Drink Beer and Eat Meat
Minneapolis, MN -> Maiden Rock, WI -> West Salem, WI -> La Valle, WI -> Madison, WI -> Milwaukee, WI -> Ravenna, MI
6 days
430 miles
Drew's visit was a 400-mile conversation through terrains sometimes dense, sometimes arid, punctured only by sleep and those moments we fell into single file on the road. He made clear from the outset that his carpetbagging intention was to "lighten the load of this old work horse." And though his delicate, pretty Mr. Pink couldn't rack more than the couple pounds of gear he'd needed for himself, he made my life a hell of a lot easier and after 5 days propelled me into the eastern time zone ready to tackle this last leg before I Ace it.
The two of us started on July 7 with a casual ride through the greenways of Minneapolis, checking out the lakes and downtown, then weaving our way over to St. Paul and ultimately onto a path parallel to the Mighty Mississippi (at this point the hegemon of a growing watershed). Suburbia and farmland miscegenated freely. The storm we'd been warned about -- flirting with the horizon all afternoon -- didn't hit until about the final 20 miles of our 90-mile day. It was an earnest rain, nothing too menacing save one last descent on which headwinds and bullet-sized raindrops paired up to batter our faces.
When we rolled into Maiden Rock, Wisconsin, open skies let us set up camp without a hitch and hang the day's clothes to mostly dry. We tented on a sandy beach overlooking a hemorrhaged-Mississippi lake framed by forested cliffs of limestone and dined, across the railroad tracks, on double-patied burgers loaded to the nines, beer from Portland and cider from the local orchard.
Drew adapts quickly, throws himself whole-heartedly into any world that presents itself, and navigates using an inexhaustible sense of curiosity. By morning he had inducted himself into the routine and was helping the machine operate more smoothly. We made our first friend in Eric, a midwest-heart-of-gold kinda guy. He approached us as we packed up in the morning and asked us some technical questions about the adventure. At that, and every point forward, Drew took to bragging about my ride. Eric was bound for a solo overnight kayaking trip on one of the Mississippi's tributaries.
We started the day's procession of food with oatmeal at the campsite, then rode 6 miles to meet Eric at Lucky Lena's in Stockholm, WI, for a breakfast of eggs, sausage, potatoes and Swedish pancakes. We sat at a bar outside overlooking the main drag, greeting the harley guys as they passed. We stuffed ourselves and said our goodbyes to Eric; from there the road turned damn-near tropical -- humid, lush, almost even coastal with that massive river. Certainly some of the most spectacular riding of the trip.
But highway 35 turns against cyclists when it turns off the Mississippi: the shoulder disappears and industrial agro's clearly got places to be. We sought side routes and after some aggressive proselytizing from a local bike shop owner joined up with a 100-mile network of compacted-limestone bike paths running through the state. The route (Great River -> La Crosse River -> Elroy-Sparta -> 400 trails) was once the romping ground of trains now anachronistically small (trains, like everything in this country, grew wider, making the old rails obsolete); it runs a straight, flat line through bustling wetlands and dives through old dynamited-out tunnels, deep and dark and cool beyond all anticipation.
After about 83 miles (only 20 on the Rails to Trails), we dragged our exhausted selves into the West Salem campground and made friends with Peter, a rosy-cheeked guy riding across the country east -> west. His nubility betrayed the eastern time zone's amenability to cyclists: this boy clearly ain't never been through Montana or North Dakota. A rowdy group of kids at a neighboring campsite threatened to keep me awake so I joined their party until about 2 am.
The next day, more of the same riding: egrets, deer, glimmering ponds. Scenic and repetitive. At the end of the day, we met George, a dry and witty Brit (he's on a round-the-globe cycling trip and seems a true imperialist from the tiny domain of his loaded-up bike) and joined him for some stealth camping in La Valle, WI. Nothing about it was stealth: we were in full view of everyone in town and everyone passing by on the trail. Nobody bothered us though and by 9 am we were at the local diner for breakfast (three eggs, three strips of bacon, three sausages, three pancakes, and hash browns).
In the 65-mile approach to Madison (our shortest day), the headwinds turned strongest. Drew pulled in front so that I could draft behind him: I tucked myself in sync with his back tire and tranced out in the precarious vacuum created by his wake. We stopped a few miles outside of Madison's downtown to stay with Nataliya, Doug, and their two kids. They fed us hamburgers, hot dogs, salads and all the beer we could drink. Their irreverent, ribaldrous humor and inexhaustible generosity made us feel instantly at ease. Wisconsin's clearly loosened on many of the puritanical strictures that still hold sway in Minnesota without sacrificing any of the charm.
We started early on the 93-mile ride from their house to downtown Milwaukee, with a quick detour along Madison's magical isthmus. Temperatures peaked around 91 degrees. The day treated Drew more cruelly because his end was in sight. We stopped for $3 1/2-lb burgers that ultimately had an unfortunate hidden cost: the destruction they wrought on our digestive systems, knocking us both off the road only about 20 miles from Milwaukee. We pulled it together, rehydrated and made it to the airbnb just before sunset, then walked downtown for pulled pork and beer.
Drew flew out of Milwaukee at about 5 am, so I had the morning alone in the studio to drink tea, putz around, and pack the bike ever more efficiently. At noon, I hopped on a ferry in Milwaukee, dozed off immediately, then woke up and disembarked in Muskegon, MI to ride 20 idyllic miles to a county park in Ravenna, MI. Running water (subtle hint of copper) and a flushable toilet: alls I need.
From our campsite on the Mississippi
