the summer of 2010.
I found a cycle shop, called Hobby Wheel, in a little group of shops with a giant Stormy Kromer hat monument out front. As I looked for some kind of sign giving the hours of operation on the shop door (it was closed at that time) a car with a couple inside pulled into the parking lot and inquired about my need for a cycle shop. The driver was a cyclist himself and he wondered if I was having mechanical problems. I told him about my wheel and said it was more just curiosity on my part and the desire to get an expert's opinion on the creaking and get the spoke tension examined and possibly adjusted. I confessed that my most pressing desire was to find a place to spend the night. I mentioned the Warm Showers problem. He produced his smart phone, which was able to get a connection, with difficulty, and opened up the Warm Showers website but the connection was sporadic and we gave up trying after a few minutes. They had no real advice for places to stay beyond recommending a camping area in the next town east. I thanked them for their help and we both went on our respective ways.
It was already getting pretty dark and I felt I could find something closer at hand. I spent the next half hour riding around a shopping center across the street and exploring the woods near the Stormy Kromer factory building which was accessible via an ATV trail that paralleled the highway out behind the small group of stores containing the bike shop. I briefly considered using the trees between the shop and the trail. Thinking I might just have to travel further out of town I started back along Rt. 2 when the Woodlands professional building appeared on my left containing, among other things, a dentist's office. Since this was a Saturday night and Sunday morning was unlikely to be a busy time at the dentist I reasoned that I could probably remain undetected if I used the trees out behind the building as place to pitch my hammock.
Returning to the shopping center I visited a supermarket and purchased my dinner for the evening: a can of mac & cheese and a beer. I found an employee break table out behind the bike shop and used it to sit at while I heated the contents of the can, drink my beer and then clean up and head back to the professional building. The yellow sodium glow from lights in the parking lot allowed me to explore the bordering grove of trees and I found two candidates far enough back in the shade to hopefully avoid detection from a patrolling cruiser. My tarp is black which also helps to reduce visiblity in such situations. I strive to lay my bike flat at these times since the tire sidewalls have reflective strips and would show up in the glare of headlights. There are reflective strips on my panniers as well that I try to take care in keeping low to the ground. I didn't want to have to talk my way out of a vagrancy charge if I could help it and since it was my first night on this trip trying to low-cost camp in what were less than perfect conditions I was a little nervous.
No one ever entered the parking lot that I knew of all night long and morning dawned as the first truly sunny one of the past three. I was in a good mood and up early. The mood took a bit of a hit after I had breakfast in a Burger King in the shopping center. My journal entry for the day starts with the line: “Note to self. Avoid Burger King for breakfast.” I probably got a full month's quota of grease in that one miserable meal. I hoped I'd find a map of Michigan at a tourist center somewhere down the road. I would be veering off to the northeast on Rt. 28 when I reached Wakefield and I didn't want to miss that turn. The official state maps also clued one in to the locations of roadside rest areas that are often my preferred locations for overnight stops. I found a map for sale at a gas station during a stop later in the morning. I also tried to realign the tire on the front wheel which I was blaming for the vibrations I was feeling since it did not appear to be seated straight on the rim. The rim itself appeared to be true. The gas station allowed me use of their pressure gauge and free air pump. I was unable to get the tire to seat evenly however and vowed to find a bike shop and get their advice on the matter.
I managed the left turn required and circumnavigated Sunday Lake as I set out to cross Michigan's Upper Penninsula on Rt. 28. It would take me almost all the way back to Sault Ste. Marie. The sun was still shining brightly and I was getting a bit of a tail wind which was a welcome change from the cross and head winds that had been my fare for the first part of the trip. I managed to make it to the Agate Falls Scenic Area by the time I was ready to quit for the day. My total distance ridden was close to my usual average on tours: a metric “century” (100 km or about 60 miles.) I didn't make up for lost time but at least I didn't lose any either. My phone was now working in both directions. The scenic area had all of the ingredients I needed for a good place to stop for the night: picnic tables, sanitary facilities, hammock trees that were tucked away from the parking area, and a rushing river to provide a nice curtain of sound that drowned out all road noise. In this case the sanitary facilities were the ubiquitous “vault toilets” that would be standard fixtures in all of the rest areas across the U.P. There was also a faucet with drinking water. It didn't get much more perfect than that, “No Camping or Overnight Parking” signs notwithstanding.
I visited the falls which were a pretty sight. I cooked my supper and then, after pitching the hammock in the gathering darkness, I walked up onto a high, now retired, railroad bridge that spanned the river just upstream from the falls. I found a really strong cell connection out on the bridge and called Faye to tell her my location and the plan for the night. I walked back to my campsite and turned in, the sound of the Ontonagon River running by, ten feet away, serving as a nice soporific.
For long stretches the road I was on was mostly uninhabited and I didn't anticipate obtaining breakfast on day 5. I polished off the last couple of granola bars from the bus ride stash and rain started as I was finishing up my packing. It wasn't heavy at first and I wondered if I would regret putting on the full rain outfit. But, since I was just starting out, there wouldn't be any time easier than now to get suited up and if Murphy's Law was in effect I could bring an end to the rain by being prepared for it. As it happened, Murphy was out to lunch that day. It was one of the longer, wetter rides I'd experienced so far. I reached the town of Sidnaw and saw that my first opportunity for a hot meal, Mom's Kitchen, was closed. I rode on. A much later stop for advice at a convenience store and gas station revealed there was a restaurant, called the Hardwood Steakhouse, about a mile up the road on the approach to the town of Covington. Since it was lunchtime I decided a hot lunch was a good substitute for the missing breakfast.
The steakhouse was a log cabin with a nice wide front porch, just perfect for parking my bike and shedding my wet rain layers, not that anything underneath them was particularly dry. Riding a bicycle in the rain presents one with the choice of being wet from rain or wet from sweat. At least the latter is relatively warm and doesn't produce wringing wet clothing. In my experience there is no rain layer made that is absolutely waterproof and yet breathable enough for cycling. A feeling of damp warmness is the best one can strive for. As long as you keep moving you can maintain a pretty comfortable balance. Once you shed those saturated outer layers it helps to get indoors where it's warm.
Inside the doorway of the steakhouse it was just that. As I stood looking for a place to sit, or at least to make eye contact with one of the waitstaff, a slender woman of about my own age started a conversation. Within a few sentences she was offering me a seat at her table and I was soon being introduced to her husband. Martine Holman and her husband Scott were from Midland, MI but had vacation properties in the U.P. They were staying at one of them, which was nearby. They wanted to know what my background was and what had brought me to the area. I explained my plan and they were soon describing some of the places I'd be visiting such as Negaunee and Marquette. I even provoked a bit of laughter with my mispronuciation of Negaunee. Scott explained that its neighboring town of Ishpeming meant “heaven” in Ojibway and the name Negaunee meant “hell.” I opined that since Ishpeming was at a higher elevation it might have had something to do with the mosquito population in those days.
They even offered me a place to stay for the night: a log cabin on a lake. It was their guest house. It came with a washer and a drier so I could clean my clothes, an item of importance at this stage in the journey, and a beautiful view which Scott showed me on Martine's tablet computer. I was flattered and expressed my gratitude for the offer. I was very tempted. It was only a short ride from the steakhouse. I'd soon be warm and dry and cozy, probably in front of a fire sipping something and feeling like I'd died and gone to heaven. The only problem was my current lack of forward progress. It was a big problem. I was stretching the limits of Faye's endurance by going for 17 days instead of the usual 14. I had earlier harbored some notion I could make up for time spent riding the bus by scorching through the 1000 miles of bicycling. It was obvious that wasn't happening. The best I could do now was attempt to get back on schedule for a finish on day 17. That was going to be made even more difficult if I quit halfway through day seven. By my original schedule I was to have been in Negaunee the previous night. If I could get close to Negaunee that night I would be holding steady at no more than one day behind schedule.
Scott seemed surprised his sales pitch with the tablet hadn't scored a bullseye. He tried to get me to see that part of the joy of life is letting go of deadlines. I could certainly agree with him and if I wasn't feeling some responsibility for a lack of pulling my own weight at home I, no doubt, would have taken them up on the offer. In the end though, my uneasiness with the disrupted schedule was the stronger emotion and I thanked them profusely but had to decline.
It was still raining or threatening to rain when I left the steakhouse after snapping pictures and being snapped. The bike riding itself was pleasant enough. The road remained accomodating for cycling with wide shoulders and zero (or nearly zero) hills. The wind was not contrary. The sky began to clear. By the time I reached the T-intersection with Rt. 41, which came down from the Keweenaw Penninsula to the north, there were actually breaks in the clouds big enough to allow bright sunshine to reach me. I stopped at a pull-off for a park-and-ride just past the intersection and stripped off some of the rain layers. The wind was picking up in velocity but in a very favorable direction, it was coming directly from behind.
Murphy was back in business however. Not much later the rain returned, and given that I'd removed much of the rainwear I decided to pull over at a rest area and get rerobed about six miles beyond where I'd taken it off. The showers however seemed to be short-lived and sheltering under the roof of a kiosk I just waited for them to pass. Which they did. I got back on the bike and feeling jet propelled by the wind continued on my way east.
The rest of the day was very rewarding. The sun did come out to stay, though the air became cooler. Obviously a front had moved through. Over the course of the past twenty hours the wind had shifted from the south and east to the north and then west which would indicate that the center of the low pressure, responsible for the rain, had moved past me. I expected I had a couple days of dry weather to look forward to as the center of a high pressure zone overtook and then passed me in turn. I stopped to take a break in the town of Champion, feeling just like one. Negaunee seemed quite achievable at this rate.
Scott had said the elevation lost between Ishpeming and Marquette was substantial. The Marquette Marathon, which is run between the two towns, claims to be one of the fastest Boston Marathon qualifying courses in the country. It should be since it lists a net elevation difference of -1037 ft. between start and finish. It was fortunate that I had both a tailwind and gravity moving me through the outskirts of Ishpeming. The road there was heavily traveled, four lanes with a center turning lane and traffic was moving faster than the posted speed limit which appeared to be about 45 mph. The roadside was intermittently either barren of development or full of strip mall type businesses. When it was close to dwellings sidewalks appeared, taking the place of the paved shoulder that I was normally using as my lane of travel.
Ishpeming might mean heaven but it wasn't named that by any bicyclist. Once the shoulder disappeared motorists seemed to find my presence in the right hand lane a downright affront to their sovereignty. They let you know this in various ways. Honking is rarely necessary. Most often it's by blowing past and pulling sharply back to the right to emphasize how very annoying it is to have someone on a bicycle taking up what would otherwise be valuable automobile space on the planet. I tried riding on the sidewalk. That's illegal in Massachusetts. Perhaps it was expected in Michigan. I doubted it but it seemed like that is where they were signaling me to go. The scary part was that no curb cuts existed at the intersections. There was a concrete gutter that bordered the somewhat rounded curb. It wasn't as severe as a rectangular granite curb but I wasn't convinced my front wheel would successfully climb it if struck at an oblique angle which was the only angle of approach on the opposite side of the intersections. I was afraid my front tire would glance off the face of the curb and send me out into the traffic. I was moving much too fast to be able to recover my direction if such a thing happened.
I abandoned the sidewalk and got back into the right hand lane, pedaling furiously in my highest gear to maintain as much speed as possible. There didn't seem to be any happy medium. I couldn't maintain a high enough speed to keep the motorists from feeling obstructed and I certainly did not want to slow down to the crawl that would have been necessary for me to feel safe on the sidewalk. I just kept on pedaling and hoped the sidewalk would eventually disappear which it did until it reappeared as I neared the center of Negaunee. Then the scenario repeated itself.
My plan for the night was to find a motel. This would now be my fifth night on the road. It would be the seventh night since leaving home and the last shower I'd had was in the morning eight days before. I had sorted this out when I had stopped in Champion. I first tried calling one of the Warm Showers hosts on the phone. There were some that listed their residences in the Negaunee area. I didn't have a high degree of confidence any of them were open to last-minute appeals for a place to stay but one of them at least didn't expressly state they needed a specific amount of forewarning. The only number given was their business, a bakery and cafe, which seemed to be already closed by the time I dialed it. My next call was home to talk to Faye. She obliged me by getting on the computer and searching for the names of motels in the Negaunee area. She found one she felt might serve well, called Tall Pines.
I knew from Faye's directions that the motel was on Rt. 28 in Negaunee. I wasn't sure exactly where. Since I did not expect to be firing up my alcohol stove in the motel room I started looking for a place that would suffice for a supper meal. I stopped at the Beef-a-Roo in Negaunee. On Google they called themselves a “steak house.” I guess that's “steak” as in cube steak or perhaps ground beef steak. It seemed like a fast food joint run by the usual assortment of disaffected teenagers that are the staff at most McDs and their ilk. At the time I had never had any experience with the name. I wasn't sure what they served. The name conjured up images of a roast beef sandwich place like Arby's. I ended up ordering a chef's salad which turned out to be an okay choice and not overpriced. Before I left I asked the kids if they knew of the Tall Pines Motel. One of them said there had been only one motel in Negaunee and it burned down a couple of years prior. Another one said he knew it and that it was on Rt. 28 after the “Cat dealership.” I thanked them and started riding without spotting my target until well beyond the center of town. In fact, the city limits of Marquette were not much further beyond when I finally did spot the motel on the opposite side of the highway. As I rolled into the parking lot I noticed that I'd put in my longest day thus far: 130 km or 80 miles.
It wasn't a fancy place. The sign on the office door directed me to one of the units. As I wheeled my bike in that direction a tall guy in his 40s had already emerged and was walking in my direction. I asked if there was an available room and was told there was space. We went back to the office and I registered for a room and learned the procedure for the continental breakfast which was served in an adjoining kitchen area. It did not seem I needed to worry too much about the cleanliness of the room. Everything seemed to be well-tended. The price was reasonable and they didn't seem so snooty that they would forbid me bringing my bicycle into the room. All things considered it was as Goldilocks would have said: “Just right!”
Nearly all of the items that had been nagging at me got attended to: sleeping in a bed, taking a shower and watching the Weather Channel were all taken care of. Washing clothes and getting my front wheel looked at still remained. I used the business section of the motel room phone-book to look for a bike shop and laundromat in Marquette. I found one of each on N. Third St.
Breakfast in the motel office was actually pretty enjoyable. I had the little kitchen all to myself. I found orange juice in individual containers in the fridge. There was a pot of coffee already made. Cups, plates and utensils were easily located. I toasted some bread in the toaster. I had a bowl of Cheerios with peanut butter toast on the side. All in all, provided you aren't a slave to high church ceremony, the Tall Pines Motel is a good place to spend the night if you ever need to stay in the Negaunee/Marquette area.
I was able to get an early enough start and rolled into Marquette and located the street in question without much difficulty. There was a pretty steep hill to climb from where I intersected it and turned toward the Northern Michigan University campus. I passed the King Koin Laundromat first on the left. The Quick Stop Bike Shop was a few blocks down on the right. I went to the bike shop and after giving them my front wheel to look at they allowed me to leave my bike in their basement storage area while I walked back up to the laundromat with a couple of stuff sacks full of clothes needing cleaning. While fishing things out of my front panniers I discovered that the shortened shavings bags I was using to line them were not keeping the water out. I did my best to air out the panniers and dry off the plastic. I made a mental note to be on the lookout for some suitable replacement plastic bags.
I was able to have a conversation with a couple who were also using the laundromat. They were looking for property to buy with the intention of relocating to the area from California. They had left their jobs and were living on the road in a camper van. We were able to share our mutual enjoyment of the simplified life that comes with being able to say that all you need to be happy you can carry with you as you travel.
When I returned with clean clothes, the bike shop pronounced my rim roadworthy. The tire could not be seated straight. It was blamed on not having been seated straight originally. I suspect there is a flaw in the tire since I can usually get a tire seated correctly and this one gave me trouble from the very beginning. The front end wiggling was annoying but not hazardous. I would just have to live with it. I bought some chamois cream from them when I paid for the service. The only available packets of cream that would easily stow in my handlebar bag were Chamois Butt'r brand in the “hers” edition. They were out of stock on the “his.” The salesman said the only difference in the male vs. female formula was that the latter smelled nicer. I said it couldn't hurt to smell a little nicer given the amount of time that elapses between showers when I'm touring and so bought a couple of packets.
I had been using Body Glide but the container was nearly empty when I started and now it was all gone. My experience on the ride in 2008 led me to change some of my previous riding habits. When an all day ride in the rain led to chafing in my perineal area I started using the Body Glide to coat my chamois pad and also dispensed with cotton briefs and rode commando from then on as most bicycle racers do. Sticking with that formula I've since been able to avoid that problem even with day-long rides in the rain. I also picked up a new saddle on that trip and with it a saddle cover, both having cut-outs in the nose area of the saddle where they contact the perineum. The saddle cover now gets packed along on all my tours. It serves as a bit of extra shock absorption when I'm riding on gravel for long stretches. It also can be helpful to have when I've put in a long day and still need to get a few more miles before stopping.
The guys at the shop let me continue to leave my stuff in the basement while I went next door to Ron's Taco Shop for lunch. The system for ordering involved a touch screen on the wall in an alcove near the pick up window. I didn't know how it was supposed to work so I went to the window to order. They showed me the system as they used a similar screen to place my order for a couple of tacos with meat, salsa, lettuce, cheese and tomato. You could order them in many different permutations it seemed. I stuck with what I was familiar with. The tacos were fried on the spot. They were a puffy type of corn wrap which was much better than the brittle ones you get at places like Taco Bell or the kind you buy in packages at the supermarket with the Old El Paso name brand on them which are aptly labeled taco “shells”. These were very good. I probably could have eaten twice as many but they weren't especially cheap so I decided that since I wasn't completely full I'd go in search of some dessert.
I found what I was looking for a block up the street at Gopher's Cafe and Bakery. I had a cup of coffee and bought a piece of cake to go with it. I had my trip journal which was in need of updating so I sat and nursed the coffee, with a couple of refills, while I had the cake and wrote about the previous couple of days travel. I was the only customer at the time. The young woman who ran the business said she'd taken over from her father. I got the impression her main source of income was making cakes to order and the cafe was a sideline to that. I left feeling like I'd made another connection in the voyage. Another “Tim” moment perhaps.
With repacked panniers holding newly cleaned clothes and the front wheel having been looked over by someone with a professional eye I was very happily once again on my way heading east. Traveling through Marquette on the city bike paths was very enjoyable. It meant I didn't need to constantly keep an eye on my rearview mirror for overtaking hostile automobile drivers. It meant I could look up and around and out at the view of Lake Superior. I passed the Marquette Coast Guard station and stopped to take a picture of it for my friend Roger who is another close friend from high school days and a fellow Outward Bound alumnus. His son had just been accepted into the C.G. Academy in New London.
At one point in the area of Marquette called the “Lower Harbor,” I passed a strange looking structure on the lake shore. I'd seen a similar one when leaving Superior on the Tri-County Corridor. I've since learned that they were the means of loading Great Lakes freighters with ore from the iron mines. They are called ore docks and are described as: “a long high structure, with a railway track or tracks along the top with a number of 'pockets' into which ore is unloaded from cars, typically by gravity. Each pocket has a chute that can be lowered to discharge the ore into the hold of a ship berthed alongside.” (Wikipedia) They have outlived their usefulness having been supplanted by machinery on the freighters themselves or dockside which can load and unload such cargo. This vestige of the ore dock in Marquette is being considered for use as a botanical/ecological center.
The ride along the shore continued for quite a while and then the bike path ended in the vicinity of the Michigan Welcome Center. I stopped in to use the restroom, fill my waterbottles and find out about possible campsites for the night. The staff seemed to be somewhat testy when asked about campgrounds and the width of the shoulder one could expect to encounter along the highway. When I was told that Pictured Rocks National Seashore was the best place to camp I expressed first interest and then dismay when learning it was about 20 miles out of my way. My lack of enthusiasm for their suggestions probably contributed to their testiness. It was 40 miles from the visitor's center to the town of Munising. I expected that would be about the distance I could cover before dark. I hoped some options for camping would present themselves when I arrived there.
One of the nicest places I found for camping along the entire route was at the Deer Lake roadside park in Au Train at about the halfway point on my ride to Munising. It would have been perfect if I'd arrived there at the end of the day. Of course “No Camping or Overnight Parking” signs were in evidence but there were plenty of out of the way spots that would have lent themselves to stringing up a hammock while remaining undetected. The lake had a nice beach and would have been ideal for an end of the day swim and wash up. Alas there was still too much daylight left and I felt I couldn't afford to stop for the day. I did take a picture of my loaded bicycle in the shade of the pines, leaning against a picnic table with sunlight streaming in from behind, the lake in the background, which became the choice for “iconic shot” of my summer's ride.
Later I stopped for a milkshake at a small store and dairy bar in the center of Au Train. The two folks running the store, who appeared to be a married couple of retirement age, told me about the “Seney Stretch” that I would be encountering on the other side of Munising. They also discussed the fact that a wolf or large coyote had been struck and killed by a car not far up the road. The view from the highway, still Rt. 28, provided glimpses of beautiful sandy beaches along the shore of that part of Lake Superior. The dairy bar across the highway from the beach, along with the sandy shoulders of the road, gave the place a Cape Cod look, albeit without the milling hordes of tourists. The Cape feeling was later completely erased when I passed the corpse of a canine looking much too large for it to be a coyote's and, except for its tan coloring, easily passing for that of a wolf. Later, when checking the color spectrum for gray wolves, I learned that brown can be one of their coat colors.
Wolves had been part of the discussion when I shared lunch with the Holmans the previous day. Scott expressed concern that Martine had encountered wolves on her walks near their vacation home and he clearly had no reservations about shooting one if he saw it get too close. Not living in the same proximity to wolves myself I did not offer any opinions either pro or con on the subject of their potential lethality. I don't completely dismiss it and feel it is wise to give the notion some respect. On the other hand I live in close proximity to black bears and for the most part have never considered them a threat to my safety. However, many people do, which I think is misplaced. I try to convince myself that Yoopers are guilty of exaggerating the dangers of their wolves the same way some people in my area do with our bears. Nevertheless I can't claim to be equally as comfortable with the notion of prowling wolves as I am with that of ambling bears. For another touring cyclist's perspective on the problem see here: ...Almost Eaten by Wolves.
I arrived in Munising as the sun was setting behind the hills that surrounded it on all sides except that of the lake to the north. In fact, I started down a hill into town past a roadside rest area that would have been my choice for a place to stay if it was on the other side of town but since I would have had to retrace my route uphill I was not inclined to consider returning to scope it out. Given the place I later did find to spend the night I don't regret that decision. One regret I have was not stopping to take a picture of a Sasquatch sculpture in the front of a store along the lakeside. The light was getting low and I didn't want to take the time to stop and fish the camera out of the handlebar bag. I would have liked to have sent the photo to some of my former students who had a fascination for Sasquatch a.k.a. Big Foot. They would have been amused. I thought I would just get a screen capture of the sculpture from a Google Streetview image but not finding it when looking for it later I'm left to conclude that the sculpture must be more recent than Google's last pass down that street.
I did stop at a small package and variety store. I bought a pint of blackberry brandy. I had never partaken of distilled liquor on my bike rides up to that point, instead limiting myself to beer and Twisted Tea and the like. All of which is consumed solely in the interest of rehydrating you understand. What I really wanted right then was coffee brandy. I had a hankering for it after a recent canoe trip on the Allagash Wilderness Waterway at the very beginning of the summer. The adults in the group all brought our flasks or bottles of something or other. I had a flask of rum. Laurel, a fellow teacher from a high school in New Hampshire, had brought along a bottle of coffee brandy which, when I tasted it, put me in mind of the fact that it had been quite a while since the previous time I'd had any. It had been mostly a high school thing. I was pleasantly surprised to find that a few sips tasted particularly good at the end of a day of paddling. I couldn't see why it wouldn't be equally as welcome after a long day of bicycling. For reasons I don't understand, coffee brandy does not seem to be a staple of liquor stores in the Upper Pennisula. It certainly is easy to find at home. Perhaps it all goes back to New England's rejection of English tea and its adoption of coffee drinking as a display of patriotism. No matter, blackberry brandy would have to suffice.
After passing through the center of town I stopped at a supermarket and bought some replacement plastic bags for my panniers, replenished my supply of disposable wipes and bought a can of something to heat for supper. I then went to a gas station/convenience store and bought a can of beer. I had asked the cashier there where the nearest place for breakfast was and received the reply that it was across the street. I was also informed that not much else existed to the east for quite some distance so if it was breakfast that I wanted in the morning I needed to stay close to Munising for the night.
I didn't see any likely sleeping places from where I was at that moment so I started noodling east when another bicyclist appeared up ahead. I overtook her and introduced myself and explained that I was looking for a place to pitch a hammock for the night and wondered if she had any suggestions for likely spots. This kind of information was not part of her usual body of knowledge it seemed and she wasn't much help. I continued on a short way after she had turned left off the highway but returned and went up the same road myself. It led steeply up a wooded, largely uninhabited hillside and I started looking into the woods on the right side of the road for some place to pitch a hammock. I found a good spot in a stand of trees just where the road leveled off and then passed underneath some high tension lines.
It was just the right time of day for the task. Not so dark that I couldn't easily see, but dark enough so that someone in a passing car would just be losing the ability to look into the trees and see my campsite. I strung up the hammock and got my stove going. I heated my food, chili I think, which I ate with corn chips and beer. My wife thinks my cycle touring diet is lacking in the vegetable portion of the food pyramid. She is probably correct. Fresh vegetables are hard to prepare with an alcohol stove and I'm not a big fan of canned vegetables nor do most of such cans contain single servings. I'm partial to things like three bean salads or raw cucumbers with salad dressing as vegetable complements to my cycling meals. I will buy those when I can find them in sizes that don't require worry about the storage of leftovers.
I finished off the meal with a puff on my pipe and sip or two from my blackberry brandy as a toast to the U.P., and then I turned in for the night. It was dark enough by then so that my headlamp was necessary. I was careful not to direct its beam toward the road when cars were passing, which was rather infrequent. I was also able to adjust its brightness to the lowest point which was perfectly adequate for most of what I needed to do such as cleaning up the pots and brushing my teeth.
The cell phone connection was good enough for a call home. The phone continued to let me both hear and be heard. The night's sleep was pleasant but, as I fell asleep, my mind kept straying back to the wolf-sized canine I'd seen, forcing me to wonder how one could defend oneself hanging like a ham from a tree. A “ham hock in a hammock” might be how a pack of wolves might see me. As a paranoid precaution I took my pocket knife and hung it from the same string that suspended my mosquito netting. I didn't think I'd be able to do very much with the knife in the defense department but I reasoned that I could cut my way out of the hammock more quickly than if I had to go through the process of uncinching one end of the net tube and sliding it off of the hammock before I could get out. I attempted to comfort myself with the knowledge that I'd been doing this sort of thing for twenty years and had even been in wolf country before and had never had any problems. Nevertheless when you travel alone it's sometimes difficult to keep your thoughts from straying down these kinds of dead ends.
I got up fairly early and made it down the hill and back to the restaurant, called Sydney's for its Australian theme. It was a good place to eat. The waitstaff was attentive. The food was well prepared and I was able to use the men's room to get cleaned up and ready for the day. After breakfast I found a table outside that I used to unpack my panniers and replace the plastic shavings bags with the new, more intact, plastic bags purchased the day before. It didn't look like I would need them today, the weather seemed perfect. It was cool, dry, and sunny. If I was to maintain no more than a day's deficit in the schedule I would need to do some extra miles during the ride since the previous day's stop in Marquette had again put me a bit more than one day behind schedule. If I'd really studied the map I should have realized the scenery was going to change. I was leaving my last view of Lake Superior behind. Ahead of me lay the aforementioned “Seney Stretch” and I really didn't know what to expect from that.
The Seney Stretch was described to me as flat and straight. It's about 25 miles without a turn. It is unique among roads I've bicycled on. I have driven cars and a motorcycle on some pretty straight roads in the west but have never done anything like that on a bicycle where the monotony of long straightaways seems exaggerated. The view of the road stretching straight all the way to the horizon was challenging. I could see when it rose occasionally. The rises were hardly much more than a few feet over the course of multiple miles. I found I actually enjoyed the ride since I had a tailwind pushing me along. I didn't envy a fellow cyclotourist who was going west. I crossed the highway and we stopped and chatted briefly.
He was on his way to Marquette by way of Manistique. A graduate of NMU in Marquette, he had started out from Kalamazoo and his father was going to accompany him on the last day or two of the ride. His panniers were open and he was using the sunny weather to dry out their contents as much as possible. I mentioned that I had used a dryer at the King Koin in Marquette to get my clothes dry from the rain. He was the same cyclist I referred to earlier who said he liked hearing cars cross the centerline rumble strip because it reassured him they were giving him wide berth. I didn't argue with him about it.
The road continued flat even after it made the first turn past Seney but then began to change character with more climbs and descents delivering a net gain in elevation over the next 55 miles or 90 km. The day remained sunny throughout the time I spent riding. I knew I was covering some respectable distance and eventually passed my previous best day's total from two days prior. I still had a couple of hours of daylight remaining when I passed through the town boundary of Strongs and it's “Black Bear Capital of Michigan” sign. Great! I thought. Another reason to lose some time falling asleep tonight.
My Michigan road map noted camping was permitted at Soldier Lake, a U.S. Forest Service property right beside Rt. 28 at about my limit for riding for the day. I had stopped to ask a Michigan state policeman sitting in his parked cruiser about the availability of supplies in the area and explained my plan for stopping at Soldier Lake. He told me I could find a small convenience store in the next town but that would be all I could expect before Soldier Lake. When I got to the store I was able to buy some things for supper and felt prepared to stop for the day.
When I reached the turnoff for Soldier Lake I noticed my cyclometer was reading 144 km. or 90 mi. from Munising. It was my longest day so far and I was quite proud of the work I'd done. Of course having a tailwind is always a good way to turn over some long miles. The road to the lake, after leaving the highway, shortly offered a right turn toward a picnic area or a left toward the campsites. I rode to the left and discovered that it was being operated on a self-serve basis as the volunteer camp caretaker was not there for the present. There were instructions regarding registration and other sundry matters. I looked at the campsites, searching for one with the right spacing between the trees for my hammock. The sky was starting to become overcast and I wondered how soon it might rain. A routed map board of the area showed the location of a “shelter” at one end of the lake. I rode back and turned toward the picnic area and parked the bike. The shelter was supposed to be near the beach. A path led that way and by following what appeared to be a side trail in the right direction I found the shelter. It was a stone and log structure that immediately seemed like the work of the CCC. I am familiar with these types of buildings since the parks and state forests in Massachusetts are blessed with some fine examples of these depression era work projects for the unemployed young men of the country.
It was currently being used for lumber storage and another parking area on the far side of the lake from the campground was temporarily closed to public access and piles of dirt and other signs of construction were scattered about in the vicinity. There was a picnic table shoehorned into the remaining space inside the shelter and a fireplace on one end that looked like it might have held a fire in the not too distant past. I immediately decided that I would stay there and went back for my bicycle. I'm sure it was not a legitimate overnight spot but the campground did not seem to have many guests and I didn't see anyone using the beach or picnic area so I didn't expect I'd be asked to leave. I figured I'd pay for a campsite anyway and call it even.
I took off my cycling shorts and put on my kilt and went down to the beach with a small container of Dr. Bronner's peppermint soap and, with the kilt off, went in over my waist, ducked under, then stood and lathered up and rinsed off by ducking under once more. I briefly saw a distant figure at the far end of the lake but didn't suppose my naked body would be too offensive to him or her from so far away. No one else was visible the remaining time I used the beach. I went back up to the shelter finished drying off and donned my camp clothes which consist of a turtleneck and xc ski side-zip warm up pants, a fleece vest and my nylon mesh cap. The mosquitoes were not too voracious. I fired up the stove and heated my supper, finishing things off with some of the brandy, a puff on my pipe and a phone call home to let Faye know my whereabouts.
When I told her my sleeping arrangement and the fact that I had not yet put any money in the tube she encouraged me to skip that step. Her frugality leads her to suggest such things when she can do so from more than 1000 miles away. I wondered about it. My funds were shrinking. I needed to economize. I was technically not occupying a campsite at all so I would have needed to put some fictitious site down as my location on the envelope in which I enclosed my payment. My conscience was putting up a bit of a struggle until I made up my mind to take a page out of Tim's book and invoke “Système D.”
When Tim took his schooner Hippo on a cruise of the French coast the summer after our transAtlantic crossing he and his crew saved their dwindling resources by arriving in a harbor late and leaving early, after the harbormaster had left but before he started work for the day and could collect an anchorage fee. Paying for dock space and moorings is an expected expense when sailing since they require upkeep and offer a greater degree of security and eliminate much of the bother and uncertainty associated with anchoring. Putting down one's anchor ought not to be something one is charged for and Tim could invoke Système D (a term he learned from French fellow cruisers) without much danger of violating his scruples.
The salve for my conscience in this situation was the apparent disregard for cyclists that exists in such places. We don't need parking spaces. In my case anyway, I didn't even need a level tentsite. I felt like I should be treated more like a thruhiker on the Appalachian Trail (also federal property) than a tent-toting tourist in a polluting automobile. Shouldn't there be more encouragement and actual incentives for a behavior such as mine? When my brother and I did our tour of the California wine country and coastline north of San Francisco one of the California state campgrounds we stayed in had specific “hiker/biker” campsites that didn't have parking spaces and could only be accessed by walking in to them. They were also less expensive. In retrospect I could still have put what I considered to be a reasonable fee into the tube without any explanation, but let that part of the equation go when time came to leave in the morning. Instead I reasoned I'd write to the proper individual in the US Forest Service and offer my suggestion for turning the CCC picnic shelter at Soldier Lake Campground into a biker's shelter that could encourage more environmentally friendly use of the campground's facilities. I will need to do a survey of cycle tourists that gives me some idea of the likelihood of such an enticement resulting in any steady use of the location. My one attempt so far at polling Michigan cyclists did not produce any responses so the idea is still a work in progress.
The rain did come during the night and I was grateful for the roof over myself and gear. It wasn't raining in the morning when I got up, packed and left the shelter just as the forest service employees arrived, I suspect, to resume work on the closed part of the campground. The first one was just sitting in her federal vehicle using her smartphone when I rode by. I don't think she even looked up to see me roll past. I went over to the dumpster and deposited my trash from supper then rode out to the highway and turned right toward Sault Ste. Marie.
According to my itinerary I was less than one day behind schedule. I was starting the day about 14 miles into the previous day's allotment which was originally expected to get me as far as Bruce Mines, ON by nightfall. That seemed a bit out of reach but if I could put in another long day, the deficit would be even smaller. If I could continue to chip away at it I had every reason to believe I could get back on schedule before the end. First item on the agenda was breakfast but with no towns anywhere near me it was 14 miles before I reached a cross roads with a gas station and convenience store where I was able to get some hot coffee and a pastry. That was going to have to suffice for breakfast.
The ride east after breakfast was another composite of Google directions and the Michigan road map. The original route, a la Google, would have had me following the Soo Strongs Trail which was a multi-use (read ATV/snowmobile) trail following an abandoned rail line that went to Sault Ste. Marie from the direction of Strongs. I have nothing against abandoned rail lines. My ride to the Gaspe last summer was along rail trails for most of the way from the US/Canada border to the outskirts of Quebec. These former rail corridors, in areas where roads are laid out in grid fashion, are usually straight lines between two points. In this particular case I could have taken the more direct route toward Sault Ste. Marie. It may have ended up taking the same amount of time, being an even tradeoff between shorter and more direct and longer, but ostensibly faster, going of the pavement.
As it was I did the north then east, north then east, and so on, zig zag up toward Brimley and beyond to the, by now familiar, international bridge in Sault Ste. Marie. The journey was not without its rewards. Stopping in the farm country outside of the Soo I saw a harvested field full of sandhill cranes. I'd never seen sandhills though I'd read about them, especially in Aldo Leopold's Marshland Elegy, a part of his A Sand County Almanac. It was a special part of the trip to both to see and hear them for the first time and I knew I would remember this for the rest of my life.
Before crossing the bridge into Canada I decided to use the LSSU campus as a possible Internet access point. I found a computer station in one of the campus buildings and managed to load the SD card from my camera and posted a few photos of the trip to Facebook. Another stop was for something to eat. I asked a passing LSSU student if there was a McDs or something similar near the campus. He pointed me in the direction of a shopping center and when I found the fast food places I also saw a restaurant called Country Kitchen that appeared to be a “breakfast all day” kind of place. Feeling that the cold pastry and coffee in a paper cup that I'd had earlier in the day really didn't do it for a rewarding breakfast and also feeling that a sit down, waited upon meal in a real restaurant was superior to something one of the fastfood chains could serve up I went in. It was a good decision and put me in the right mood for my trip over the bridge and entry into Canada.
It was now well after noon and the sky was darkening with rain clouds. I suspected I wouldn't get far out of the city before I needed to start looking for a place to sleep. In fact I was willing to spring for the cost of a campground if one existed at a suitable distance beyond the city. My eye caught sight of the Ontario Travel and Information Centre once I finished a rather uneventful crossing of the border, compared to my journey south. The women at the counter in the information center were happy to give me a free road map of Ontario and also gave me directions to a campground just outside of the city called Bell's Point Beach. It didn't seem far enough away for me to call it a day but since the rain was just starting they seemed quite confident I would find it to be just the place to stop for the night. I wasn't sure since my original itinerary had me making it as far as Bruce Mines by that evening. The distance to there was still 70 km away which didn't seem achievable within the remaining daylight but I knew I needed to put in a full day or risk falling too far behind schedule.
One thing I did decide to do was visit the Walmart in the Station Mall and ask about prepaid phone plans. I was still thinking Tracfone but in reality it could have been any carrier as long as it was pay-as-you-go, since I would only ever be using it in Canada. The Walmart did not have such phones and the salesperson seemed to be unable to suggest any alternative locations for obtaining one, though a check of the Internet reveals a couple of places I could have visited, one of which was in the mall itself. Feeling like I'd wasted time unnecessarily I donned my full rain gear under the overhang in the mall doorway as the rain began to gain intensity and the wind began to pick up in velocity. The directions I'd received at the information center for exiting the city by bicycle jived pretty well with my printed Google cue sheet and map. I was cautioned that construction along one stretch of the route would require a short detour. That was useful information and helped keep me from getting too far off route when I encountered it.
Along the way I passed the entrance to Bellevue Park. The “bell” in Bellvue triggered the poorly remembered advice to stay at Bell's Point Beach and so I turned down the road that led into the park which quickly revealed itself to be a city park and playground with albeit very nice grounds and a greenhouse and horticulture building. I sheltered in the lee of the building and contemplated my options. The park was not going to provide any stealth camping opportunities, at least not until it was closed and gated for the night. I didn't have any desire to wait that long nor was I confident I could find a discrete enough spot. The wind abated and so I continued on, following my Google directions which said to stay on Queen St. East.
When that road ended I merged with Ontario 17, the highway that connects Sault Ste. Marie with Sudbury, the next similarly-sized community to the east. Here it is a four-lane road with nowhere to ride except on the side of the right lane tight to the curb or perhaps on a dirt herd path in the grass outside the curb. It was not a happy choice. I stayed on the pavement and, where I could, I road off to the side where curb cuts or driveways opened up a bit more space. Fortunately it didn't last more than a kilometer and then the majority of the thru traffic was routed left onto a divided section of the highway and I continued straight onto ON-17B, which must have been the “old” ON-17. That consisted of only two lanes but was flanked with nice, wide, paved shoulders. I was much relieved.
Riding east on ON-17B I passed the Bell's Point Beach Campground without recalling having seen it or, if I did, making the decision to continue on. I did stop at the Garden River Quick Stop to get a soda and something to eat. I engaged the cashier in conversation. She was an Ojibway woman who told me I was now on the Garden River Ojibwa Reserve. We discussed other areas that contained Ojibwa populations. She also told me that camping was available at the Ojibway Park Campground not far up the road. Not much further up the road I crossed the Garden River and with it a somewhat famous railroad bridge just upstream from the highway. It bears the handpainted motto: “This is Indian Land.” I had first seen it approaching the Soo on the bus. A picture of the bridge was featured on post cards and other memorbilia at the native crafts and art shop that I poked around in back beside the Garden River Quick Stop. In honor of the moment I snapped a picture.
When I reached the entrance to Ojibway park I went in. I did not really want to spend the night in a campground but, if the price was right, I could be pursuaded to think otherwise. There was no one in the office when I arrived so I rode around the campground trying to get a sense of where I might be able to string up a hammock. The price was $25.00 Can. for the night for a site with no hook-ups. I was still short of my day's target. There was enough daylight left to get in more miles. I hadn't bought anything yet for supper. There didn't seem to be a store at the campground. I decided to keep going.
Some distance beyond, a car pulled over and stopped just up the road from me. The driver got out and waited for me to get close enough to talk. He told me he was a local cyclist and wished to give me directions for avoiding the divided highway section of ON-17 which I would shortly be forced to use if I didn't know the alternative. I suspected that my Google directions gave me that same information but he also had some landmarks I could use to stay on course since there were some confusing turns. He told me that part of the route was closed due to repairs, which was something Google would not have been able to tell me. Another handy bit of advice he gave me was to take the Lee Valley Rd. when I got to Massey. That too was on the Google route but again his landmarks were going to save me missing some key turns. We discussed a few of the other area roads that Google was recommending and he warned me against using those saying there were sections with very loose sand that could cost me a lot of time if I went that way. He said he was from Desbarats and “Snooks” was the name he went by. I thanked him profusely and we parted company; it being another Tim moment of the journey.
As it was getting close to sunset, what seemed like my last option for purchasing something, an LCBO and market in Echo Bay, had closed at 6 p.m. so I resigned myself to using my emergency supper rations if nothing else was available. On the opposite corner of the same intersection was the Pit Stop gas station (actually gas “bar”) which seemed to have some limited number of food items for sale. Besides staples like bread and milk and bait worms there was a wide assortment of snack food. I chose a bag of beef jerky and another of peanuts as my supper protein source. It wasn't much but it was going to have to do. I imagined Faye would shudder if she knew.
My directions were to take Bar River Rd. E where ON-17B ended. I would then intersect Government Road which was going to take me on a parallel track to ON-17 allowing me to avoid riding on the divided highway segment of that road. I hoped I'd find someplace to put up my hammock before it got too dark to see what I was doing. The first part of Government Rd., after reaching its intersection with Bar River, was uphill at a steeper angle than anything I'd been forced to climb since leaving Duluth except perhaps that brief climb out of the creek crossing for which I'd wanted my small ring when following the detour on Day 2. With some difficulty I was able to get my chain onto the small ring this time. It was getting pretty dark but not so dark I needed to turn on my bicycle lights yet. There were residences scattered along the wooded margins of the road but it held promise as a good stretch of road to provide a stealth campsite.
I found a place where an ATV trail crossed the road and I walked into the woods following it for a few hundred feet. A grove of young trees growing from rock strewn ground provided a couple of hammock stringing candidates and I decided to stop for the night. On the plus side, the rocky, boulder-covered ground made for less undergrowth. It also made walking problematic. With some difficultly I was able to half carry, half wheel my bike in amongst the trees and get everything set up as the last usable light faded away. Again grateful for a hammock, instead of a tent, in this and many similar instances, I dined on beef jerky and peanuts washed down with water from one of my bottles though I was sorry I hadn't at least been able to get a beer. The supper had certainly satisfied my daily requirement for sodium. The last of the blackberry brandy provided a small moral boost however. It had been a ride of about 60 miles or 100 km from Soldier Lake that day. I still hadn't closed the gap but it was holding steady at a closable margin.
The morning was damp and it promised to be a wet day. I donned my rain outfit and started in search of breakfast, hoping that finding one would take the curse off last night's poor supper. The road gave me back all of the elevation I'd previously worked so hard to achieve and following Snooks' advice I managed to make the appropriate left/right turn combination to stay on Government Rd. until reaching the center of Desbarats. A firefighter outside of his station pointed across and back to the west down ON-17 when I asked him if there was a place to get something to eat in town.
Stobie's Restaurant was a nice discovery on a rainy late morning. It was busy, friendly and warm. I picked a breakfast item from the menu shortly before they would have stopped serving such choices and it came quickly. Using the bathroom helped me feel cleaner and drier. I was happy to sit and watch the goings on as I wrote in my journal and nursed a cup of coffee. At about half past eleven troops of high school students started marching in. The waitress asked them what was happening. The answer was that “they jacked up the prices for lunch” at the school cafeteria. Even a teacher came in to pick up a sandwich to go.
I realized these easily could have been students of mine, at least those from the Carhartt and camo crowd. I had a brief feeling of sadness that a chapter in my life was now ending. This was the first time in 34 years that I wasn't getting to know a new crop of kids at the beginning of September. I was tempted to announce that fact to the waitress but instead kept it to myself and just watched the interactions. They were all very nice kids, just like so many of my students. I reflected on my good fortune for having had the chance to share so much of my life with all of them and having them share a brief part of each of their's with me.
I suited up and left after taking a picture of Stobie's and the highway out in front with its cars and trucks throwing up sprays of rainwater. I noticed, with concern, that there was no shoulder to the road. Where the pavement ended was a white line marking the outer limits of the travel lane. Outside of that line was between 12 and 16 inches of pavement and then a gravel strip wide enough for a breakdown lane. Any thoughts I might have had of riding in that gravel were quickly suppressed, especially when I saw a previous rider's two inch deep tire tracks weaving sinuously through the muck. To ride there would have been to consign myself to a frustrating crawl that, at best, could have been little more than walking pace and frequently probably not even that. To stay on the pavement, in a rainstorm, seemed foolhardy, but what choice did I have? I could only hope it was temporary. I kept my rear red light on and flashing. I was wearing a red rain jacket. Beyond that I had to trust the drivers, and there were many of them, of both cars and trucks. This was a busy road, the only one connecting two large Canadian cities of 75,000 and 160,000 inhabitants each.
Unfortunately it became obvious that things were not going to change. The roads in Wisconsin and Michigan had spoiled me. Heck, the roads in other parts of Ontario and Quebec had spoiled me. I had never been on a road quite like this one with its combination of heavy traffic, high speed, and no safe place to ride. There were a couple of positives. The wind was coming from behind and I wanted to get off the road badly enough that I was willing to put in some long miles.
I stopped to refuel in Iron Bridge. The weather had improved by then. It was mid afternoon. The sun had been shining for quite a while. There were two small stores on either side of the road. I visited both of them. From the one on the westbound side of the highway, Village General Store, I could watch an Amish couple selling corn from the back of their buggy in the lot next door. There had been signs along the highway announcing that occasional buggy traffic was to be expected. I could see buggy tracks in the loose gravel of the shoulders. I didn't think horses could like pulling weight through that stuff any more than I did, a fact that seemed confirmed by buggy tracks that had seemed to leave and return to the shoulder periodically, probably during lulls in the traffic.
I rode on through Blind River but it wasn't quite late enough to stop or even find a place to buy supper makings. When it did eventually get that late I couldn't find a store that was still open. Spying a restaurant on the opposite side of the road, a couple miles beyond the hamlet of Spragge, I decided to at least ask if they were still serving food. It was late and the parking lot was empty. It turned out that I was just in time for the last round. The restaurant was a solo operation and the proprietress was an attractive woman in her 30s. The restaurant was called Nothing Special which probably was an accurate description of the menu but not of the experience of eating there. She was friendly and interested in my travels. I spied poutine on the menu and ordered that. She prepared an enormous bowl of french fries and put gravy and cheese on top. As hungry as I was I couldn't quite finish it. I told her she better have some animals she could give it to. She said she didn't. I felt guilty but I had seriously reached my limit. It was sold as an appetizer and if that was the normal portion size it could have been shared quite adequately by a party of six.
I told her of my plan to find a place to put up my hammock for the night, hoping she might have a suggestion or two as to where that might be. Unfortunately, as I have found, this is a concept that is outside of the average person's frame of reference. I believed she mentioned the campground across the highway. I politely demurred. I saddled up and rode off into the gathering darkness. I didn't need to ride for long since I came upon the Serpent River Highway Rest Area just as it was getting too dark to see without some kind of artificial light. There was one car in the rest area. The occupant(s) seemed to have a flashlight in hand. I wasn't sure what their game was since they just sat in their car and shined the flashlight about. They were on the far side from me, probably a few hundred feet away. It gave me the creeps so I was a bit reluctant to stop there for the night but, barring the strange company, it seemed like the right place.
Next to the rest area entrance I noticed a sign board and, with the help of my headlamp, I was able to read it. It described the Kennebec Trail and a worn path led off into the woods toward the west. I wheeled my bicycle down the path which was covered, in that location, with wood chips. Another sign board gave some of the history of the area but I continued on past that and, walking my bike, came, after a few minutes, to a spot where the trail opened up to a view of the Serpent river flowing nearby. There were a couple of spruce trees that seemed adequate to support the hammock and I experimented with trimming a lower branch or two to see if that would make things work. As far as hammock spots go it rated a C+ but, together with some students I've known, I decided that seemed good enough and so I prepared to stay there for the night. After getting set up I walked back to the rest area. The car was still there. Weird. I used the restroom and then continued on to an overlook at a set of rapids in a bend of the river. I could look along the bend and see the approximate location of my hammock site. There was a full, or nearly full, moon on the rise. The air was pleasantly warm. Aside from the creepy car I guessed it wasn't such a bad spot.
The morning was sunny and a fine breeze was blowing in from the west. I was up and on my way and stopped at a convenience store to see what might be had in the way of breakfast food. Pickings were slim so I asked the cashier, who appeared to be Native Canadian, if there was a restaurant serving breakfast in the area. He told me a few miles up the road in the town of Spanish I would find something. I did find Dixie Lee's and had a decent breakfast for not too much money, along with a wash up and some time to write in the journal. The flags on the front of the restaurant were blowing in a good direction. The sun was shining but it was cool and dry. I was feeling strong. It was a perfect day for some long miles.
The names Spanish (for both the town and the river which flows through it) and Espanola, which was another town to the east, are so named, according to Wikipedia, “due to French explorers and Jesuit priests encountering Ojibwe peoples speaking Spanish in the area, apparently as a result of a Spanish woman having been taking (sic) captive during an expedition far to the south.”
As I was eating breakfast and pondering the day's ride, I realized that my mileage for that leg of the journey had been calculated with a ferry ride from South Baymouth to Tobermory as part of the total distance traveled. That ferry crossing represented a distance of 30 miles that I didn't actually have to pedal. My night at Serpent River had been nearly a day's ride short of Little Current where I had scheduled to spend night 11. Night 12 was supposed to have been in Tobermory which was at the far end of the ferry passage. I wasn't sure that I could make the last ferry of the day, I didn't have the schedule with me, but if even if I could only get to South Baymouth where the ferry departed I reasoned I would essentially be where I expected to be for that night minus the ferry ride. At least in terms of miles needing to be pedaled it would mean I was back on schedule. I didn't work out the mileage between Spanish and South Baymouth and, as it turned out, it is probably good that I didn't.
My primary task was to find Snook's landmarks alerting me to the alternate route to Massey and from there the Lee Valley Rd. I was more than ready to get off of ON-17. In fact it only got worse as the day went on. The trucks (big rigs) were especially unnerving. They were going faster than the 90 kph which was the posted speed. In all fairness there wasn't much room for any of us. Most of the route was only two lanes, though an occasional passing lane did appear. A truck, trying to give me room, had to cross the centerline. If there was oncoming traffic that was difficult to do. If two trucks were passing it was especially important for me to give them both as much space as I could. In such cases I occasionally did veer onto the gravel and held on for dear life as my tires slewed crazily in unpredictable directions. I often felt like screaming and as the hoped for landmarks seemed to take longer and longer to appear I did begin screaming out in frustration when I was buffeted by the bow waves of passing trucks so strongly that it made me feel, had my left arm had been extended, I could have touched them going by at 100 kph. I vowed to write the Ontario Ministery of Transportation and suggest at the very least they invest in the placement of “Share the Road” signs and if at all possible create a wider paved area outside of the travel lane. Someone should acknowledge that cyclists had a right to be using the pavement.
I did find what I was looking for. I breathed a sigh of relief and said goodbye, I hoped forever, to the accursed ON-17. The road took me into the outskirts of Massey and then I got a bit disoriented. Because I wanted to find the bridge that would take me over the Spanish River I turned toward the river at the first intersection I came to. I briefly followed the river downstream until I asked directions from a resident of the area, standing in her driveway, who was able to get me turned around and headed correctly.
Lee Valley Rd. was everything that ON-17 was not. That is, quiet. I suspect a lot of cyclists use it and the few drivers who passed me on the way did not seem to resent my presence, quite possibly because they did not seem to be in such a hurry that a cyclist was viewed as an obstruction to forward progress. It brought me to a busy intersection in the center of Espanola. I turned right onto ON-6 leading south toward Manitoulin Island and the ferry. The wind, which had been my friend up until then, was now not going to be so favorable. I hoped it would die down but at present it did not seem to be so inclined.
As I reached the shopping center area of town I saw both a Tim Horton's and a McDonalds. I have a weakness for root beer floats during hot summer bike rides and my favorite way of getting one, at what is really a bargain price, is to order a vanilla ice cream in a dish and a large size soft drink from McDs. I dump the ice cream into the cup and then fill it with root beer. I sat outside with my float and tried to keep the wind from blowing away my napkin.
With my carbohydrate levels topped off I was once again on the road, now fighting a crosswind. What I knew, was this was the best I could hope for from here to South Baymouth. There were going to be some places where I would be riding west, into the wind. I kept hoping it would lessen before then. The road shortly began to climb and descend. It goes through what are known as the La Cloche Mountains at this point. There were some steep, but short, ascents as well as descents. This was the most climbing I had done in the whole ride thus far. It didn't seem quite right that it should happen a long way into an already full day's ride and with an unfavorable wind making it even more difficult. I do have to say it was pretty. The terrain was made up of bare rock knobs and cliffs interspersed with lakes and ponds. At one point I crossed over what once had been the railroad line that paralleled my route to South Baymouth. During the planning of the trip I had taken note of the presence of the old rail line which was now an ATV trail. Looking down onto it I could see its gravel surface pockmarked with puddles from recent rainstorms. It looked firm enough to be a good surface for bike riding. If I wasn't enjoying the ride on the pavement so much I would have been very tempted to switch to the gravel of the rail trail. As it was, ON-6 was a smoothly paved surface with wide paved shoulders and drivers who also seemed very tolerant of cyclists. The trade off would have been fewer climbs on the gentle grade required for railroads. Constrained by the topography though, it wasn't any shorter.
The wind never did seem to die down, it may in fact have increased in velocity. It's always hard to tell. When one is riding with it, it never seems to be very strong. When one is riding against it, the same wind seems ferocious. For two separate stretches of highway, totaling about 18 km, or 11 miles, I was slogging upwind, my head down, pedaling in a low gear, feeling like I was hardly moving.
The last, and longest, of these upwind stretches ended when I reached Little Current and the beginning of my ride down the length of Manitoulin Island. I stopped at a gas station and convenience store advertising hawberry jelly, a local delicacy. They had a ferry schedule. It looked like the last ferry left at 10 p.m. which seemed doable until I noticed that was during the summer only, the schedule for which had stopped being followed by a day or two. I hoped I'd read this incorrectly but I wasn't going to bury myself to reach the ferry slip by 10 p.m. only to find that I hadn't been wrong. If I made it on time to catch the ferry, fine. If not, I'd spend the night in South Baymouth and take the first ferry in the morning. I wouldn't be too far off schedule even so. I was once more heading south and the wind seemed to be calming down some. There was even a stretch of road when I was riding east and briefly had the wind at my back again. The longest climb of the day happened while riding that eastward stretch, in an area called Sheguiandah, ascending to where the road swung south at 10 Mile Point. I stopped there to take in the view. The sun was getting low and I very much wanted to reach the town of Manitowaning before it set. It was important to me to get a picture or two there.
I had been to see my primary care physician in late May. I needed to get a DOT physical so I could maintain my bus driver's license. I have driven my own field trips for many years and, post-retirement, I wanted the chance to continue driving sports and field trips. My PCP is also a cyclist and we always talk about summer plans. When I mentioned I was going to be traversing the Great Lakes he mentioned Georgian Bay, Manitoulin Island and especially Manitowaning. That town held special significance for him. Having finished his undergraduate training he was taking time to ride his bike across the continent. He traversed Manitoulin and when he reached Manitowaning he was struck by its beauty and peacefulness. He made the decision in that place to pursue a medical degree, reasoning that with it he would be able to live in a place like Manitowaning. That was over 40 years ago. I figured he deserved a picture of the place if I went through there.
I reached a billboard for Manitowaning just as the last rays of the sun were shining on it. I took a couple of pictures with my bike propped up against it and then rode through the main part of the town and got back onto ON-6 heading for South Baymouth. I was in the home stretch for the day's ride and had put in over 90 miles up to that point. My rear end was getting pretty sore. I fished my saddle cover out of its stowage place and put it on over my saddle. It was time for a bit more padding. I finished the ride into South Baymouth in the dark. It was about 10 p.m. The ferry had been long gone by then. I had read the schedule correctly. There was nothing open in town. I was able to buy a soda from a vending machine and fill my waterbottles from a hose on the outside of the ferry building. I decided to spend the night in the pedestrian waiting shelter beside the ferry slip. I never saw another person the entire time I spent cooking my supper (my emergency ration), laying out my sleeping bag, and getting settled.
It had been a 114 mile ride that day with the strongest headwinds and biggest climbs of the trip thus far. I was obviously getting stronger as the journey went on.
I was up early enough to remain unnoticed. I left most of my things in the shelter and walked up through town to see if any place served breakfast. I found that Carol & Earl's was going to start serving at 7 a.m. which was about a half an hour away. I investigated the John Budd Park on the opposite side of the road. They had campsites. If I had noticed that on the way in I might very well have stayed there. It would have been a much shorter walk to breakfast. I went to the Shell station down the road and poked around to kill a little more time. Hawberry jelly seemed to be an item here as well. The restaurant was open when I returned. The prices were very reasonable. Earl was trying to get his customers to order the special, which involved a side of “peameal.” Since I wasn't aquainted with the item I wasn't that interested. I ordered “The Kitchen Sink” which was basically an omelet with everything. When I placed my order, Carol, Earl's wife, said, “Oh, he's not going to like that.” She said the same thing when another customer ordered it as well. It later became obvious why. At one point Earl trudged through the dining area carrying a pipe wrench and drain wanting to know who ordered The Kitchen Sink. I gathered it was a pretty standard act.
I was quite pleased with my omelet and returned to find my bicycle and gear sitting as I had left them. The ferry office was open and I purchased my ticket. I used the men's room there but decided to stay dressed in my off-the-bike clothes rather than getting into my cycling garb, reasoning I could do the changing during the ferry ride. It was a two hour passage. The weather was very nice. It was going to be quite a pleasant crossing to Tobermory.
When loading started I wheeled the bicycle through the auto deck to the very front of ferry. I tied it to a railing along the inside of the hull. Also parked in the bow, and anchored to the deck with ratchet straps, were numerous motorcycles. The ones nearest me were being ridden by members of the Tarmac Jacks from Guelph, ON. When asked, a deck hand stated that once under way I was not allowed back down onto the auto deck. At that point I didn't have time to rummage through my panniers for the clothes I would need which ruined my plans to change before we docked. I had hoped to be ready to ride once back on land in order to limit my deficit from the schedule to as short a time as possible. If I had been in Tobermory the night before, as planned, I would probably have started riding much earlier than I would be now, once landed. I could still ride to where I was scheduled to spend the night, Owen Sound, but it would be later than originally planned. Looking for a place to sleep in the dark always complicates the process.
It was rather late when I finally started riding. As a result it was after dark when I reached Owen Sound. The ride down the Bruce Peninsula was pleasant. The road shoulders were adequate. The traffic was reasonable. I stopped for a pastry at an organic bakery along the way. Aside from that, the only place I had interest in stopping in was Wiarton, about 2/3rds of the way down the peninsula. I harbored some notion that Stan Rogers' song White Squall was famous enough in Canada to warrant a souvenir or two honoring the line about a “red-eyed Wiarton girl.” There wasn't anything like that, that I could see, and it was late enough that most of the souvenir shops were closed. I stopped at the Daisy Mart to get something to fuel the next leg of the ride.
My final stop for the day was at the McDs in Owen Sound. It's a big town and, as it turns out, there is more than one McDs. Mine was in the shopping plaza strip one encounters as you approach the center of town from the west. It was more a matter of desperation than any particular desire for fast food. I was pretty tired. It was starting to get chilly. I just wanted to stop riding for a while, eat something and plan my next move. I had no clear notion of where I would spend the night. In such situations I usually find that just continuing to ride is about the only thing I can decide to do. There was a roadside rest area marked on the map along the way from Owen Sound to Meaford. It was a long way away but it gave me a target and if something appeared before I got there, so much the better.
Riding through the center of O.S. wasn't too pleasant. There was a lot of traffic and not much road width for all of us and a pretty good hill to climb on the way east so I found myself on the sidewalk at times. I had to stop and consult the map at one of the turns. A Tim Horton's made for a convenient and warm place to do that. The Travel Lodge diagonally across the intersection also tempted me. I went to inquire about the cost of a room and whether my bicycle was permitted in the room with me. It became obvious the cost was going to be too steep and storing the bike too inconvenient. I asked about public phones and was directed down the street to a payphone at a Mac's on the corner of my next turn on the way to Meaford.
I called Faye to let her know I wasn't sure where I'd be spending the night but assured her it would be somewhere along the way to Meaford and the sooner the better. As I exited the more settled parts of town, now passing through the east side shopping plaza strip, recent road construction seemed to have accomodated the placement of a sidewalk/bike path along my side of ON-26. I gratefully rode there and, as I continued along it, I left the streetlit part of Owen Sound behind. I was soon following the path in the near total dark. It was concrete and I reached a place where, in the dark, the path became black. I assumed this resulted from being paved with macadam instead of concrete. I was preparing to ride onto this supposed macadam section when I realized just in time that it was actually a deep hole in the ground. The path simply ended in an open drain hole about four feet deep.
I swerved sharp left and came to a halt where the concrete paved path ended at a curb cut on ON-26. My heart was racing. I was ready to quit for the night right then and there. Across the highway were some young aspen trees. It looked like a possible hammock spot. I wheeled the bike in among them, found two that were spaced well enough for a good pitch, strung up the hammock, climbed in, and went to sleep. The only interuption to my rest occurred sometime during the middle of the night when some creature, a racoon or something similar, was scuffling around in the leaves near the hammock. I shined the light around but inside the mosquito netting you feel like you are only lighting up the netting and nothing much is visible outside the screen. Holding the light close to the netting helps but it is still hard to really see out into the dark. Whatever it was moved on and I fell back asleep. I hoped it wasn't a skunk. Besides wolves, skunks are another type of animal that gives me some reason to be afraid.
I wasn't behind schedule in any way at this point. Owen Sound had been my goal for night 13 and that is where I had found myself. Day 13 was supposed to have been a 70 miler and it was. If I didn't take any short days from now on I should finish on schedule. The sun was shining brightly that morning. So brightly I was a bit afraid my hammock was plainly visible to the cars going past on the road close by. If so, I never saw anyone looking my way. They all seemed focused on their drive, probably into work. It was a Monday morning, the weekend was over, it was time to get back down business. My goal for the night was the town of Barrie, on the shore of Lake Simcoe. There were Warmshowers hosts I could potentially call.
First item was breakfast. It was still quite early. I could have turned around and started looking in the shopping plaza that I'd passed the previous night. My chances of finding a fast food place were high but I wanted to avoid those for breakfast if possible. I am also reluctant to go backwards on a tour. I'd rather ride four miles in the forward direction and take 20 min. to find a place than go back one mile and find it in five. I suppose when you have to work for every mile you make you don't want to give any of them up.
I went by the previous night's putative rest area stop as I was coasting down a long hill into Meaford. It was fortunate I had stopped where I did. This rest area was not conducive to stealth hammocking. Riding along Sikes St., which is the path of ON-26 through the center of Meaford, I spied the Georgian Bay Motel & Cafe. It seemed kind of funky but worth a try for breakfast. It was a bit of an odd place. The residents of the motel looked more like those in a single room occupancy operation than tourists visiting Meaford. The cafe seemed to be a one-woman operation and the regulars knew the routine but I sat waiting for a waitress and watched one of the residents step in to help the cook with some of the table waiting duties. She poured me a cup of coffee but confessed that she didn't work there. Eventually the cook did come over to my table to take the order but I'd never been given a menu. She pointed to a sign on the wall that listed the three choices one had for breakfast. I ordered two eggs, over-easy, toast, home fries and bacon.
When the food was served, everything was as it should be. No frills, however. My coffee was kept topped up and I had time to write in my journal as well as visit the men's room and get cleaned up in my usual fashion. Once done with all that I was able to use a curbside public phone to touch base with Faye. With everything back in my handlebar bag I started off in search of a bike path following a converted railroad bed called the Georgian Trail. Because of many favorable recommendations that I'd obtained online I was interested in riding on it. My Google directions were not much help largely because they'd had me following parallel roads to ON-26, which I would have been more interested in, if ON-26 hadn't been an O.K. route for cycling. Finding a rail trail isn't usually too difficult since they would have been the rail link between population centers in their heyday. By looking for former train stations, or roads with “Depot,” etc. as part of their names, one can often come to a junction with the rail trail one is looking for.
Before I went looking for the trail I was interested in going to see Meaford harbor. One, because I like sailboats and, two, because one of the online reviews of the trail mentioned finding the start of the trail right beside the harbor. I was satisfied on both counts. Just after I crossed a bridge over the river that flowed into, and whose mouth formed, the harbor I passed by the start of the trail. I continued on to where I could park my bike and climb up onto a breakwater that, on one side surrounded the mouth of the harbor and, on the other, formed an enclosed yacht basin. The sun was still shining in a cloudless sky and I was content to relax and look at all of the sailboats. I was curious to see if any of them were like my father's, a Triton. That is now sold but he'd had it for nearly 40 years and had taken it across the Atlantic and back.
I saw one that looked very much like his type of sailboat across the harbor from where I stood. Before I left, I wanted to get a closer look and perhaps take a picture of it. I rode back past the start of the trail and up along the harborside path that took me to where the boat was docked. I took a picture and told myself I'd share it with my father and get his opinion of it. After that I started following the bike path. It was gravel and very shaded in the first portion but opened up at times and gave nice views of Georgian Bay to the north.
While I was still on the Meaford end of the path I passed a couple of other cyclists and not much further beyond was overtaken by one of them who wanted to know where I was from and where I was going. We talked as we rode together for a short distance and then he said he needed to excuse himself and ride back to where his wife would be waiting. He said his name was Yuri Dojc and he was a photographer. He even asked if he could take my picture, which I allowed him to do. He gave me his business card and told me to look for his website on the Internet.
I stopped at a trailside Mac's convenience store for something to eat and then continued on into Collingwood which is a fairly large town of nearly 20,000 people. Try as I might I could not follow my Google directions which had me joining up with something called the “Train Trail.” I rode around trying to locate what would have been the old train station in town. I passed a shop, the Graphic Wear House, that had numerous t-shirts for sale and, remembering Faye's admonition that I get some kind of souvenir of the journey, a t-shirt specifically, if one could be obtained, I went in to see what was available.
The one that caught my interest, which featured Georgian Bay, was available in my size if I wanted to custom order it. It turned out most of the t-shirts on display were made to order. The one I wanted would have been expensive since it involved multiple colors. I was told a less expensive one could be made and it was possible to put a bicycle on it if I wanted. I went with that. The young woman who was in charge said she'd taken over the business from her father. Thinking it might be useful in the future to have a place to order one-off custom t-shirts, I asked if she accepted mail orders and she said she did and gave me her card; with her father's first name crossed out and her's hand written in its place. When she had finished the shirt she also helped me find my way by using her computer to get the directions I needed.
Even with those it took a bit of doing to eventually find the path. It was gravel and not as well tended as the Georgian Trail. It took me south out of the town and actually paralleled a still existing, but apparently abandoned, rail bed. I passed members of a high school cross country running team who were using the trail as training course. Eventually I arrived in the outskirts of the town of Strayner and took the opportunity to go look for a place to get something to eat. I found the Life's A Slice pizza restaurant and ordered a slice of pizza and a soft drink.
Unbeknownst to me, I had missed a left turn at the crossing of the Nottawasaga 27/28 Sideroad, which Google had directed me to take, before I'd intersected ON-26 again and followed it into Strayner. That missed turn was to lead eventually to a complete change in my objective for the night. I had missed taking it because, for one thing, it is a rare bike path, indeed, that puts names on the sides of the roads one crosses. Automobile drivers need to know what roads they are intersecting but not bicyclists because, who ever heard of a bicyclist from outside the area who had to know the names of the roads? I am being unnecessarily sarcastic here. I don't think most bike path planners should be obligated to accommodate the needs of long distance cycle tourers in their budgets for signage. The responsibility rests with us. A GPS could be one way to solve the problem. I would rather attempt it with less technology than that. I specifically print my Google directions using kilometers for the entire ride, the U.S. portion included. My cycle odometer is set to show kilometers traveled instead of miles.
I challenge the average person to translate tenths or hundredths of a mile, which is what the odometer would be reading if set to miles, into specific numbers of feet. On the other hand, even a math-challenged cretan such as myself can translate fractions of kilometers into meters very easily. When the Google directions tell me to take a left in 300 meters I can set my trip odometer to zero and when it reads 0.3 km I know I've gone the correct distance. Try to do that with directions to travel 900 feet using an odometer set to report in tenths of a mile. I have found this the best way to confirm or reject a potential turn, name or no name attached. On the down side, all this precision has led me to abandon some turns when, in reality, they were the correct ones. Google's ability to predict distances is not without its margin for error.
I use each and every turn to help me work out exactly what is the percentage of that error. The ignorance of the specific fudge factor is usually not a problem when short distances are involved but, as stands to reason, it can be huge when there is a long distance. If the difference is consistent I want to know it so I can adjust by whatever percent it is each time a long distance is involved. After four years of using Google bike directions, over the nearly 4000 aggregated miles I've covered in that time, I'm still in the process of determining what that is. Obviously there are a great array of variables involved both in calculating and following the directions. Something as simple as tire pressure can be one of those variables.
My Ontario road map was of such a small scale that it was hard to plot any course that mirrored the murky Google directions. On the other hand, ON-26 went directly from Strayner to Barrie. Why not just follow that? Problem solved. Unfortunately ON-26 out of Strayner, heading east, gave me flashbacks to ON-17 between Desbarats and Massey. Lots of traffic, no shoulder, and high speeds. I made the decision to follow a parallel gravel road to escape the buzzing traffic. Pretty though it was, and as relaxing as it was to be out of harm's way, I did not have the avantage of an actual set of directions to follow. I got lost. Eventually I asked for directions from a local farmer which led me down numerous other gravel roads, and further stops for directions, before I rejoined the same, by now, accursed ON-26.
There were only a couple of ways across an intervening river and if I wanted to get back to my truck in Kingston, I was forced into using this highway, at least temporarily for the sake of the bridge. Beyond the river crossing, while still on the highway, I stopped for respite from the whizzing of cars and trucks and to contemplate my next move. I was on the grass in front of what might have once been a farmhouse but now appeared to be a residence in the bedroom community of those folks working in the nearest big employment center. A pretty young woman driver of a car that turned into the driveway of the house stopped and asked if I needed directions. I explained my plight briefly and when, as part of that explanation, I mentioned I'd been riding my bike from Duluth, MN during the past 11 days, I reached the escape velocity for any identification she might have had with my situation. In quite a polite way, she expressed complete amazement that anyone would want to do something as pointless (my word for it) as that. I replied, à la George Mallory, “Because it is there.” That pretty much ended our conversation. She was in a hurry to go somewhere. She wished me luck but she had to go.
Returning to a study of the map showed a less well-traveled road leading almost straight to Bass Lake Provincial Park. There was a symbol on the map indicating it was a campground. I abandoned Barrie as my objective and decided that if that road was conducive to bicycling, Bass Lake would be my preferred spot to spend the night. I was able to make the correct turn only a kilometer or two further down ON-26 and found the amount of traffic on the new road to be amenable but discovered also that I was now entering a region of hills. They weren't hills like some of the ones I'm used to climbing around home, but it was the end of the day and I didn't have a lot of energy left. I started to think I might stop earlier than planned. I reached an intersection that had a Foodland/LCBO and, since it was getting close to the closing hour for such places, I decided to buy my supper makings before going on any further.
At the corner of the same intersection there was a sign for a KOA campground. It said the distance was only 1.7 km. I was willing to ride the extra mile to find out what it might have to offer. I arrived just before the office closed. The young woman in charge was getting ready to lock up for the day. When I explained I needed two trees she seemed skeptical I would find a site that suited. They were mostly an RV campground with electrical hook-ups. The price for a site was $49.00 plus tax. I think she might have been able to knock a few bucks off the price if I'd been more willing to stay, but the total scared me off. Instead we talked about Bass Lake and how to get there. She provided me with directions that were supposed to save me having to do much climbing and descending. Unfortunately the map I had didn't show the roads I would be needing to take so I had to commit the directions to memory. She was also a little foggy on a turn or two.
I found my first turn, onto Bidwell Rd., quite easily since it was just opposite the campground. I made the next right/left turn onto Bass Lake Side Road W without incident. Given the name of the road it should have been theoretically possible to follow it straight to Bass Lake, and that was essentially the case, but it involved a couple of turns where cross roads intersected it. Most of these cross roads, which were labeled 1 Line through 14 Line (where Bass Lake was located), created straight through intersections. It was largely a grid layout for roads in the area. The line roads, running north and south, were about a mile and a quarter apart. With 14 of them to cross it meant I was about 17 miles from Bass Lake when I started. The woman at the KOA was correct, there wasn't much climbing. I was grateful for that. What she wasn't quite able to say, with complete assurance, was exactly where that intersection was that wasn't straight across. It didn't make much of a difference. I was directed to go right and then left when I reached it.
The road surface was pavement and traffic was mostly absent. It was a nice ride and if I didn't already have an objective for the night I would have been tempted to start looking for hammock spots along the way. In retrospect that is exactly what I should have done. I passed a dirt turnout with half a dozen cars parked in it. Some had bike racks on their roofs. I stopped and talked with the driver of one of the cars. It turned out to be a popular mountain biking trailhead for the local riders. When I asked how much further to Bass Lake he said that since we were near 7 Line Rd at that point I had another seven miles to go. He wanted me to know I should take a left and then right when I got to an intersection ahead. This seemed like a confirmation of my earlier directions except that the sequence was reversed. I assumed I'd just misremembered the earlier one and kept repeating “left then right” so I wouldn't get it mixed up a second time.
Exactly one crossroad later the intersection did not continue straight through. I took a left and hoped shortly to find a right turn. The initial left turn sent me down a short steep hill to a stream crossing. The road then proceeded to climb at a steady rate. It was now past sunset and getting cooler. I was in need of arm warmers at least. After climbing for 10 or 15 min. I decided there was something wrong and I stopped to layer up, turn on my flashing white handlebar light and red flashing taillight and get my helmet lamp out of the handlebar bag. I reversed direction and coasted back down to the bottom and chugged slowly back up the short steep ascent to where I'd first entered the intersection. I cursed my inability to remember such simple things accurately. The hill continued up steeply beyond. I was not too excited about exploring upwards only to remain confused if my hoped for turn didn't materialize in a short distance.
At that moment another cyclist appeared from the direction of the local mountain bike trails. She had been out on the trails herself and was now riding back home. I shared my story and said I was hoping to spend the night at Bass Lake. She said she could show me the way. I expressed hope that the park would take credit/debit card payment. She told me the park office would probably be closed at this hour since this was now the fall season. I said I could always use “Système D” if it came to that. She looked at me uncomprehendingly and I let the matter drop. I followed her up the hill and then shortly to the left. So it was a “right then left” that I should have taken. Without a chance to reinterview both of my guides I resigned myself to being ignorant of exactly where I'd gotten confused.
Her bike had a carbon fiber frame and she was very fit. Mine had a steel frame with about 40 lbs. of gear and I had been riding, mostly steadily, since 6:30 a.m. Needless to say I our riding paces differed. The road became gravel surfaced at the turn and when we reached the first steep climb my rear tire began to slip in the loose conditions. I couldn't shift to my lowest ring without dismounting. I told her I was going to lose contact and thanked her for her company thus far but that she should ride on. She wanted to make sure I was going to be o.k. I assured her I would be. At worst, I reasoned, I was going to put up my hammock along the side of this road. It should have been an easy task since there were no houses anywhere close by. At best I was going to keep going until I reached Bass Lake.
Once I got the gearing I needed, I climbed quite easily without slippage and when I crested the climb I could see her flashing red taillight in the distance. We were now going downhill on pavement. With my extra weight and aerobars I figured I had an advantage and hoped I could catch back on. I did get much closer to her but eventually the road started climbing again and I gained no further ground. We reached another intersection which was also not straight through. She went left and I followed. I reached a right turn and took it. I could see her flashing taillight in the distance. This must have been the source of my confusion. There were two turns I had needed to make. The young woman at the KOA had been giving me directions for the first one. The guy at the mt. bike trailhead had been giving me directions for the second one.
Riding in pursuit of the other cyclist had given me a second wind and I was feeling pretty strong when I reached the entrance to Bass Lake Provincial Park. It was now well after dark. When I had navigated the park road system well enough to find the headquarters building, the lights were out and a kiosk on the outside gave directions for using the payment envelopes. The fee for the night was $39.00. I didn't have that exact amount on me. There was no hiker/biker fee category. The campground did not have showers. I was going to need to use Système D again and my resistance to using it was at an all time low. On the plus side, there was a payphone and it was working. I called home and updated Faye on my plans for the night.
There was an evil upgradient from the headquarters building to the campsites. It was steep enough to require dismounting and unshipping the chain by hand to get it onto the smallest (inner) chainring. I made a pledge to get my derailleur cable tension adjusted so that I could stop doing this. Up to that point in the ride the hills were never so steep, or so frequent, that I needed the small ring very often, but when I had needed it, the shifting was just not consistent. Sometimes it would work and sometimes it wouldn't. The topography had now changed and it was obvious I needed to solve the problem with the shifting.
I rode around a circle at the highest point of the campground. There was a lower area of the campground but it was closed for the season. In hindsight that is where I should have gone looking for a hammock spot. No one would have bothered me there. I found some good hammock trees in an area of the campground that was down and behind a couple of sites. I used the picnic table at one of the sites as a cooking surface to heat up my supper. Once cleaned up from that I wheeled my bicycle down into the trees and crawled into my sleeping bag. Falling asleep was a challenge. One of the nearby campsites was occupied by a family of metalheads. They were playing their music loud enough for everyone in the campground to hear it. I suppose since there was no overnight supervision of the campground at summer's end it was an ideal excuse to blast the music. There was also the sound of cars going by so closely that I had a difficult time understanding how that could be until I rode out of the campground the next morning.
The day just ending, Monday, Sept. 8, my 11th day of riding, had been another 140 km day. I felt pretty tired when, at the end of it, I had reached Bass Lake, but was ready to go that next morning. The sun was shining and I left before having to answer anyone's questions about where I'd spent the night and consequently why my payment wasn't in the proper location. Système D to a T. I followed the same road I arrived on, passing the campground on the left as I continued east. I could see into the trees and realized that some of the tent sites were very close to the road. I had spent the night in one of those.
I began descending through a residential neighborhood. As I went, kids were coming out of their homes and walking to their school bus stops. At the bottom of the hill I found a shopping plaza and looked for the requisite Tim Horton's which I found without much difficulty. I had breakfast at the Tim's, did my usual morning things, and then continued on into downtown Orillia. I was navigating primarily using my Ontario road map. Once off the Google trajectory, the only way to get back onto it, barring the use of a computer or phone with Internet connections, is to look for the name of a road in the directions that is marked on the map as well. Numbered routes are usually the only things identifiable on a map the scale I had showing the entire province of Ontario.
ON-12 was listed on my directions as well as a number of streets in Orillia. It is important to mention that the Google directions never give details as to when one enters or leaves a particular town. It would be very intelligent to annotate the directions while still at home and able to use the computer, saving some confusion later. I hadn't done that and so relied on my ability to coordinate map and directions using the above method. It was made more difficult by the lack of any detailed map of Orillia along the margins of the provincial map. Barrie was the closest town to have achieved that distinction. ON-12 was the road that ran along the north side of the shopping plaza I was in. I hoped that by following it down to the center of town and across the narrow isthmus between Lakes Simcoe and Couchiching I would eventually find one of the roads named on the Google directions and could resume following them once again.
A detour forced me off route as I was nearing the center of town but by asking directions I was put back on course and came upon one of the smaller roads listed in my directions leading me first to a stretch of bike path and then to the bridge across the narrows between the two lakes. Once across the bridge I continued to follow my Google directions which led me off the highway and onto Concession Rd. 11 and almost due east. The road continued in an easterly direction though the pavement ended and it started a series of up and down climbs. I got off in the middle of the first climb since my front derailleur was still having trouble shifting to the smallest ring.
I pulled off onto the grassy shoulder and fished out my tools. The task of increasing the reach of the derailleur toward the inside is a matter of balancing the cable tension and the limit screw adjustment, the latter acting as a stop for the inner travel of the derailleur. If you don't leave enough slack in the cable it won't relax the tension on the spring enough to allow the derailleur to reach its limit. If you have the limit screw set for too much travel the chain will actually unship to the inside and you then have to get off the bike to reship it by hand. Sometimes it's a little hard to tell which of the two reasons explains why the derailleur isn't reaching its inner limit in a particular instance. I had already played with the limit screw and it hadn't solved the problem so I assumed cable tension was the issue.
Adjusting cable tension is a more difficult process than simply turning the limit screw which is why you first rule out the screw as the possible problem. The tools I used for the cable tension adjustment were an Allen wrench and a pair of needle nosed pliers. The pliers were necessary to grip the cable, and hold it, once the pinch bolt was loosened with the Allen wrench. Once loosened, the idea was to let a bit of cable slip and then retighten the bolt. It had to be subtle. If I let too much slip through I would lose the tension needed to shift onto the largest/outside ring. It is a balancing act and unfortunately I didn't get it quite right. For the remainder of the day's ride I was able to downshift with no problems but getting the chain onto the outer ring was now more difficult and it wouldn't necessarily go on with the first attempt. It was nevertheless an improvement. What I needed was a bike stand and a chance to really fine tune the three variables of cable tension and inner and outer limit screw adjustment.
My route through the region between Orillia and Kawartha Lakes was a pleasant interlude from the car dodging I had been doing the previous day and any more that awaited me before I was done. The roads I followed were either gravel (the minority) or paved county roads with light traffic. Concession Rd. 11 fed directly into Simcoe County Rd. 46. That led directly to Karwartha Lakes 6. The scenery which was rural, consisted of pastures and hay fields for the most part. One particularly interesting sight was the Kirkfield Lift Lock. I stopped to take pictures and read some of the information that was posted about its history. I wasn't having too much trouble following the directions until I stopped for a snack in Kirkfield. I wasn't aware that I was supposed to take a left turn here onto Portage Rd./Kawartha Lakes County Rd 48.
I had been watching my odometer while following a 20 km leg up to the point of the required turn. The fuzziness of the fudge factor on mileage contributed to my confusion. I became concerned with the lack of an appropriate road when the odometer turned over 20 km so I stopped and asked directions from a gentleman who looked like he worked for the government, or a utility company, due to the type of vehicle he was driving and his task of measuring the road for some purpose. He essentially said I'd overshot my turn by a couple of kilometers. I would have turned around to ride back but the side road leaving the intersection where we were talking would take me to Hartley Rd. where I could rejoin the route I was supposed to be on.
One of his remarks alerted me to a confusion I had regarding Ontario municipal boundaries. When I said I was heading for Kawartha Lakes he said I was already in it. He supposed I meant Lindsay. I didn't disagree but thought for sure what I had seen on the map indicated the name of my destination as K.L. It turned out Lindsay was my destination and K.L., though right beside it, was in a much larger typeface on the map. The confusion only deepened as I passed signs announcing the existence of a “City of Kawartha Lakes.”
To add to my confusion, because there must have been municipal elections coming up, there were campaign signs for mayoral candidates sprinkled along my route. The call for a vote for a “mayor” in a sparsely settled region of farms seemed out of place to me. Mayoral elections are reserved for cities where I come from. But this wasn't any kind of city I was familiar with. I resolved to do some research to answer these questions when I got home, and I have, but it still isn't exactly clear. It so happens that Kawartha Lakes is what, in Ontario, is called a single-tier municipality. Kawartha Lakes is a city that, before 2001, used to be a whole county (Victoria).
The best approximation I can imagine would be if the state of Massachusetts decided to create a single city out of the county in which I live and call it something other than what it is called now (Franklin County). The populations of the two areas are similar at a bit over 70,000 people each. The present county seat of Greenfield (which actually doesn't have the same legal status it once did with the abolition of its county government by the state back in 1997) would become analogous to Lindsay in Kawartha Lakes, which is administratively now a community within the City of K.L. A mayor's office and “city” administrative offices would preside over the municipal services of my little town as well as all of the other towns in the former county. At best, we could hope to elect members to sit on a city council that could represent our particular interests but I suspect we'd all miss the direct participation that goes along with our present form of town government with its town meetings and votes for members of a town selectboard.
Even more eyeopening, an Internet search indicates that the average councillor in K.L. represents 5,000 people. Discussing this with my wife, her remark was that this would be “inconceivable” if attempted here. Our only representation on the city government would be a single individual responsible to not only all members of our town (pop. 1,800) but those of at least two neighboring towns. We tried to imagine how disenfranchised it would make us feel. At best, we could hope our property taxes wouldn't actually increase. However, the responsibility for spending those tax revenues would now be vested in a mayor's office in Greenfield which might possibly be willing, if enough patronage favors existed, to spend some of that money on fixing Ashfield's roads as opposed to those in more favored locations. A call to our councillor's office would only be one of many to an individual who probably didn't have enough favors to call in to get every item needed for the local fire department or the new plow blade for the highway crew or whatever else the town would formerly have been able to decide, on the individual merits of, and spend on, or not, according to town meeting vote.
One wonders what the benefits would be to this new, more centralized, form of government. In K.L. the average councillor's base salary, in 2010, was $24,500 with expenses exceeding an additional $5,000 for an average total greater than $30,000 (all Canadian dollars). If the expected salary increases during the past five years are allowed to stand in as an offset to the higher value of the U.S. dollar in 2015 and we can let these different currencies represent equal values, some comparisons are possible. The budget for the Ashfield selectboard stipends is currently $5,000 US total. The budgets in the two neighboring towns would be comparable. If it costs us $5,000 to represent 2000 people then our current local cost of representation is extrapolated to be $12,500 US to represent 5000 people. That means a two and a half times greater cost to support the hypothetical city government's legislative personnel. This neglects the additional cost of the townspeople's share of the mayor's salary at $80,000 Can in 2010. Countywide that probably represents an additional dollar per person (probably the only bargain in the whole hypothetical mess).
The genesis for the “reform” was something called the Common Sense Revolution. It was an initiative of the Conservative Ontario Prime Minister, Mike Harris, and was ostensibly an effort to reduce the size of government, though I can only think it had just the opposite effect. Wikipedia has this to say:
Municipal amalgamation led to a reduction in the number of municipalities in Ontario from 850 to 443 and the number of elected municipal officials by 23%, but resulted in an increase in the number of municipal employees by 39% from 1996 to 2011. Per thousand residents, there were 15.8 municipal employees in 1990 and 20.9 in 2010. Part of this resulted from an increase in services by the larger municipalities, or replacement of volunteer staff with full-time staff such as for firefighting services. Other contributing factors were the downloading of services from provincial jurisdiction to municipalities, such as social assistance, public housing and public health. The remaining increase resulted from wage increases associated with amalgamation and an increase in administrative employment, such as hiring more clerks and treasurers. Amalgamated municipalities increased employees at twice the rate of those that were not restructured. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Sense_Revolution)
It also sounds like it was unpopular in much of the new City of Kawartha Lakes. Wikipedia again:
This act was implemented by The Victoria County Restructuring Commission, led by commissioner Harry Kitchen. Despite a general opposition from residents of the area, the provincial government pushed forward with the amalgamation, which officially came into effect on January 1, 2001.
By a narrow margin (51% for, 49% against), the citizens of Kawartha Lakes voted to de-amalgamate in a November 2003 local plebiscite, but the provincial and municipal governments have not taken any steps since the vote to initiate de-amalgamation. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kawartha_Lakes)
There also seems to be groups organizing in other areas of the province to overturn their respective amalgamations. The tone of my guide's voice in the way that he told me that I was “already in Karwartha Lakes,” makes more sense to me now.
Once I turned right, east, on Hartley Rd. I was back on course with Google. The issue remained, where was my next turn? If I had made Google's correct original turn onto Hartley Rd. I was directed to go 15.1 km to a left turn on Goose Lake Rd. Would there be a sign informing me that I had reached G.L.R.? If not, how would I separate one left turn from another over the ensuing 15.1 km minus the unknown distance back to where I should have turned onto Hartley Rd.? This then is the challenge of using Google bike directions without a detailed map or some technically sophisticated aid to navigation. I actually like the challenge. I would feel like I'd lost some of the spirit of the challenge if I had a smartphone with GPS capability. Of course I've seen other riders with the devices who seem just as lost as I am when they're in areas of poor cell reception. I may change my mind in the future but on rides like this one, where people are plentiful and I can just stop and ask for directions, I see no need to get more complicated.
On the other hand, stopping for directions usually leads to a dialogue like, “Well if you want to get to Lindsay from here you should ...” usually directing me on the straightest course from our present location to where my guide thinks I should go to be in the town center. My usual response is, “Yes, but if I wanted to get back onto the Google route where should I go from here?” Which usually draws an exasperated sigh and a “Well, if you really want to go that way ...” response. They usually think they know better than Google how I should be going and for the most part they are probably correct. If the Google directions are so desirable how then did you get lost from them, might be a logical question in their minds.
Where their advice might possibly differ from my own best interests rests with the different perceptions a driver of a car possesses versus the rider of a bicycle. Hills never seem to be noticed when you are driving a car. Wind direction, likewise. Width of the shoulder and speed of traffic are also perceived much differently by the bicyclist than the driver of a car (a “cager” by those who speak derisively on the subject.) Google obviously cannot take wind direction into account, nor do I think it factors hills into the directions it provides, but it must use some algorithm that factors road speed into the directions it provides when one toggles the bicycle option.
If a person claimed to be a local bicyclist and wanted to give me directions contrary to the Google ones I wouldn't hesitate to take them. Snooks' directions to avoid some of the parallel roads were emphatic enough to warn me off of them even though I was cursing ON-17 most of the time. I would, more than likely, take a non-bicyclist's directions in contrast to Google's if I wasn't trying to find a bike path for instance. At some point though, I knew I would need to “Turn right onto the Victoria Rail Trail,” eight turns, or 17 km, after turning left onto Goose Lake Rd. Once off the prescribed route I would have had a nearly impossible time finding the correct turn for something like that. In my experience, most people are not able to direct me to such a path unless they live in the immediate neighborhood of it and sometimes even then they remain unaware of its existence or know it by a name other than the one Google uses.
Hartley Rd. did yield a left turn onto Goose Lake Rd. which led in turn to Chambers Rd., Elm Tree Rd., Peniel Rd., ON-35 S (for 300 meters), Kenrei Rd., Angeline St. N, Willow Glen Dr, and finally the Victoria Rail Trail. Somewhere along that route I passed a farm with a windmill and an ancient, and still working, steam threshing engine, looking like a miniature locomotive on metal tractor wheels. Its owner and his wife were working in their garden and I stopped to take a picture of it and chat. They were impressed by my journey. I told them I was enjoying their road so much more than the highway and they agreed traffic moved too quickly on the local highways. I thanked them for the conversation and moved on. In Cambray, along the Elm Tree Rd. part of the journey, there was a branch library of the City of Karwartha Lakes. I stopped and was given permission to use one of the computers. I used it to catch up on email and, if I'd been able, to post some more pictures to Facebook. The computer did not have an SD card reader so I was unable to do the latter.
Once on the rail trail, it led directly into the center of Lindsay. I found a kiosk with a map of the rail trail and some information concerning its history. The map seemed to confirm my Google directions for continuing onto what was called the Trans-Canada Trail. The directions through the heart of the town/city/community/sub-district were confusing. I found myself off route and in the neighborhood of a Tim's. I stopped in for a bite of something to eat. Upon exiting I was engaged in conversation by a local cyclist. He wanted to know about my ride. He had done a complete Trans-Canadian ride a couple of years prior and had good and bad things to say about the experience. It was a milestone for him and he was very proud of the accomplishment. He told me that any of the info on the kiosk about a continuation of the Victoria rail trail connecting with the Trans-Canada rail trail was bogus. They had made the map based upon a proposed route whose completion had been stalled by the failure of a developer to follow through on an agreement made with the city. He told me how to find the Trans-Canada trail. Before I left town I stopped into the main library of the City of Karwartha Lakes. Their computers were identical to the ones in Cambray and lacked SD card readers. I left a note on Facebook stating where my present location was but apologizing for a lack of photos. I told everyone that I was 200 km, or 120 miles, from finishing my ride.
I was able to successfully navigate the remaining roads to an intersection with the Trans-Canada Trail. It was time to start thinking about where to spend the night. I had Warmshowers hosts listed for the Lindsay area. Perhaps one of the disadvantages of traveling without a smartphone is that I was unaware of how close one of them was to the Trans-Canada Trail. Looking at Google Maps later I discovered they lived within 600 m of the trail in Reaboro. I also made a note on the sheet of names I was carrying that this host “has a farm and lots of positive reviews, short notice o.k.” It was a made to order first test of the Warmshowers system. Unfortunately, looking at the sheet while underway, didn't tell me how far out of my way I'd be required to ride. I also did not have a phone that I could use to make a call. If I had been thinking ahead I could have done all of this while in Lindsay. I regret being so lackadaisical in my thinking. I probably missed out on a good meal, a comfy bed and nice company. At least I know that what I did end up with for the night was none of those things so an attempt at it had been definitely worth a try. Tim would have done it.
I was on a bike path. I think I just assumed I'd find a spot along the way that would work for a hammock site and that would be where I would spend the night. The next town after Reaboro was Omemee, about seven kilometers further down the trail. It was getting late enough when I reached Omemee that I thought it prudent to stop and get something for supper. The Omemee Foodland was closed already. A Mac's was still open. I bought a can of something and went in search of a picnic table upon which to heat it up. I found one down by the boat launch thanks to directions from a local guy who appeared to be the only pedestrian in town after sunset.
It was dark enough when I was finished with supper to consider the wisdom of remaining right there. Two properly spaced trees along the margin of the grassy lawn seemed far enough out of the light of the street lamp to give me some degree of stealth. The place seemed particularly absent of any after dark use. I figured it was worth a try. There was a porta-potty available. I didn't see any “No Camping” signs but I knew that would be a poor excuse if I was discovered. I had yet to ever be asked to move along in all the years of doing this. Not having any negative experiences leads to some reduction in the level of apprehension regarding run-ins with the authorities. I went ahead and set up. For the entire time I was there, I wasn't required to deal with anything more negative than light from the street lamp and noise from the traffic crossing the bridge downstream from the boat launch.
Another plus to spending the night in these illicit locations is that I'm much more likely to get an early start. I rode my bike back to the Mac's, which included a Subway counter, for some possible breakfast. Among fast food places, Subway's breakfasts are probably the most palatable. The vegetables are at least fresh though the “eggs” are precooked. Before I ordered anything I asked if there was a restaurant serving full breakfasts anywhere in town. The answer was yes. Not much more that a kilometer of the way back toward Lindsay was the Roadside Diner. It was a one woman operation that didn't have a very extensive menu but at least was serving freshly cooked eggs instead of the processed “egg” that's served at the fast food places. It was also quiet enough, only one other customer was there when I came in and only two more arrived before I left, that I didn't feel I was taking up too much space while I wrote in my journal and nursed my coffee after breakfast.
Riding back toward the boat launch, which was right near the rail trail, I passed the Youngtown Museum. One of Omemee's claims to fame is a fleeting association with Neil Young when he was a child and a longer association with his father who was a sportswriter for local publications and who stayed in the area when the family broke up and Neil went west with his mother. Omemee shares, with good reason, the claim to be the inspiration to the line “There is a town in North Ontario,” from his song Helpless.
Looking further along the highway I could see quite a substantial climb of six or seven percent grade stretching east beyond the river. I turned left, away from the climb and reached the rail trail and turned right on it which immediately took me under an arch declaring the start of the “Omemee Rail Trail” and passed over the Pigeon River on a wooden planked bridge. It was an auspicious start to the day. One, because it looked like this section of the path, lacking the parallel ruts of ATV traffic, was intended more for bicycles and two, being an old railroad bed, it probably meant I was going to avoid having to make that short, but steep, climb I'd just been looking at. The path did indeed stay close to the river for a bit and skirted the climb heading in the same general direction as the highway, east, toward Peterborough.
The path was quite a treat. Especially nice was a high trestle bridge over a creek about seven kilometers from Omemee. There was another cyclist standing beside his bicycle on the trestle admiring the view which was the best one to be had anywhere in that relatively flat countryside. I remarked on both the beauty of the vista and of the day and he agreed. Nearing Peterborough the path ran beside a bubbling brook through a cedar forest. There were no houses anywhere near by. I thought it looked like the perfect camping spot for a stealth-camping hammocker like myself.
The path led right into the downtown area of Peterborough after emerging from a transit of two of the town's parks. It became paved and wound its way between streets until it deposited me in an area that looked as if it could produce a bake shop with a coffee and muffin. By asking a couple of girls on the sidewalk I was given directions to the Charlotte Pantry on Charlotte St. which produced the desired items for a reasonable price together with friendly service.
While attempting to retrace my steps back to the trail I came upon B!KE: The Peterborough Community Bike Shop. It was in a block long brick Victorian building with a porch running its entire length. I've later learned it is called the Cox Terrace and is a Canadian national historic site. The word “Bike” is what had caught my attention and upon closer examination I discovered a Community Fix-It Bicycle Repair Station sitting on the porch in front of the bike shop window. The shop itself was closed until later in the day. My need for a stand to fine tune the front derailleur settings came to mind and since it was still early in the day I decided take advantage of this opportunity. It required stripping off the panniers, front and rear, but it seemed worth the trouble to get the derailleur adjusted once and for all. Spinning the rear wheel while adjusting the derailleur prompted a decision to true up the rear wheel which was showing some very slight, barely detectable wobbling.
I might have been tempting fate in the form of Murphy's 11th conclusion that “nature always sides with the hidden flaw.” As I loosened a particular spoke nipple I heard a plink that sounded at first like the spoke had broken. Examining the spoke I could see it was still intact but definitely much looser than it should have been. Closer examination revealed a piece of the rim itself had broken out and part of it was still attached to the ferrule that surrounded the spoke nipple. It was a key hole shaped break. After puzzling the situation out I decided to try and wedge the piece still surrounding the ferrule back into the narrowest portion of the key hole slot. To keep it there I took a wire tie out of my tool bag and buddy-splinted the disabled spoke to its nearest neighbor on the narrow side of the slot.
Spinning the wheel revealed a pronounced wobble to the rim. I tightened the damaged spoke as much as I dared. I knew I couldn't tighten it enough to completely eliminate the wobble. I widened the space between the brake pads to keep the rim from dragging. It would just have to do. I had prior experience traveling with a single broken spoke for a day. When you break a spoke it's a signal that something is wrong. Since one less spoke in the rim places more strain on the remaining spokes, the remaining spokes are themselves now more likely candidates for breaking. If you break a second spoke a third could be soon to follow and so on. Too many broken spokes and the rim will buckle. It's called “tacoing” because it folds like a taco shell. It's fatal, to the rim, and not necessarily a good thing for the rider either. It's always best to replace a broken spoke ASAP. In this situation that couldn't happen. Since it couldn't be replaced, keeping the damaged spoke in place, as little as its contribution was to the whole, was still better than snipping it and taking it out of the rim altogether.
If the community bike coop had been open I would certainly have gone inside for advice. It wasn't due to open for another two or three hours. I didn't want to wait that long and couldn't imagine I'd be given much different advice even if I did. The rim should be retired and that is what I was going to do with it when I got home. The challenge now was getting there. Could I get back to my truck which was 178 km, or 111 miles, away in Kingston? I set off once again following bike paths through greater Peterborough, crossing the Ontonabee River on a bicycle/pedestrian bridge and wheeling my bike across the top of Lock 20 on the Trent Canal. Taken as a whole, from the numerous bike paths and the community bike coop, I would give Peterborough an A+ for bike friendliness.
Eventually I reached the southeastern edge of town and had a series of Google directions that, without prior experience with the usual format, would have been very confusing. The directions for the 287th turn of my journey stated that after a right on “Keene Rd/County Rd 35 (signs for County Road 35/Keene Road),” I should take a “Slight left toward 7 Line.” The problem was 7 Line was a road 28.4 km away. This is the way Google gives directions when the desired route is an unnamed bike path or rail trail. I had to be very careful. After going 2.3 km on the Keene Road I needed to look for the slight left onto this path. When my odometer told me I was close, I saw a woman along the side of the road and asked her if she knew of a bike path nearby. She said yes and told me where I would find it. When I did see it it had an arch and name over it much like the Omemee Trail. This one said Lang-Hastings Trail. I have since sent in a “Report a Problem” update to Google Maps informing them that they should give the path a name now.
There were barricades (boulders, Jersey barriers, etc.) at all of the road crossings for this trail. That told me they were reserving it for non-motorized use, at least in the summer months. I suspect that the barriers are moved/opened in the winter for snowmobile traffic. The benefit to this is that a gravel path, such as this one, doesn't succumb to the wheel ruts and pot holes that form when ATVs are allowed to use it. On a bicycle you can move quite quickly on a gravel path if the surface is smooth and level. While you can't equal the speed of riding on good pavement, the poorer the paved surface the faster you can travel relative to that. Add to this the gentle grade associated with old rail routes and the more direct line it is likely to take compared to the roads, when those are laid out in grids, and you can make better time on the paths. All that, and no cars to dodge. What's not to like?
This was a nice path. For the last part before Hastings one rolls along beside the Trent River. The old railroad route crosses the river in Hastings but because of water traffic the swing bridge is left open during the summer and bicycles are forced to take a detour. When the boating season is over the swing bridge is closed and snowmobiles are allowed to cross it in the winter. I stopped at a convenience store in Hastings and had something to eat. Following my Google directions I was directed back to the Trans-Canada Trail on the opposite side of the river. It was a continuation of the same rail line so I didn't anticipate having too difficult a time finding it. I didn't need to search very hard since I overtook another cyclist who was happy to show me the location of the trail. He cautioned that it was a bit rough in the beginning. One thing that I noticed immediately was that the barriers were no longer across the trail where the road ended and the trail began. It looked heavily used by ATVs.
It was a problem. I have ridden some rough surfaces on my tours. I ride the kind of bike I do because I want the freedom to follow some of these less than pristine routes. I will sometimes stick with them just to see how bad they can get and have found that they can get pretty bad. Google freely admits that its bicycle directions can include “routes not suitable for bicycles.” I don't know in what sense that is exactly but if a local mountain bike trail is on a Rails to Trails database those are often candidates for selection. This particular trail was not one of the worst. The difference this time was my dicky rear wheel. I wasn't sure what kind of abuse it could take. It seemed best not to tempt fate. The trail was alternating between o.k. and not so o.k.
When the rear wheel bounced and careened off the occasional babyhead I cringed. I didn't think the rim would fail catastrophically but I also didn't want to pop another spoke. At one point I met an ATV coming from the opposite direction. The trail was so narrow we had difficulty passing each other. The driver said there were no other ATVs with him which was reassuring but no guarantee that I wouldn't meet another one at some point down the line. I decided to take the first crossroad that offered a clear shot to the next town and abandon the trail. I found the spot I needed a couple of kilometers outside of Campbellford. The trail crossed a road very close to an intersection with the numbered ON-35 which was marked on my map. That meant I wasn't going to be riding blind. I landed in Campbellford within minutes of following the road. It was a fairly large town with the usual Mac's convenience store and I stopped for something hot to eat. Hot dogs were available and I got a couple along with a cup of coffee. It was getting late and rain was starting. I was reluctant to stop riding. My truck in Kingston was my haven of safety. I wanted to get there as quickly as possible now that I was worried about my wheel. It wasn't particularly rational but that was my emotion. I asked the cashier at the store how far it was to Kingston. She seemed very skeptical it could be reached on a bicycle without riding well through the night. The nearest Warmshowers host was in Belleville according to my notes. Belleville was about 50 km away. That seemed like a possibility but it wasn't part of the route Google had given me. The roads between Belleville and Kingston looked to be pretty busy ones. I was more inclined to follow the general route that Google had given me and try to rejoin it where the Trans-Canada Trail ended.
The difficulty with that was the lack of clues in my Google directions giving me any indication as to where that might be, generally speaking. I knew exactly where it was. The directions told me to “Turn right toward Harmony Rd.” and go 12.7 km. I interpreted that to be the last section of the trail ending at a junction with Harmony Rd. If I knew what town Harmony Rd. was in I could probably find someone there who would tell me where the turn from Harmony to Bronk Rd. was located. If I found that intersection I would be back on my Google route. I had some additional clues when the directions mentioned numbered roads. In one instance the route followed ON-8 for 62 meters. ON-8 was shown on my map leaving Campbellford to the south heading toward Stirling. I set Stirling as my next destination, got suited up for the rain, and left heading south on ON-8.
Wearing rain gear when it is not raining is always a bit annoying. The rain didn't fall steadily. It came in spates and none too hard at that. The fact that it was now dusk and the temperature was falling made it easier to tolerate the extra layers. I left everything on under the assumption that if it started raining in earnest I would be sorry if I didn't. ON-8 was a decent road: smooth surface, light traffic but also no paved shoulder. It made a long jog to the south before swinging east. I expected that had I been on the trail instead of the road it would be taking a more direct route toward Stirling, if indeed that was where it led. I have since discovered that the rail trails I had been following since Lindsay were originally part of the Grand Trunk Railway back in 19th century. A map showing the stops along this stretch of rail is a pretty accurate list of the towns I was riding through if one allows for a different spelling of Stirling. I was sorry that the Orillia to Lindsay section had not also been possible.
I rolled into Stirling as the sun was going down. I made the decision to stop there. Where ON-8 seemed to become the main street of town there was a convenience store that I designated as my supper provisioning spot. There wasn't much to choose from and I ended up with a bowl of instant noodles. I tried to supplement the poor dinner with a cold beer but the proprietress informed me that unlike in the States, beer was not sold in convenience stores in Ontario. I wanted to say they sell beer at the Mac's in Quebec but held my tongue. Perhaps she viewed Quebec as a foreign country as well. I asked both her and her son whether they knew of any discreet hammocking spots in Stirling. I think I might have been labeled a homeless person as a result of that question. When I said I'd been riding from Duluth and would soon reach my truck in Kingston, the son said he was relieved to know that I wasn't homeless. The fact that I was riding such a long distance by bicycle puzzled both of them. They were not the first people to express a lack of comprehension. Many times I was asked if I was trying to raise money for some cause. I suppose in the popular imagination someone doesn't do something such as I was doing for mere enjoyment. Either that, or they expect that if it is being done for enjoyment one should be contributing to some greater cause in order to legitimize the experience.
They told me there was a storm coming and I should get a room for the night. I was even advised to get a cab and drive to Belleville. I said I'd slept through plenty of rainstorms and that I would be fine. The son finally gave up trying to convince me otherwise and said I would find a town park at the other end of the main street and could probably find a place to string up the hammock down there. He said I would be fine. No one would object. I wasn't sure how reliable that assessment was. The only park I found contained a picnicing area with a large play structure and ball field. There was a junior men's fastpitch softball game being played under the lights. I chose a spot quite far back from the ballfield under a picnic pavillion. I cooked my supper and tried to calculate the likelihood of being asked to leave once I set up my hammock. I made the decision to sleep on the concrete floor of the pavillion. I reasoned I would be able to keep a much lower profile that way.
There was a pretty strong wind blowing through the pavillion from south to north. I was set up on the northernmost end. It was a fairly large structure which was big enough to hold three picnic tables. I had trouble keeping my hold on things as they were regularly being blown off the table and sent flying. All the while a light rain would start and then stop. It never rained so hard or steadily that the softball game was called and that eventually ended. A few spectators trooped by as the field cleared and the lights were turned off. I decided to erect a windbreak using my hammock tarp. I strung it up east and west between pavillion supports and guyed it out sideways from the table to the north and to the south with a single tent stake that I wedged into a seam between the concrete pads.
I was sleeping underneath the northernmost table and my tarp was pitched so that it sheltered me from most of the wind blowing in from the far end of the pavillion. As the night progressed the rain intensified and the wind, if anything, increased in force. It seemed like the remnants of a tropical storm were blowing through town. I regretted being so dismissive of the convenience store owner's son's concern about the weather I would be facing. Perhaps the news channels had been harping about this storm. I woke quite frequently and looked at the steadily shrinking amount of dry pavillion floor. The wind driven rain was slowly creating a puddle that stretched northward with small dry spots under mine and the nearest picnic table. At about five a.m. I got out of my sleeping bag and took a picture of the set up showing just how little, but just enough, dry concrete remained where I was lying. It never got any worse than that and the rain and wind died down as the sun came up. At about 6 a.m. I got up for good, dressed, packed, and rode off in search of breakfast.
No one had ever come by or noted my presence that I was aware of. I probably would have been more comfortable stringing the hammock up between a couple of the pavillion support posts and would not have been noticed if I had. It had been the most uncomfortable night's sleep of the trip but since it was the last night before being back in my own bed at home it wasn't intolerable. A good breakfast could set everything right. I had seen a restaurant on the other end of the main street (W. Front St.) as I had ridden into town the evening before but when I got there I discovered that it had not opened yet. At about the same time I saw my friend from the day before as he was on his way to school. He asked me how the night went and I said as well as could be expected. I assured him that I had stayed dry. I asked him for directions to a breakfast place and he told me where to find one at the other end of town.
I found Jenny's Country Lane Coffee Shoppe and Restaurant right where I had been told to look for it. I parked my bike against the building and went in to the very small dining area which had one remaining open table right near the window. Every head turned as I entered the restaurant and it was obvious from the expressions on people's faces I was not someone they were expecting. A very friendly waitress was by my side in an instant. I ordered coffee for starters and studied the menu. The mysterious peameal was one of the side orders. When the waitress returned I asked her to describe it to me. She said it was like a cross between ham and bacon. She searched for other ways to describe it and solicited comments from the other patrons. This might have been a good icebreaker because they all enjoyed themselves giving me descriptions of it. I was still a bit unsure that it would hit the spot I was trying to fill so I declined to order it and got something else instead.
When my order came the waitress said she had told the cook to put some peameal on the plate so that I could try it. Peameal might very well be what we in the U.S. refer to as “Canadian bacon.” It was a treat, mostly because it had been an unsolicited gift from the restaurant and something new to experience. Jenny's was the perfect antidote to my miserable night's sleep. There were a couple of young Amish guys in there and one of them was a brand new father. A woman, who I assumed was a neighbor of his, asked how the experience of fatherhood was going. He admitted he wasn't getting as much sleep as he had before the baby came. The same woman started talking to everyone there about Hairy Larry, a Shetland pony she owned, and the relationship that had developed between the pony and a very young neighbor. She passed around a picture of the two of them. It showed a Thelwell style pony, very chubby with an incredibly thick and untamed mane and a tiny five or six year old girl wearing a tutu-like skirt over tights with a bicycle helmet on her head, holding his lead line. From the sound of it, the pair of them had become inseparable.
My final question for the waitress, after being asked what my plans were, was for the local knowledge regarding the Trans-Canada Trail that I was supposed to be following according to my Google directions. I hoped they could give me a clue where it came out so that I could pick up on my directions again at the Harmony Rd. intersection. The question again was refered to the rest of the patrons and the general consensus was that the trail did go through Stirling in the direction of Madoc. Most knew it as a snowmobile or ATV trail rather than a bicycle trail. I had a hunch my rendezvous with Harmony Rd. would happen in Foxboro, which was marked on my road map and was shown as the next town south and east of Stirling. No one could confirm that possibility but it seemed reasonable to most of them.
The weather seemed to be improving but no sun was yet shining through the clouds. I kept my raingear on, minus the shoe covers, and went to look at a map of the town to try and orient myself as to the proper road to take in the direction of Foxboro. My bike was leaning against a picnic table on a small covered pedestrian bridge near the map. As I was organizing myself for the ride a retired couple walked through the bridge, perhaps themselves on the way to Jenny's for breakfast. The woman asked me where I was going and where I had come from and I related my journey up to that point. Discussion of where I'd spent the night revealed I'd camped under the pavillion in the rainstorm and profound regret was expressed that we couldn't have made contact before that had become necessary. I mentioned Warmshowers as way of making contact with bicyclists and they seemed interested in hosting cyclists in the future. They said they were retired educators such as myself and liked to travel. They were partial to off the grid camping as well, using parking lots, etc. for overnighting in their RV.
When I mentioned having to abandon my Google inspired route along the Trans-Canada Trail because of the spoke mishap they gave me directions, as best they could, for the most likely route to rejoin the trail. Foxboro seemed confirmed as my next destination. They also said that if I ran into trouble between Stirling and my truck that I should give them a call. They gave me their phone number and I took a picture of them standing there near my bicycle under the roof of the covered bridge. I thanked them profusely saying that, while in all likelihood I would not run into further mechanical trouble, it was comforting to know that I wouldn't be faced with stranding if I did.
I bid them adieu and, as I swung my leg up over my top tube, the young Amish father from breakfast came speeding down the road and turned left driving his buggy in the manner a young guy his age might drive a pickup truck, an emphatic flick of the reins serving the same function as a good hard stomp on the accelerator. I turned east to follow ON-14 out of town, making a turn south in less than a kilometer and began a long gradual climb that gave way to a rolling route that led mostly east, 12 km to Foxboro. By the time I arrived the sun was shining. I left the highway and turned right down what looked like the principal road through the town which was quite small lacking any real business area. There was a farm supply store, County Farm Centre, and I leaned my bike against the sheet metal front wall and went in to see if I could get some help finding my way back onto the Google directions.
The guys in the business were all interested in my journey and offered advice for getting back on route. I explained my desire to regain the route saying I'd enjoyed it when the path was smooth. We talked about places that I had been and I mentioned going through Omemee. I was asked how much I liked climbing that hill on the road heading east out of town. I was able to say with satisfaction that the old rail route made a fairly flat detour around that hill.
One, who lived along the route that Google had mapped out, offered alternative suggestions. Given the fact that so many of the roads were choices between one parallel road or another running either west to east or north to south I would have been wise to have taken advantage of his knowledge of local road conditions. My reluctance to do so was based entirely on the difficulty of following any route that didn't exist at the scale of the map I was carrying. It was either Google directions or major roads. I didn't have any alternative. He seemed to understand. He also offered me his phone number and said that if I got into trouble with my dickey wheel he would help out.
Armed with directions to Harmony Rd. I turned left off of the road the Farm Centre had been on and started east. No one had a clear idea where the Trans-Canada Trail came in and I missed seeing it when I went by it. I was looking for the intersection with Bronk Rd. but did not know how far it might be from the beginning of Harmony Rd., only how far it was from the trail intersection. My guesswork was not good enough to go on and I missed my intersection with Bronk. I was not too concerned since all of the roads ran parallel to each other. I figured I would just take the next cross road and pick up the route from there. I did and, because I was one or two steps too far east to get back on the route, I made another turn and hoped I would find one of the roads listed on the directions once I headed east again. All this time the wind was picking up in force. It was an almost perfect west wind and so every easterly leg I made was much easier and every southerly leg I made was spent fighting a cross wind. As long as I kept making an east then south zig zag I was traveling in the direction I needed to go but to make another attempt to get back on route I stopped to ask directions from a guy in his front yard.
He listened to the names of the roads I'd been trying to follow and calculated that if I went south on Marysville Rd., a bit further ahead, I could follow it to its intersection with Callaghan and from there go left to Deseronto and I'd be back on my route again. I thanked him and it all worked as described. At one point I stopped to talk to some guys in a survey crew. They weren't local so any help with directions was limited. We did discuss the fact that the survey they were doing was for a proposed gas pipeline. I mentioned that I was from an area where a new pipeline was also proposed. The individual I was talking to said that the survey work wasn't without its opponents. We both agreed that in an energy hungry society objections to any energy source needed to be coupled with the legitmate promise of an economically competive alternative. I wished them luck and rode on.
From there to Napanee I stayed on course. In Napanee I stopped at a Tim's for refueling and sat at a table near enough to hear the store owner and a rep from the corporation talking about renovations to the structure and parking lot. It sounded pretty involved. It was interesting to eavesdrop on a process I would otherwise never be part of, nor could even imagine the details of without such an opportunity. I then saddled up and followed my directions to an intersection with ON-2 which was going to bring me into Kingston in about 20 km. In fact, after a bit of a jog out of town I took a picture of a sign announcing “Kingston 22 km.” I was getting close.
I stopped at the Pop In Store in Odessa to get a Coke and took a picture of the half-finished bottle holding down my last half page of directions. The wind was still blowing strongly from the west and I was headed due east. Five kilometers further down the road I saw a big blue and white sign announcing the city limits of Kingston. It was like the finish line of a 1000 mile race. As I crossed the line I punched the air with my right fist just as if I were the winner of a bicycle race. I couldn't imagine having any greater sense of accomplishment if I had been one.
As a final reminder of Canadian drivers' attitude toward cyclists I was treated to more “get out my way” passing as I my ride took me closer to the bus station in town. The riding on Princess St. which was what ON-2 became within the city limits was much like the riding I'd been forced to do in so many town centers in both the U.S. and Canada: two lanes in each direction with a center turning lane, curbs and a sidewalk and copious amounts of 60 kph traffic moving much faster than the speed limit. When riding in the the far right lane one is treated to drivers who want to pass you but are prevented from doing so by the stream of cars going by on their left so they slow down and then race by pulling back very quickly to signal your interference with their forward progress. It seems to be a sign they want you out of the travel lane and riding on the sidewalk where they, wrongly, think you belong. At least the sidewalks had decent curb cuts but I resisted retreating to the sidewalk for relief from the infernal combustion scolding I was enduring. The road was angled slightly downhill and the wind was pushing me along at a spin-out speed. If the cars, who were supposed to be traveling at a maximum 60 kph couldn't tolerate another vehicle going 40-50 kph too bad for them.
During my previous visit to Kingston I'd ridden in on the K&P trail, a bicycle path created from the old Kingston and Pembroke rail line. I hadn't needed to ride on any of the major thoroughfares. My memories of Kingston as a bicycling destination were therefore positive but, after navigating Princess St. and then John Counter Blvd., where the bus station is located, I realize Kingston still has some room for improvement as a bicycle-friendly city. There was one particularly difficult section of J.C.B. where the driver of a pickup blew me an especially unfriendly exhaust-blast raspberry and I felt much more vulnerable to being taken out by the closer than safe proximity of the passing cars. There was no shoulder and the road went down to two lanes so the harried motorists needed to cross the centerline in order to get around me. They were clearly not used to bicycles in the travel lane. I was “feeling the love.” I'm assuming the city cyclists either avoid that stretch of road for the most part or feel they must ride on the litter strewn, pot holed, gravel shoulder.
Amazingly enough the same road widens to a newly constructed section that includes a bike lane with its open diamond symbol painted in it along with the universal bike symbol. I used the bike lane but saw other cyclists still using the sidewalk. I took them to be local cyclists who had been conditioned to use the sidewalks by the abuse they suffer. That of course leads motorists to think that all bicycles belong on the sidewalk and will resent seeing bicycles used elsewhere, even in dedicated bike lanes. It's not just a Canadian problem, the U.S. is full of similar examples. It is a matter of education and Share the Road signs are one means for helping that process but there is much more that can be done.
I'm quite tempted to digress from my tale and rant some more on bike advocacy. Instead I will refer anyone interested enough in such a discussion to look at the “Appendix 2” to my Baxter State Park ride of 2008 for that rant. Besides, the feeling I had, as I turned from the bike lane into the parking lot of the bus station, was one of elation not anger. I wanted to share my accomplishment with someone. I picked on a college age guy sitting in one of the bus shelters that lined the parking lot. He was waiting for a city bus to take him to his final destination after arriving by intercity bus earlier. He was an alum of Kingston University. I asked him to take my picture. The smile I had says all I need to say about my feelings for the trip.
My truck was sitting where I left it, glass intact. I will say this about Canada: I would be much more nervous leaving my vehicle sitting unattended for 14 days in a bus station parking lot in a comparably-sized U.S. city (124,000 pop.) such as Hartford, Conn. This is not to say I wasn't still nervous. On the other hand the location of the bus station in Kingston might have been a bigger factor in the matter than any innate qualities the citizens might possess. The scientist in me says more data is needed, such as crime statistics. A cursory check of the Internet reveals that the former may actually be the case since Canada rates a higher rank (by 0.4%), at number six in the world, than the U.S., at number seven, for “property crime victims” defined as: “People victimized by property crime (as a % of the total population). Includes car theft, theft from car, burglary with entry and attempted burglary.” From: http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Crime/Property-crime-victims. New Zealand is number one at a rate nearly five percent higher than the U.S. Who knew?
There is a caveat on the website stating: “Crime statistics are often better indicators of prevalence of law enforcement and willingness to report crime, than actual prevalence,” though I expect that the “actual prevalence” is probably similar in both the U.S. and Canada. Where that caveat might make a difference would be between developed and developing nations.
Unlike my reluctance to ask the reader to take the time to indulge me in a rant about bike advocacy, one particularly galling fact that I do have an inclination to rant about is the prevalence of trailhead break-ins that occur in New Hampshire's White Mountain National Forest. I have driven into trailside parking lots that are sprinkled with chips of tempered glass from the side windows of vehicles. There seem to be regular, though perhaps decreasing, announcements on hiker forums, such as Views from the Top, letting people know of the most recent atrocities. For me the most irritating fact of the matter was that for 12 years all of these parking lots required U.S. Forest Service (USFS) “trail fee” payments. The USFS has been scaling back the trail use fee collection at most of the trailheads. There doesn't seem to be much to rant about except the fact that where they still collect the fees, the trailhead break-ins continue.
Why should that bother me in particular? I've never had a vehicle of mine broken into but I've paid for the privilege of parking in the lots and worried about a break-in the whole time I was in the woods using the trails. I didn't have any objection to paying the trail use fees. I am grateful for the existence of trails in the Whites and the USFS is one organization that helps maintain them. If they need some extra funds to keep doing that I'm happy to oblige. It shouldn't be the responsibility of every taxpayer in the U.S. to foot the entire bill for the maintenance of the trails in the northeastern part of the nation. It stands to reason that the heaviest users of the resource should pay a larger share of the cost. What strikes me as unfair is that these weren't “trail use” fees but actually just parking fees. Anyone who hitchhikes to a trailhead, takes public transportation or arrives by some means other than a car that stays parked in the lot is not obliged to pay anything. Granted these are a tiny percentage of the hiking community. The cost of enforcing the collection of fees from them is all out of proportion to the amount of revenue it would generate. It's too low a priority to be on the radar screen. That isn't what irritates. What does irritate is that I once asked a ranger who was in the lot collecting the fee I just put into the tube, and who, if I hadn't paid, would have taken down my license number and left a violation notice on my windshield, requiring the payment of a fine, what kind of policing the USFS did to protect cars from break-ins at the trailheads.
His answer was nothing in particular. Nothing at all really. If they happened upon a break-in in progess of course they would stop it, but aside from driving in occasionally to collect the fees there were no regular or random patrols specifically made to discourage the behavior. There were no video surveillance cameras. There were no pay-for-a key lockers to store valuables in so that the car could remain less of a target. If I'd paid for a parking space in a private or municipal lot somewhere else with an equally dismal record for break-ins and the attendants showed a similar lack of concern for the safety of the vehicles for which they were collecting parking fees I'd be equally as upset. Essentially this was another priority that was too low to be on the radar screen. Yet, it was perhaps the number one concern of the only people who were being dunned for the fee. It certainly was for me. The frequency of break-ins actually seems to mirror the history of fee collection. Both have been decreasing in recent years. Both could return to their prior levels. Before that happens I would like just one official of the USFS to agree with me that there is a disconnect between the level of anxiety of the person paying the fee and the apparent lack of concern for that anxiety on the part of those collecting the fee.
Number one priority for me, after getting my bicycle stowed in the back of the truck, was to see if there was a public shower in Kingston. I asked at the desk in the bus station. Oddly this seemed to be a question that is rarely asked of them. I had to rephrase it as, “Is there a YMCA in Kingston?” which produced an affirmative answer with directions. The Y was just what the doctor ordered. They didn't get many requests for the use of a shower alone but the guy at the desk had no trouble telling me where the men's locker room was. The shower was quite nice, as public showers go. There was a soap and shampoo dispenser mounted on the wall near every shower control. It was a shower to remember and I told the guy at the desk that it would rank right up there in my memory with my first hot shower once back on land after crossing the Atlantic. That provoked some discussion of mutual adventures and when I offered him a tip for letting me in free of charge he declined to take it but pointed to a collection jar for some fund for which the Y was raising money. I put the money in the jar and walked out feeling like a million bucks.
It was nearing the end of the afternoon at that point. I was hungry and had passed an A&W restaurant on my way to the Y. I hadn't been to one of those in years so it seemed like the place to stop. I also filled the truck's tank with gas which is a bit of a roller coaster experience. First, it seems like such a great price, until you remember you're paying for fuel by the liter. Then to get over the shock of the final bill you need to remind yourself that the dollars are Canadian. I set my sights on home and drove back over the Thousand Islands Bridge feeling much less stress than I had 17 days before coming the other way when I was hoping I wasn't going to be late for my bus. It was a pleasant trip back into the U.S. but as I turned to go south on Rte. 81 toward the Watertown exit and a junction with Rt. 12 I started to remember the motorcycle crash. I entered a curious state of mind. If someone's emotional capacity is finite, then when I left Kingston it was 100% euphoric. The closer I got to the crash site that euphoria was replaced, though never completely, with a feeling of mourning.
I stopped for a break at a convenience store on the north side of Watertown. I hoped it would serve two purposes. Primarily, it delayed the reunion with the crash site plus it gave me a chance to get some caffeine, which I am obliged to keep at a certain level in order to keep driving, just as gas must be kept in the tank of my truck. Serendipitously, it also distracted my thoughts about the crash as I watched the local lottery players (primarily guys of retirement age) who were gathered at the store to watch their numbers not be picked during the live drawing aired on the local t.v. channel. They were quite an amusing group to observe since a large amount of mutual insult appeared to be part of the ritual. Once back in my truck heading south, however, the thoughts could not be denied and my emotions slid progressively toward the mourning side of scale.
It was getting darker but I expected I'd recognize the spot anyway. Then it started to rain and became increasingly more difficult to pick out landmarks that would have helped me orient myself to the location of the crash. I wondered what I would do when I reached the exact spot. Would I feel the need to stop, get out of the truck, and stand there in the rain? Would there be a pile of flowers marking the location, as is so often the case? Especially if the crash claimed the life of someone who is very young.
The assumed age of the motorcyclist was for me the most troubling aspect of the event. I realized the feeling of mourning I had was not only for the anonymous victim(s) but also for all of the students in my past who had died at young ages because of poor decisions they had made. The mourning then blossomed into an anticipatory phase. I knew the dying wasn't over and I wondered which of my most recent students would be next. The sadness went laterally and I grieved with all of the teachers who had the young man as a student and knew that they would, like I have done, be asking themselves “How could we have helped him make better decisions?” I have no children of my own and so the closest I've come in my life, to the feelings of a parent, have come through my teaching. I am certain that, in such tragedies, the pain that parents feel and the self recrimination felt, is orders of magnitude greater, if such pain is even quantifiable. A parent who loses a child loses their role as parent of him or her as well.
My mourning then jumped to the meta level and I started mourning the loss of my role as a teacher. And mixed in with all of this was mourning for my friend Tim who'd died riding a motorcycle himself. When I ceased teaching and had time to devote to other projects, Tim was going to be there to help me. Now he wasn't and a whole imagined part of my future was lost and I was no longer as sure of who I was or what I would become. The tears were flowing pretty freely by then. It wasn't an entirely unpleasant emotion. The euphoria was still there, shared now in equal part with the sadness, and I decided to do what I could to keep future tragedies like this one to a minimum. I would share this story with my former students and trust that I could plant a seed so that, as it grew and bore fruit, at least one of them, who might otherwise have not done so, would make a better decision than the one I'd seen made in this case. And with that, the tide turned and the sadness began to diminish, never entirely disappearing, giving up its place to contentment, acting now as only a minor member of the triad of feelings I had. And at the same time, I realized, I'd passed the spot of the crash without recognizing it in the dark and the rain.
What would I say to them, I asked myself. I thought about the words I would use to describe the incident. So much of the time we use words like accident to describe such events. Could anyone call this an accident? I had watched someone riding a motorcycle on a busy road at over 100 mph. What made him do that?
It had to be a conscious decision, but why? Had he just broken up with his girlfriend? Was he high? Was he just feeling adventurous? Had he been speeding just a little too much but now, with the police on his tail, was he riding that way out of fear of being stopped? Where was his fear of what he was doing and whom he could be putting in danger? Was there a baby in the car he hit? Didn't he think about such possibilities? Logic doesn't play much of a role in the decision making process of adolescents. This hook has to be baited with emotion and even then it isn't easy to get it to set. I've been part of mock “accident” scenes where students play the role of drunk driver (who survives) and friends (some of whom die) to get students to think about the consequences of impaired driving. It's usually staged around prom time. These kinds of productions have as much chance as anything to make a positive impact. Another is the first hand experience shared by someone who had been drinking and driving and did kill someone. Speakers with that kind of background who are willing to talk to high school audiences are rare and the few that do it are in demand. They are the least likely to be viewed as “fake.” The mock accidents are sometimes scoffed at and their value decreases with their familiarity.
I know this account of my journey, now reaching it's 69th page, is beyond the threshold of even the most voracious high school reader and those are a critically endangered species these days, rarer even than black rhinos. Just writing all of this has buried the message I need to share under too many layers of other stuff. That can't be helped. The decision to let all of this come out was made when I rode past the spot of the crash. I've been unable to stop it from reaching these proportions. It's what had to happen but I expect it wouldn't be the best means of accomplishing the task of sharing a particular message with high schoolers.
Perhaps I could put it into the form of an oral presentation. I would need an opportunity to share it when I got back. What would my message be? “Don't ride too fast,” seemed too trite. Most of the kids I would be speaking to wouldn't need to hear that message. Only a few might ever be tempted to ride on a motorcycle at speeds over 100 mph. I thought about the sheriff's deputy. He didn't appear to be much older than the age I imagined the motorcycle rider to have been. There was probably some of the same testosterone-clouded decision making going on in his mind at the time as well. My message would also have to extend to those students who might someday need to think about the consequences of chasing someone going in excess of 100 mph on a motorcycle. I hoped I could help them see the wisdom in backing off from such a chase.
Speeding is only one of the ways we can put our safety at risk. Whatever form it may take, choosing to seriously risk one's safety is something many of my students could be faced with at some moment in their lives or they might be in a position to help change the mind of someone else who is. The message I'd want them to remember in such a situation is that they need to view such moments as serious business. Their own future and the future of other people depends upon the choices they are making. I would say to them: Don't make such choices lightly. You are not immortal. Your own, or someone else's, life could end with the wrong decision. Understand that before you act. You can't undo the damage once it is done. The consequences are forever. Death can never be a better outcome than all of the other possibilities that are facing you in such a situation. You can choose to make a new beginning no matter how badly you have failed but, if you die, or cause another person to die, you will have forever forfeited that ability.
The Bible says: “No greater love has any man than this, than that a man lay down his life for his friends.” Viewed this way, the preservation of life is not the ultimate good. According to this way of thinking there are things that could be worth dying for. I believe that. But, to die for the sake of a whim, to die chasing a cheap thrill, to die, or cause someone else to die, because of pride, anger or the fear of failure might very well be the ultimate bad. Life is a gift. It is the ultimate gift. How you have used that gift is eternally recorded and unexpungable. If consciousness of the self continues after the grave, an individual will have the memory of their use of that gift to personally consider for eternity. If an individual's consciousness of themselves as a self ends with his or her death, the consciousness of the survivors continues regardless. Your legacy lives on in the consciousness of others whether your own consciousness survives to contemplate it or not. Your deeds matter. They will outlive your mortal body.
While you still do have that consciousness, and the ability to act upon your thoughts, ask yourself what you want your legacy to be. How do you want to be remembered, as someone who gave in to the whim, to the cheap thrill, to the pride, anger or fear and squandered that gift or as someone who stayed strong in the face of those things and made the best use they could of the opportunities that were given to them?
Have I been consistently wise in all of my decisions? The answer is no. One of the advantages of age is that I can look back on poor decisions made as lessons gratefully learned. 62 years provides a much better perspective than 18. There is an element of good fortune or, if you are so inclined, of providence that plays a part in this dynamic. In such cases I had been given another chance. That thought is humbling. I would ask my students to agree with me that we should have great respect for the person who makes the correct decision when we are unable to. By seeing his or her example let us resolve to be more able ourselves the next time. Perhaps we can be the example for someone else when we are given that second chance. That is the best we can expect from our imperfect selves. Life is really only a trajectory, a vector, a compass heading. We will probably never reach our hoped for destination, but the fact remains, we will still be steering some course when the end comes. Our hand is still on the tiller. We can make corrections to that course at any time. Let it be that at that time, we were steering toward a good end.
At least, that is what I hoped to say. If I ever get the chance remains to be seen. The rest of the drive was a decompression from the flood of emotions I'd been experiencing. Fortunately I didn't feel sleepy. My mind continued racing. I thought about the many things I was grateful for and especially my gratitude for a 37 year relationship with a truly unique and wonderful person. Another gift. As I eventually turned the corner onto our main street, my house being on the opposite end, I had my last curious sensation of the trip. It was almost like I was riding into another town for the night. It could have been any little town on the continent, they all have their similarities. Because a part of my mind was thinking about where I might find a place to spend the night, while the other part of my mind remonstrated with it that I already knew where I was, I found myself with a completely new perspective. I had been given the ability for a moment to see my own town through the eyes of a stranger and at the same time remember all of the towns I'd visited with feelings akin to those of a resident. Something else to be grateful for. It was very much like a line from T.S. Eliot's Little Gidding: “We shall not cease from exploration, And the end of all our exploring, Will be to arrive where we started, And know the place for the first time.”
The “end” of all my exploring hasn't yet arrived. Perhaps I will be able to say I actually “know” the place I started when that happens. For the moment I can't say that I do. I have a better appreciation for it, and for other places I've been, than would be the case if I'd never started exploring. Because that can only keep being the case, I'm already looking forward to the next trip.