Trip Report, The First

We did it! A couple of nearly-50s rode nearly 700 miles, our first big trip together since 1976. That's pretty good. Over the course of the next few (many) entries, I'll detail the trip. For now, just the snapshot.

Overall, the trip was a complete success, if there can be such a thing on a 10-day bike trip. I suppose finishing makes it successful. Or finishing and remaining friends. With no broken bones. Or rabies. (I hope. There's a raccoon story from early in the trip. Stay tuned.) Maybe it's having the fun-to-not-fun ratio be greater than 1.

The trip went from Milwaukee to Muskegon, MI, over the top of Lake Michigan. (Actually, it went from Muskegon to Muskegon, including a crossing of the lake by ferry, but we didn't actually ride it.)

We camped every night but one, we cooked some of our meals, but mostly ate at BP stations. (At least, that's how it seemed.) Our short day was 56 miles; our long day was 82 miles.

The weather was very nice: a few hot-ish days, a few headwind days, a little rain, but mostly sunny and cool with favorable winds.

We had a normal amount of equipment failure: Jon's back wheel started breaking spokes and needed to be replaced. The tire on my back wheel suffered sidewall failure (and would have burst if I hadn't caught it) and needed to be replaced with the spare I carried.

We had a few accidents. Actually, one real accident (I picked up a large stick in my front wheel, which caused my wheel to stop turning, with predictable results) and one near accident (Jon was nearly plowed into by an SUV soccer mom on a cell phone).

We had lots of nice flat riding near the lake, and several monster hills away from the lake, the worst of which was a steep two miles long.

We rode on county roads and state highways, busy and deserted, and bike trails, paved and not paved.

We stayed in campgrounds located in town parks and county fairgrounds, public state parks, and private campgrounds. Our favorites were the campgrounds in the middle of towns.

We met interesting people and saw places we had never seen before, or saw familiar places in a new way.

I'm glad I did it. I don't think I'll be taking another such long trip anytime soon, but it did open up possibilities for short trips of one or two nights, which I might have been reluctant to do by myself. Now, there's enough about the bike touring experience that I like that it might be fun to do it in short installments, pending that ultimate trip . . . around the world. More later.