October 2014

My bike tour! Originally conceived as a road tour from Columbus OH, to the end of the ACA's Northern Tier route in Maine, and then re-imagined as a bikepacking trip through Michigan following the TransMichigan route created by JimL, and available at http://transmichigan.blogspot.com/

Things didn't go as planned, but not just on the bike tour specific side of things.

I was dropped off at the Ohio/Michigan border on September 28, and I headed off into the country on a great set of dirt roads. The first day of the trip was amazing. It was sunny, and I was shedding layers almost immediately. The roads were a mix of well maintained dirt farm roads and some pavement, plus a few short sections of singletrack shortcuts.

The second day was a bit colder, and more paved as I passed through Battle Creek, and the third day lead me to detour into Grand Rapids to take a rest day and hopefully dodge some rain. This section contained everything from pavement, to rail trail, to "seasonal" roads way out in the country. Altogether fantastic riding.

However, dodging the rain didn't really work, and as I approached Manistee National Forest, and the real singletrack sections of the trip, I wound up riding all day in the rain and temperatures in the 40s. Stopped for the night in White Cloud, I looked at the weather forecast, and decided to bypass the singletrack section and head towards Mackinaw City on the road/White Pine Trail.

That choice proved to pretty much unravel all of my plans for the trip. Once I broke that seal and acknowledged that I could dramatically change the route, it just didn't stop. I was worried about trail conditions, my fitness, and my lack of experience camping alone. Here, also, is where the non-bike tour related drama came into play. A family member passed away at the beginning of September, pulling me home from a work trip and disrupting my budgeting for the year and this trip. At this point, amid the bike-specific worrying, I began to feel like now maybe wasn't the best time to be alone, and that I was spending too much money.

I rode up to Cadillac MI on that day after leaving White Cloud, and then decided I would cut west, visit the sand dunes and then jump back onto the main TransMichigan route into Mackinaw City, then I decided that I would go 80 miles back the way that I came, and jump on the ferry in Ludington and ride south through Wisconsin to visit friends in the Chicago area. It being 35º and pouring down rain on my tent may have contributed to making the idea of Chicago seem so appealing.

It turns out that riding 50 miles due west into a headwind on giant MTB tires really blows, but Jamesport Brewing in Ludington makes delicious beers.

The ferry was fun, but road touring in Wisconsin proved boring, and staring at the mess that is Chicagoland on a map seemed like it also wouldn't be fun to ride through, so I rented a car and headed home to hatch a new plan.

That new plan wound up being a week at home riding around town and eating too much, then heading off to Washington DC with my friend Mark via the GAP/C&O Towpath. We decided to just bring everything and go slow, which didn't really work out when we remembered that we only had 5 days of riding time if we wanted a day in DC at the end. So, we ended up riding several 80+ mile days fully loaded in the old-man-touring sort of style with four panniers and other bits strapped to our bikes. Still fun!

Maybe I'm a wuss. I definitely doubted myself too much in Michigan, but I made the choices that I made and now I'll just have to go back to Michigan and finish the ride (but definitely when it is not 40º and raining). It was still a great month dominated by bikepacking and touring, that left me hungry for more.