59.7 mi /  6:04:54 time /  9.7 mph avg. /  829 ft. climbing
Staying at Wayback House AirB&B

The rain continued for a few hours into the night, while Rett slept away. At some point I dozed off, only to be awoken by the sound of my bike shifting around. Oh shit, raccoons. I’d forgotten about that camping menace once again. I crawled out of the tent, and found a single little guy working like hell to get into my rain-covered pannier. I shooed him away, only to have him return a few seconds later, entirely unconcerned with my presence 3 feet away. Lacking any rocks, I threw (with full strength) one of my full water bottles at him. Unfortunately I missed (hey, he had backed to at least 5 feet away by then, gimme a break!) but it scared him enough to run off for good.

At first, seeing my rain cover fully in place still wrapped around my bag (and without any holes chewed in it), I figured I had gotten there in time and my brownies were still safe. Only later on did I discover that the little bastard had somehow managed to unzip a pocket and tear into the foil- and plastic-covered treats. All without disturbing anything on the outside. Yeah, this park doesn’t just have raccoons, it has Raccoon Magicians.

Luckily the rain had mostly stopped by then, just before midnight, no more raccoons returned (after I brought all food into the tent), and at least Rett got a good night’s sleep. We were rolling out of camp before 7am.

The short way out of the park took us to the gravel Calumet Trail. Rett, like me, prefers the smoothness and predictability of asphalt roads, so I assured her there would be an exit to the road across the train tracks a mile or two in. Except that exit was blocked by fences and giant logs, in outright defiance of what Google Maps would have you believe. Worse, more rain had apparently fallen than I’d guessed, because the trail was filled with dozens of puddles, some more like ponds (complete with tadpoles swimming in them) up to 50 feet long and 4 inches deep. I have tried to expose Rett through all kinds of biking scenarios, but unfortunately riding through ponds was not something we had managed to get to in her 10 month training. She actually did great, but they made her so nervous that we were held around 6 mph for miles, and worse, her grip on her bag-laden handlebar was making her hands go numb. I was relieved that after only a moderate amount of rational argument, she put her stubbornness aside and allowed me to take her handlebar bag with me for the day.

And even more relieved to hear that it did make it things easier for her, since today was scheduled to be one of the longest days of the tour.

After reaching the road and then moving more quickly on to Michigan City, we stopped at the Lighthouse Restaurant for breakfast, again following the trail blazed by Dennis and Swati last summer. Too bad that also marked the point where our temporally-shifted routes diverged. Rather than following along the Lake Michigan shore, we headed straight away from it, up and out of the basin on US 20.

A crappy shoulder, miles of construction, and roaring semis made for some pretty unpleasant riding, but Rett, ever the urban warrior, was happy to take that over the desolate gravel swamp. Thankfully most drivers were very good, shifting in the left lane (when it existed) as I was taking the right lane behind Rett, and only once did we have to pull off to let a chortling semi trailer by.

We eventually made it to the junction with IN-2, where a dusty old restaurant filled with dusty old people stood as one of the few bits of civilization around. Already Rett’s “human-to-seat” interface was causing her pain, so she changed into a fresh pair of shorts, and we ordered some ice cream at the counter to cool down and fuel up (hers with pie, mine with root beer).

Influence is a funny thing. There was one day this spring when a cynical observer at the Lakefront Path would have seen a curious sight: three matched couples riding by in a row. The first a spandex kitted-out girl on her racing bike with her roadie boyfriend, the second a girl struggling in her tight jeans with the one gear available on her single-speed bike behind her hipster boyfriend’s fixed-gear, and the third a girl in moderately athletic clothes on her customized hybrid touring bike out ahead of her boyfriend’s dedicated touring machine. Rett is hardly one to jump on whatever bandwagon her boyfriend happens to be driving (and that’s definitely something I like about her), but with no other biking influences in her life, I suppose it was inevitable that she would tend towards doing things “my way”. Seeing that influence come out in her is something that makes me simultaneously proud, and a little embarrassed. Of course I think my way is the right way, but really it’s just one way of many.

Unfortunately I think that influence carried over further than it should have when it comes to that “human/seat interface”. I never ride with padded shorts, and though I never explicitly said it, I think Rett took the idea that she should likewise “toughen up” her backside rather than taking maximum preventative measures, even as we started this tour. One thing we were unable to do in our compressed window was to determine the combination of seat and shorts that works for her, since she had built up to her first back-to-back long rides less than a month ago. Hard to find a solution when you can’t run the test conditions! So much of Rett’s ride was endured through quite a bit of pain; I just hope we haven’t already passed the point of treatment.

Anyway, IN-2 made things a bit easier, with its wide shoulder and rumble strips essentially giving us a protected bike lane on the major highway. Heading due east, black thunderstorms slid past on the left side, while the right side had blue skies. We got just a bit of cooling from the storms and the cloud cover, and finally a brief shower that at least initiated Rett into rain-riding (another skill we hadn’t yet hit!) Tailwinds also made for a very lucky weather day, if you ignored the heat (which was easier for me than Rett.)

Reaching South Bend, we stopped at Kroger, Taco Bell, and the liquor store (which Rett thankfully thought of for us!) and then made the final push to our destination. In planning, there was a group of hotels at around 50 miles in South Bend (too short of a day) and another at 62 miles in Elkhart (too far, and on a bad route). That left quite a quandary until I discovered an AirBNB listing for an upstairs apartment between the two. Cheaper than the motels and far nicer (at least according to the photos), it almost seemed to good to be true. But no, after turning down the long, winding, forested driveway, there was the house on the gorgeous grounds. Green grass, pleasant songbirds, shadows from the tall trees, it was definitely the place to end Rett’s longest ride yet. The hostess went above and beyond and even offered to let us borrow their car if we needed it, but we had come stocked to stay and not move. Showers, beers, and burritos restored some life into us, and hopefully the big soft bed will do some healing.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 27th, 2014 at 7:44 pm and is filed under 2014 Bike Tour, bike. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.