Chronicle of the 1st Inaugural Bike to End Division Charity Ride around Lake Michigan
Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can ~ Arthur Ashe My good friend Gary Greer wrote in comments to one of my Bike to End Division posts words to the effect of “aren’t there ways of raising $12,000 for a good cause (in this case, West Town Bikes) that don’t…
On any of my long-distance bike rides, the whirl I took around the Grand Illinois Trail (600 miles), the sweep up and down the Katy in Missouri (443 miles), or finally last week’s aborted attempt to circle Lake Michigan (250 miles), I had my share of fears and doubts. On this last one though, these…
In the parking lot of the EconoLodge in Oconto, WI, on Wednesday, the day of my rescue, I received a phone call from a lifelong friend, who told me of the four mosquito bites he got on his back and how because they he is allergic, they had each swelled to “the size of quarters”…
Last night in my Econo Lodge motel room, here in Oconto, WI, I peeled a thick rubbery section of skin from the bottom of my surgically repaired left foot. “Uh, oh,”, I thought. I wrenched it in front of me to get a view of the bottom of the foot, which didn’t really work. I…
I intended to use this trip to meditate on fear. To that purpose, I was far from cheated. I was flabbergasted by own dread, how each evening it reached a pitch and subsided somewhat in the morning when the looming, practical necessity of checking out a motel room or my AirBnb lodging forced that down…
I have a Garmin watch, bike computer, cadence sensor, speed sensor and taillight with radar. If Garmin made a candleabra, I’d have one mounted on my handlebars and suffer the epithet (justly earned) as the Liberace of Long Distance Cycling. I pray to God they don’t have one in development. I did remove my cadence…
When you think of Wisconsin, what do you think? Cheeseheads, cheese curds, the Packers, Governor Scott Walker? Naw, you meant to say red barns. It’s the ferrous oxide (iron) that was mixed with linseed oil, milk, and lime that made the barns rust colored according to this WideOpenCountry article, Why Barns Are Red. I reckon…
I didn’t sleep to well the night before. I was a little feverish and woke up too often. The dogs were barking as they used to say. My anxiety was at a pitch. I woke up and a metric on my sports watch which shows your state of restfulness, had me at five, which is…
I had just departed from the Motel 6 in Glendale, WI (Milwaukee for all intents) when I came across these specimens from the animal kingdom, live, cage-free, wild turkeys! I was not in the hinterland. I was in a ‘burb of Milwaukee and there they were. It’s absolutely a fact that no charity ride should…
I got a great start getting into town. First in fog, then through some scenic stretches like this. Today was supposed to be the two-wheel equivalent of a stroll as I navigated my way lazily through the burbs and the city of Milwaukee, a light day to give my legs, buttocks, and sundry ligaments a…