New Concepts in Bike Touring

As has become clear in my entries for days 5 and 6, there was a serious flaw in planning for this trip. I take most of the blame, both in the specifics of leaving too few days for too many miles, and in the subscribed-to philosophy of the tour and bike touring, in general. (Jon probably can share in some of the blame for both of these, but I won't insist.)

First, as I mentioned before, I should have started with 50-mile days, assuming that each would expand to 60 or 70 miles. And we should have allowed one catch-up or layover day.

But an even more fundamental problem was the tendency to make the tour's purpose a journey from point A to point B, in which success was defined by the completion of the journey. In this case, we decided it would be a nice accomplishment to ride around the northern half of Lake Michigan. Simple, easy to describe, easy to define.

But with this definition of success--finishing the journey from point A to point B--we did not allow ourselves any escape hatches. Anything less than a timely arrival in Muskegon would have been a failure. (Remember: I speak for myself here, but I suspect Jon would at least be sympathetic to this view.) So in Manistique and St. Ignace, as we were pondering the apparently impossible distances yet to go, we never considered the possibility of bailing out, even though we had a good bail-out option.

My family owns a summer place in Empire, just west of Traverse City. It would have been 150 miles short of our goal, but we easily could have detoured there, picked up a car and finished the journey to the Muskegon ferry the fast way.

Here's how the trip might have unfolded: We would have stopped in Manistique on Day 5. On Day 6 we might have stopped in a stunningly beautiful state forest campground right on the beach just east of Brevort. On Day 7 we might have stayed at my favorite campground in the whole world, Wilderness State Park, just west of Mackinaw City. On Day 8 we would have had a relatively easy ride to Fisherman's Island State Park (where we stayed after the actual Day 7). On Day 9 we would have had a longish ride to Empire, but no longer than many of our other days. On Day 10 I would have driven Jon to the ferry.

The advantage of this schedule is that it would have spared us the grinding out of miles necessary to reach the ferry by bike, and it would have allowed us to really enjoy some of the most beautiful spots in the country.

As my posts for days 7-10 will show, I had a good time even on the grind-out-the-miles days, so I don't want to convey the idea that it wasn't fun. But it was partly fun because we accomplished a daunting (at times nearly overwhelming) task. We slept well every night because we nearly killed ourselves. It might have been nice to be a bit less daunted and near death.

In any case, I propose that all future bike trips have a bail-out option, one that will represent merely course correction rather than failure. On this trip, keeping the Empire option open would have been the logical bail out.

Another way to do it would be to leave a car in a central spot, then head out as if along the spoke of a wheel; the actual tour would be around the rim, with the option of following a spoke back to the center if necessary. For example, a nice tour would be around the tip of Michigan's lower peninsula. One could leave a car in, say, Grayling, head straight east to Lake Huron, then proceed up the Lake Huron coast, down the Lake Michigan coast, and straight across the state back to Grayling. At any time, however, it would be possible to head back to Grayling from any point on the coast if the schedule wasn't working out.

Another possible "tour", if covering X miles was the goal, would be to stay in a nice central location, and take 60- or 70-mile loop rides out from that central location. It's easy to go 35 miles out one route, and then 35 miles back on another route that's just a few miles away from the first, so you're not literally retracing your steps. I could imagine doing this in, say, the Adirondacks or Rockies, or perhaps central New York or along the Erie Canal, or the Oregon coast. Find a really nice campground (or B&B if wives are along) to serve as the home base, and take off from there. If one were feeling ambitious, it could be a week of centuries (if you know what I mean). That would be pretty good: 500 miles in 5 days.

In any case, the desire to get from point A to point B by bike (west coast to east coast, Seattle to San Diego, Fairbanks to Tierra del Fuego) just to say you did it is, I'm sorry to say since I'm guilty of it, a bit juvenile. It makes for good cocktail party boasts ("Yes, I've ridden from Seattle to San Diego and around Lake Michigan--cough cough most of it cough cough the northern half"), but it doesn't necessarily make for the best trip.

Just some thoughts. Let's continue the trip, shall we?