51.0 mi / 5:29:20 time /  9.3 mph avg. / 199 ft. climbing

A bike tour can essentially be seen as an extended balancing act. Of course balancing a two-wheeled mechanical contraption is of foremost importance, but it goes much deeper than that. Covering distance must be weighed against the ability to enjoy that distance. Eating too little vs. eating too much. Covering your skin to protect you from the sun vs. uncovering your skin to protect you from the heat. All these and more were weighed by Rett and I this day.

At first-breakfast at Starbucks, we balanced our need for energy with our need to save room for second-breakfast. Rolling down US-20, we found a speed that kept us moving against the headwind without ripping us to pieces. Hopefully the steady headwinds from the last few days will eventually be balanced by tailwinds. Or maybe the sunny skies and lower temperatures are already the balancing part of the equation.

Second-breakfast had some really good cinnamon French Toast at Rayz Cafe. Then onwards through Oak Harbor, and soon after, our first view of Lake Erie! The scent, and the roadside environment actually made it feel much like an ocean holiday resort, quite unlike anything on at least the western shore of Lake Michigan. Seeing the water and sailboats and wave-runners was the most exciting moment of the trip for me so far; my mind was suddenly snapped into the realization that we had made it to a different place, somewhere quite distant from our start.

Crossing over onto the Marblehead Peninsula, we got some ice-cream fuel, and then it was time to balance Rett’s desire to make it on the 3:30pm ferry with my desire to not overwhelm her body in the race against the clock. And psychologically, to balance a belief that we could actually succeed in covering the 10 miles in that time, with preparation for disappointment in case the effort ended up being a waste. All day the headwinds and the 6 days of riding had Rett’s legs in a worn-out state, but she fought like hell against them with her mind, and thanks to her hard work (and desire to start our island break as soon as possible!) we made it aboard the boat to Kelley’s Island with a whole ten minutes to spare. Success!

Kelley’s Island is 20 wind-cooled minutes into Lake Erie, with views of the giant Cedar Point roller coasters in the distant haze. We slowly rolled the two miles to the state park on the opposite side of the island and snagged the last available lakeside campsite. Here we would balance the unbroken effort of the last six days with a day of rest and relaxation.

The island is small, low-key (even on the weekend, here somewhat before peak season), and charmingly unpretentious. Bicycles and golf carts are the major forms of transportation on the few island roads. We instead left our bikes in camp and took a two-mile walk to the Kelley’s Island Wine Co. for dinner, with plans to then head further to the 4-bar “downtown” area. It was a pretty long walk for Rett’s aching knees though, so I was really hoping we’d be able to find some other way back when the cold and dark came on.

The wines actually balanced nicely against my low expectations, and the food was great. Sitting out on the covered front porch, we commented to each other on The Rabble-Rousers: a foul-mouthed drunken idiot getting behind the wheel of a golf cart with three similarly drunk adults and three (hopefully sober) kids. We overheard the other couple on the porch make a similar comment, and, finding a common bond in our distaste for idiots, we quickly struck up a conversation. One thing led to another, and soon we were riding in their car with them over to the Glacial Grooves, a unique geological feature in the the state park. We took in the sunset, inhaled the atmosphere, and shared stimulating conversation. Sometimes, the more you talk with people, the more you realize that you have less in common than you initially thought. It was the opposite with Charlie and Laurie, and I became more and more happy that we’d run into them.

We then went back into town with them, and Charlie led us to a bar for drinks and more conversation. The awkward dancing on the outdoor patio, the bachelorette party remnants, and the mom using her 34-year-old daughter as her wingman carried forth the vibe that I was really digging about the island.

After one more bar hop, Charlie and Laurie had to catch the ferry back to the mainland, but first they were kind enough to take us all the way back across the island and drop us directly at our campsite. Even more, they informed us that Bike (er, motorcycle) Week was happening in Sandusky (where we planned to stay the next night), and if we had trouble finding a place, Charlie promised that he would drive out, pick us up, let us crash at their place, and drive us back to our route the next day. Amazing. What generous and genuine people. They helped turn a good day into a great night.

As I stood outside our tent, with my girlfriend at my side, the stars wheeling above us, and the waves softly crashing at our feet isolating us from the world at large, everything just felt right. Balanced. That’s one great day of bike touring.

47.2 mi / 5:03:50 time / 9.3 mph avg. / 318 ft. climbing
Staying at EconoLodge Motel

Only one more raccoon visit happened overnight, with one sniffing out some plastic bags in Rett’s pannier rain cover. The night was actually oddly quiet; I think the campground overlords control even the behavior of the insects in order to keep the peace.

Today and yesterday felt like some of the most remote sections of bike touring I’ve done outside of the desert southwest; after our second night in a row camping far from any town, we then had another 21 miles to go before the first breakfast opportunity. So we made extra preparations to have first-breakfast provisions on hand (led by a bag of donuts), and they seemed to serve Rett’s morning legs pretty well. A repeat of yesterday, we had mid-70s, low humidity, and sun. And more headwind. We saw about 4 cars in the first hour of riding, several unleashed but not-too-aggressive dogs, we talked with a friendly county sheriff’s deputy, and Rett made her second roadside restroom stop of the trip (the latter two were thankfully unrelated!) At one point where her energy started to flag, it was restored with speed and giant smiles after she got a chance to pet some horsies in a roadside paddock.

After late second-breakfast, we got ice cream a bit later in Swanton, a town made ugly by an outlying highway that clearly destroyed the railroad-centric downtown and replaced that core density with sprawl. Ugh. And that girl honking at us and gesturing angrily in her convertible was pretty ugly too.

Then we got on the Cannonball Trail for 10 miles into Perrysburg. It was smooth, flat, shaded, wind-blocking, and directly on our path. Those are pretty much our criteria for taking a trail over a road, and it was lucky that all this came together here.



Coming into Perrysburg, near the end of the day, with the heat peaking, through some difficult traffic and a difficult intersection, I inadvertently piled on enough to break through Rett’s stress limit. She normally does so well under difficult biking conditions that I sometimes forget how stressful such conditions can actually be for someone biking less than a year. Her rear, while definitely on the mend, likely also added to the stress level.

But we quickly cooled down, and some Internet/phone work got us a $45 EconoLodge room, booked for us by the Quality Inn receptionist against the will of the EconoLodge receptionist, who didn’t want to give us a first-floor room (which makes it a lot easier to roll our bikes inside). Woo hoo! Google pointed out a highly rated independent Mexican restaurant in the sea of chains, and boy, that shrimp+bacon+chorizo+mango inside-a-pineapple thing was my favorite meal so far. It’s very odd to go 5 nights without a trip to a restaurant for dinner, but that’s just how this trip has worked out. So it was nice for Rett to see that campground cooking is not necessarily the standard for my tours. For $45, the motel ain’t the greatest, but it’s better than a tent, made for a relaxing evening, and I’m at least 50% sure we won’t have a raccoon problem!

47.0 mi /  5:11:13 time /  9.1 mph avg. / 926 ft. climbing
Staying at Harrison Lake State Park Campground

We knew Rett wasn’t a morning person, though she’s actually been more of a driver of us getting up and on the road than me. That’s just one example of us working really well together, since it wouldn’t be tons of fun if I felt like I had to be the taskmaster. But in terms of riding, it has now repeatedly taken until second-breakfast before her legs stop feeling like lead pipes. Yesterday we unfortunately verified that coffee isn’t a sufficient elixir, but we’ll keep experimenting. Obviously riding three of her most challenging rides ever, three days in a row, contributes to the lead pipes, but the alchemical transformation into gold after second-breakfast has been remarkable.

Today’s second-breakfast was at a hippie-style lakeside bar, and extended to do some planning using their wifi. Then through the small town of Fremont, and then, into our third state: Michigan!

What? Michigan is on the way to New York? Yep, for us it is. And then 20 minutes later, we made it to our fourth state, Ohio!

Damn, we’re fast. OK, really it’s just some weird twist of geography and history that drops a corner of Michigan into Ohio, but the important part is that either way, we made it through the whole width of Indiana. Yeah!

Today was scheduled to be a “short day”, and with no threat of rain, and comfortable 75 degree temps with low humidity, it should be easy, right? Well, I forget to take into account the miles of up-and-down hills upon entering Ohio, and the constant 10 mph headwind sure didn’t help matters either. And all the while Rett was still fighting through the pain in her rear.

But oh, what a fighter! Powering up the hills in defiance, keeping the miles ticking down, even when she was losing hope of making it to our destination. But just near the breaking point, the hills flattened, and the impossible seemed possible again. I even learned yet another bike-touring trick from this supposed novice: the mid-ride baby-wipe wash of the face. It breathes a whole new life into you!

We really entered some remote territory today, with only two towns on the whole route, and lots of country roads where we rode side-by-side. One of them sounded like the snap-crackle-pop of Rice Krispies under our wheels, and Rett quickly deduced that it was sun-heated tar bubbles bursting as we rode over them. Weird and kind of fun! There are lots of little ponds around, presumably created when the former swamp that covered this region was more formally separated into water and land.

Harrison Lake State Park is as nice and clean as all the reviews stated, but I can’t shake the feeling that it’s some dystopian paradise-hell where beauty and order is maintained only through a set of draconian and unnecessary rules: no alcohol, no driving on this bit of road that is an important connector in the park, one hour parking at the shower house, etc. So we had to carefully hide our wine from the roving park rangers, and likely the overhead drones as well. But nothing like contraband wine to make your soup and cheese-and-cracker dinner.

The one thing not controlled by any rules? You guessed it: raccoons! We were  both sitting in the tent in the fading light, and I was about to go back out and do some final cleanup, when another brass-balled raccoon sauntered right up to the door of the tent and took off with our box of crackers! I burst out after him, and he dropped it before he could do any damage, though I chased him into and out of a tree with more water bottle missiles anyway (again, none met their target, but he eventually ran off to harass someone with fewer projectiles in his arsenal, I hope).

Why was there a box of crackers right in front of our door? Because I had bagged up all of our food to bring into the tent with us in order to… keep it from raccoons! I just hadn’t yet brought it in. Argh, death to all of them! Thankfully, while Rett isn’t a big fan, they don’t do much to break up her sleeping. We have our fingers crossed that we may have turned a corner on her skin pain, but she still needs as much good sleep as she can get, especially on this second night in a row in a tent. Back to a bit of civilization tomorrow!

54.5 mi /  5:19:51 time /  10.2 mph avg. /  499 ft. climbing
Staying at Manapogo Park Campground

We were up before our 7am alarm, with Rett getting another good 9+ hours of sleep. Cereal and coffee were nice treats at our AirBNB as we packed up all our blown apart gear (which always takes longer than breaking down camp in a campground because you totally throw all organization to the wind when sleeping inside a building). Rett was even getting a bit antsy with my dawdling, which is greatly preferred over the opposite! Especially since I was waiting for rush hour traffic to die down and rain chances to pass anyway.

A cursory inspection revealed that last night’s Neosporin + Aquaphor treatment had eliminated any visual evidence of Rett’s pain, though of course that didn’t mean that she was quite as fresh as a daisy just yet. The glorious air conditioning had completely dried out her washed pair of favorite padded shorts overnight (and to clear up any confusion over yesterday’s entry, she has been wearing padded shorts the whole time, she had just been saving her good ones for later, and trying to toughen up her skin by not babying it).

Hopping aboard after our quarter mile walk out the beautifully wooded driveway didn’t induce any yelps like yesterday, but it also didn’t appear to be super pleasant. In my planning, I had plotted out three options for the day, and due to her condition, we chose the shortest one, ending at a commercial RV Park (which I usually avoid in favor of state parks and the like). So we made our way over to Elkhart for second-breakfast at McDonald’s, which got Rett’s motor running a little faster.

She had the excellent idea a few days ago to pick up some shelf-stable gnocchi from Cost Plus World Market, so in Bristol, while I fixed a flat on her front tire, she found a jar of pesto for tonight’s dinner (the shop girl didn’t know if they had it since she didn’t even know what pesto was!)

Then we headed out down SR-120, which would be our road for the rest of the day. Smooth year-old asphalt, continuous 4 foot shoulder, cloudy skies to moderate the  temperature, small Amish (Mennonite?) farms populated with lots of horses, an unexpected bakery in the middle of nowhere, and friendly small towns put both Rett and I in a great mood for a beautiful day of true bike touring. After a day of mostly urban riding and a day of major highways in pain, I was glad that Rett finally got a taste of what I consider an ideal bike touring day. And her shorts seemed to be working, to the point where she could enjoy everything else almost as much as me (and even more when it came to the horsies and baby horsies!) By the mid-point of the day, my grave concern from last night had been turned around into a belief that we can actually do this thing!

Lunch was in  the small town of Howe, where Rett’s raspberry pie rated as the best pie she’d ever eaten. Orland, despite its small size, had a perfectly placed liquor store for us to get a bottle of wine for dinner (which I’d never had on a bike tour before, what a fantastic idea by Rett!)

I had emailed the RV Park to confirm that they had tent sites, and their positive reply mentioned that they close at 5. When I said we might not make that, they said to just grab any site we wanted, and slide $20 under the office door. Very cool of them, especially since that was even a small discount off the posted rate. When we arrived around 5:10, and were about to set up at one of the tent sites literally 100 feet from I-90 (though nicely shaded with tall trees and green grass), a woman in a golf cart pulled up, telling us that a coworker on her way home saw us on the road and called to tell her to stay late for us. She suggested a site more towards the interior of the park, where we could have electric, water, and be close to the bathrooms and showers. Rett wisely recommended that we go for that instead, even if she got distracted off-course before we made it there, by a seasonal camper’s two dogs (yes, she misses Pip very much). They still only asked $20 from us, and even offered to go back and re-open the camp store if we needed anything. Wow, I was happy that Rett could experience the “people are good” feeling I get on every bike tour, because, you know, people are good.

The electric sites were just as green and tree-shaded as the ones by the highway, the bathroom a few feet away was clean with great hot showers, and when a couple of drops of rain started falling, other friendly seasonal campers offered to variously take our bikes onto their covered deck, or let us sleep in their (two-bedroom!) trailer! As it’s literally one of the nicest campgrounds I’ve ever stayed in, it’s sure making me rethink my anti-commercial-campground bias. But don’t worry, I definitely made sure to still bring all the food into the tent. Including the awesome pesto gnocchi filling our bellies!

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.)

The South Bend of the river maybe? I dunno, I just realized I hadn't taken any photos!

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.

51.2mi / 4:47:02 time / 10.7 mph avg. / 376 ft. climbing
Staying at Indiana Dunes State Park Campground

Bike tour#7 begins! Chicago to Skaneateles, NY. This one was the idea of my amazing girlfriend Rett, who set this goal less than a year ago. She not only got herself into touring shape in that time, she also learned how to ride a bike. Yeah, that little important prerequisite to bike touring, actually knowing how to ride a bike? She hadn’t checked that one off yet. But did that stop her? Or even make her pause? Hell no! That’s my girl! Through a lot of hard work, and a few painful “learning experiences”, she was ready.

So, up at 6am at her place, her mom, who would be watching her dog Pip during the trip, was nice enough to wake up early in the morning to pick him up and see us off. It’s the longest Rett and Pip have ever been apart, so the normal strong emotions that go with leaving on an epic journey were multiplied.

But she did a great job of keeping it together as we headed off into the bright Memorial Day sunshine, south down the Lakefront Path. There were already a ton of people out on the super-popular path at 8am, but luckily the dreaded tourist crowds around Navy Pier had not yet woken up.

So we made short work of the familiar path, nice because it had been Rett’s main training ground (and boy if you can learn to survive the chaos of the LFP, everything after that is easy!) I realized that although I started my first three tours from my front door (one of the ideals of Ken Kifer, my original bike-touring inspiration), I realized that I hadn’t done so for my next three. So it was cool to get back to that (ok, not quite MY front door, but close enough!), and even better, retrace the very route that began my first tour to Atlanta a decade ago.

Well, not exactly, because then we rode the nice, empty, bike-laned section of South Shore Drive, a road that didn’t even exist a year ago, much less a decade ago. And then we made our first of four state border crossings, into Indiana. The border sign, with the Chicago Skyway looming darkly over it, unfortunately did not provide a pleasant stop for a photo. We continued down the empty backroads of the BP refinery, surrounded by belching towers of flame that reminded me of the destructive industry of Saruman at Isengard, and Rett of another Dark Tower in literature, hers from Stephen King (a volume of which currently resides in her handlebar bag).

And then, it was time to pass through Gary, Indiana, the town made famous on my first bike tour for the well-meaning woman who tailed me for a mile, pleading with me to not enter such a dangerous place on my own. This time, almost too good (or bad?) to be true, the scene nearly repeated. A couple of guys at a light pulled up next to us, rolled down the window, and warned “Do you know where you’re headed? That’s Gary. Something happens there, you call the cops, they won’t come.” Too her credit, Rett, who had already been subjected to similar fear mongering, immediately piped up “Yes, we know, we’ll be fine!” Luckily they didn’t insist on tailing us, and actually were interested a bit in our trip, but I’m pretty sure they assume we’re dead crazy idiots by now.

But once again, much to my unsurprise, Gary simply failed to live up to its reputation. In the blazing heat, we stopped right in the center of town at a McDonald’s with some of the friendliest fast food employees I’ve ever encountered. Sure, there are some abandoned buildings in pretty bad shape, but there are also some nice new ones. I certainly don’t wish that passing through Gary actually was as dangerous as all these people think it is, but it might make it more interesting!

And it turns out we weren’t the only crazy cyclists passing through Gary today. As we sat in McDonald’s, Rett noticed group after group of blue-jerseyed roadies going by. Later on, we passed their sag-wagon, and then got passed by some of them. Their shirts said “Wrigley to Fenway”. So they were going a bit further than us, though oddly, none asked where we were headed. Clearly they were intimidated by us and embarrassed by their load-avoiding wussiness!

We eventually made it to the green-lined smooth, shouldered road of the Dunes Highway for our last segment. A lot more cars were leaving the Dunes than arriving, which is good news for us. We don’t have to go to work tomorrow! Or the next day…

We made it to camp before 3pm, a great first-day performance by Rett. After a bit of refreshing and setting up camp (and Rett, in Dennis’s place, reminding me to change into my more comfortable sandals!) she showed off how good she was doing by hiking up a big ol’ dune for a dip in bracing Lake Michigan. Ah, that was refreshing! Well, at least until we had to hike back over the dune in the still-burning sun…

Back in camp and after showers, I cooked up some underwhelming burgers, though luckily we were hungry enough to put them down anyway. Then, just as I’m almost done cleaning up, a rumble of thunder. Uh oh. Check the radar on my phone (yep, that’s camping these days, and sure enough, it’s coming. Well, at least it waited ’til we were done riding, sightseeing, and eating! So we hole up in the thick air of the tent at 7pm. But eventually it cools off a bit, the raindrops put Rett to sleep, and I have time to write this entry. All in all, a successful first day of Rett’s first tour!