Here is the story in chronological order.

  • Bike to End Division Announces Fundraiser
    by John Poplett
    The 1st inaugural Bike to End Division charity ride is now official! We’ve identified two worthy beneficiaries for the ride, West Town Bikes and One Spirit, which serve two of the neediest communities in the United States of America, respectively the West Side of Chicago and the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. To…
  • Conversation with Alex Wilson, Founder and Executive Director of West Town Bikes
    by John Poplett
    Alex Wilson founded West Town Bikes, using bikes as a vehicle [pun intended] to better the quality of life for young people on Chicago’s West Side. It hasn’t always been easy. Only as recently as 2020, the pandemic all but wiped him out, forcing Alex to take himself off the payroll and fire over half…
  • Take it Slow: the Right Way to Haul Ass
    by John Poplett
    I’ve done this before. 13 years ago, yeah, sure, but I’ve done it. Back then it was the Grand Illinois Trail, 600 miles that took me from my front door in the western suburbs (River Forest) to Navy Pier, Joliet, straight west on old canal paths, all the way to the Mississippi, north along the…
  • Planning to Circumnavigate a Large Body of Fresh Water
    by John Poplett
    No other planning can proceed unless you know where you are going and to figure that out you’re going to need a route. It’s been done before, a few hardy souls periodically attempt to bike the distance around all of Lake Michigan and fewer still have had the foresight and wisdom to record their experience…
  • When fear knocks, go out through the back door
    by John Poplett
    I slept only in fits and starts last night, the night before the first day on my cycling tour around Lake Michigan, which will take me past Milwaukee, Port Washington, Green Bay, Manitowoc, until I reach Escanaba on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, pedal across it, and start the journey back down past Mackinaw City,…
  • Burnt Toast on Day One
    by John Poplett
    This “pedway” to the bike trail along the lake almost spelled my doom. Easing my bike down the little ramp along the edge didn’t work as planned. I lost control of the bike, when the weight from all the gear on the trailer, pushed it passed me and jammed the front wheel into the opposing…
  • The Majesty of the Outdoors (on the Robert McClory Bike Path)
    by John Poplett
    This is what I saw coming at me on the Robert McClory Bike Path as I left Waukegan this morning. I set down the bike to take the snap for perspective and so you could see how I’m fixed up for travel. So many times you see people along one of these trails who look…
  • An Easy Day Gone Awry
    by John Poplett
    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…
  • Two Turkeys and a Naysayer on the Road to Belgium (Wisconsin)
    by John Poplett
    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…
  • Trekking to Manitowoc, WI—Backwoods QAnon Theorists be damned
    by John Poplett
    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…
  • Just Left Belgium, Denmark’s Gotta Be Around Here Somewhere
    by John Poplett
    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…
  • When Garmin Makes Candleabras…
    by John Poplett
    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…
  • How Quickly Fear, the Quicksand of the Psyche, Can Drown You
    by John Poplett
    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…
  • How Abruptly Plans Shatter in Oconto, WI (or Anywhere, USA)
    by John Poplett
    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…
  • Hurtling toward the Next Oblivion in a Honda Fit
    by John Poplett
    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”…
  • Psychological Debris from an Anxiety-Ridden, Failed Attempt to Orbit a Big Lake
    by John Poplett
    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…
  • Pedaling to the Beat of Arthur Ashe’s Motto
    by John Poplett
    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…