8pm now - we left the restaurant in south haven, where i last posted, and came out to find a couple groups of folks our parents' age looking at the bikes. we talked to them for a while, started to leave and noticed john had a flat tire. the folks just about panicked, but we explained it was a 5 minute repair. they were skeptical. john was in fine form.
we headed north along the lake shore, hoping to make it to holland tonight. we stopped at an overlook, and were approached by two couples on harleys, out for a ride. talked for a while. john's achilles is aching a bit, and the 50 year old woman in a leg brace gave him a handful of painkillers. john is proud to have taken drugs from a biker chick.
proceeded further n along the lake shore - lovely houses set back from the road. started to worry about making holland, settled for plan b: KOA campground in saugatuck. our road ran out (dead end) before it was supposed to, but right at that moment a couple in a car pulled up offering help. they were cyclists, and assured us that we could make holland tonight. back out to route A2, we headed n again. at one point we realized there was a boy on a BMX bike on the opposite sidewalk racing us.
our energy was too low to make holland, and we found the KOA had closed, so we're at the shangrai-la motel, and have ordered subs and salads for delivery.
68 miles today. we'll get an earlier start tomorrow, as i'll be asleep within the hour.
-- Post From My iPhone
Sunday, May 31, 2009
2pm
we're about 2 miles s of van buren st forest, s of south haven. john's having minor bike and shoe issues, but all is good. sunny, not too warm. 34 miles for the day so far. rolling hills, fresh new pavement.
-- Post From My iPhone
-- Post From My iPhone
last night and this am.
tom allen brought us PIZZA AND EDAMAME to our campsite, and hung out for an hour. it was great and saved our day. we went to the store at the campground, got watr, and went to bed. john got up in the middle of the night to chase raccoons out of our pizza.
we overslept, and took a long time packing. rolled out oof camp at 10am, and stopped for breakfast now, at sammie's. 10:50 now. figuring out route.
-- Post From My iPhone
Saturday, May 30, 2009
day one-- chicago to warren dunes st park
Let there be no mistake. Today's ride was about one thing: puting the industrial unpleasantness of NW Indiana behind us as quicky as we could.
That said, I'd like to register my diasappointment in one Harvey Botzman, author of the seemingly-perfect, self-published book "'Round Lake Michigan: A Guide for Bicyclists." Forget the fact that he wrote the whole thing backwards (as if anybody would ever take the CLOCKWISE route around the lake), and that it's filled with strangely-distorted maps that might actually prove useful if they weren't so misleading...
No. My beef with Harvey revolves around one issue: Route 12 through Indiana.
He goes to great lengths trying to convince folks that it is some kind of impenetrable death trap that no sane person should ever try and insists that all should use a workaround he developed that has dozens of turns and adds 10s of miles to the trip.
At one point he actually says that taking rt.12 would be "suicide."
Since Jay and I have proven by merely embarking on this trip that we have little regard for personal mortality (and couldnt stomach the idea of extra miles) we went straight to it... and it was FINE! Sure, some of the shoulders were chewed up and it gave an up-close tour of refineries and Gary's blighted downtown, but it seemed relatively safe and parts of it were quite lovely.
Mr. Botzman recommends that, should you accidentally find yourself on rt. 12, you should get off immediately and find the Calumet Trail... Which, as it turns out, seems to be a fancy name for a loose collection of ruts, sandtraps, gravel pits, and pond-sized puddles. One might argue that it's better than the traffic of the highway, but I would disagree. I think it merely replaces one fear with another: the fear of getting hit by a passing car (a fear, I'm proud to say, that I have tamed over the course of my life) with the fear of an 8 mph, face-first crash into a 6-inch-deep mini-swamp teeming with parasites dying to enter thrugh any available oraffice to inflict a nigh-undiagnosable and painful illness (a fear I haven't even been able to tell trained professionals about).
Still, the directions through the South Side neighborhoods of Chicago were quite helpful...
And it certainly didn't dampen our enthusiasm about the day's ride: 90 miles (100 for Jay) that got us to a gorgeous state park in time to witness a rarity for THIS "third-caoster"... An AMAZING sunset over Lake Michigan.
That said, I'd like to register my diasappointment in one Harvey Botzman, author of the seemingly-perfect, self-published book "'Round Lake Michigan: A Guide for Bicyclists." Forget the fact that he wrote the whole thing backwards (as if anybody would ever take the CLOCKWISE route around the lake), and that it's filled with strangely-distorted maps that might actually prove useful if they weren't so misleading...
No. My beef with Harvey revolves around one issue: Route 12 through Indiana.
He goes to great lengths trying to convince folks that it is some kind of impenetrable death trap that no sane person should ever try and insists that all should use a workaround he developed that has dozens of turns and adds 10s of miles to the trip.
At one point he actually says that taking rt.12 would be "suicide."
Since Jay and I have proven by merely embarking on this trip that we have little regard for personal mortality (and couldnt stomach the idea of extra miles) we went straight to it... and it was FINE! Sure, some of the shoulders were chewed up and it gave an up-close tour of refineries and Gary's blighted downtown, but it seemed relatively safe and parts of it were quite lovely.
Mr. Botzman recommends that, should you accidentally find yourself on rt. 12, you should get off immediately and find the Calumet Trail... Which, as it turns out, seems to be a fancy name for a loose collection of ruts, sandtraps, gravel pits, and pond-sized puddles. One might argue that it's better than the traffic of the highway, but I would disagree. I think it merely replaces one fear with another: the fear of getting hit by a passing car (a fear, I'm proud to say, that I have tamed over the course of my life) with the fear of an 8 mph, face-first crash into a 6-inch-deep mini-swamp teeming with parasites dying to enter thrugh any available oraffice to inflict a nigh-undiagnosable and painful illness (a fear I haven't even been able to tell trained professionals about).
Still, the directions through the South Side neighborhoods of Chicago were quite helpful...
And it certainly didn't dampen our enthusiasm about the day's ride: 90 miles (100 for Jay) that got us to a gorgeous state park in time to witness a rarity for THIS "third-caoster"... An AMAZING sunset over Lake Michigan.
warren dunes
so tired. arrived safe & sound @ warren dunes a bit ago, and now i'm lying in the tent. world-class photographer and xacto artist tom allen is coming for a visit and bringing us dinner! i rode about 98 miles today. trip odometer is at 88. the last couple hours were really slow riding - my fault. john just went to the beach to watch the sunsey. tomorrow will be easier.
-- Post From My iPhone
-- Post From My iPhone
new buffalo
we're in new buffalo, MI. 6:15 EST. 74 miles for the trip thus far (plus my ten; i'm tired).
-- Post From My iPhone
-- Post From My iPhone
indiana dunes natl lakeshore
blogger seems to have the time wrong. its 1:35 accodring to my phone, which i assume is EST now. john's oiling his bottom bracket. trip odometer is at 45.6 miles for the day so far, not counting the 10.25 i did to get to john's. i'm tired but we're good. on hwy 12.
-- Post From My iPhone
we're gone.
left the house @7, rode to john's down mccormick to kimball. we left his house @ 8:30, rode milwaukee to downtown and the lakefront. cool and overcast. ran into some running event taking up the path. rode soth, saw ben from chifg around 90th st. wound along rt 41/20/12 into whiting indiana, where we're having lunch now.
-- Post From My iPhone
leaving after this bowl of cereal.
i stayed up way too late, working on packing, prepping the bike, and then most (but not all) of the work i needed to complete for my new book. i'll take my list of all the animals in the books with me, and count them over the next few days to email to jason harvey.
eating cereal. it's 6:34am.
leaving to ride to logan square, to john's house. will get the chance to readjust any wambly parts on the bike while there.
my expectations for this blog are mostly of the "we arrived in XXX, we rode 1234 miles today" type. john and i both keep actual handwritten trip journals, which we'll try to type up and post here after the trip.
overcast and cool. looks like rain.
going back to bed sounds like a great idea right about now.
eating cereal. it's 6:34am.
leaving to ride to logan square, to john's house. will get the chance to readjust any wambly parts on the bike while there.
my expectations for this blog are mostly of the "we arrived in XXX, we rode 1234 miles today" type. john and i both keep actual handwritten trip journals, which we'll try to type up and post here after the trip.
overcast and cool. looks like rain.
going back to bed sounds like a great idea right about now.
Friday, May 29, 2009
Thursday, May 28, 2009
posting photos from the iphone?
realized i've never posted a photo via the phone. yesterday i noticed the sole coming off one of my cycling shoes (nice timing), so last night a friend hooked me up with some 10-year-old-but-new-in-the-box shoes by LAKE, based in evanston. i'm wearing them around the print shop to break them in. they're ugly and awesome.
-- Post From My iPhone
-- Post From My iPhone
getting closer
okay, let's clarify:
since i started this blog to document our trip in 2007, and neither john nor i finished typing up our handwritten journals from that trip, we are skipping (for now) that trip (which was glenwood springs, CO to lawrence, KS, via pueblo, CO).
so: this trip. late spring, 2009.
john and i are leaving logan square, chicago, on saturday morning, may 30th. we're riding our bikes counter-clockwise around lake michigan. we don't have an exact route, so we don't have exact mileage, so we don't know exactly how long this will take. i have randomly selected 12 days as the amount of time. it may be more than that. we have maps, and an iphone with gps. we are planning on camping most of the time. we will carry sleeping bags and a tent with us.
our first night, we plan on camping at warren dunes, michigan, which is eighty-something miles from john's house in logan square. my friend tom allen (photographer/x-acto knife artist) lives a few miles from there and may come to see us. if we do really well on saturday, we may decide to ride to tom's house, instead, so we can see his chickens.
due to time, we know that we won't be able to see every awesome thing along the shore of lake michigan: we're going to mostly skip the leelanau and old mission peninsulas in michigan, and door county, wisconsin. these are lovely places, but we can't go to every lovely place.
i plan on posting from the road, from my iphone. i hope john's blackberry will do the same, but, to be honest, i don't know since we haven't talked much at all due to both of us having a ton of stuff on our plates work-wise and travel-wise. this is probably the least planned-out trip i've taken in quite a while.
john is riding a bianchi 'volpe', roughly a 2004 model. i'll be on my surly 'long haul trucker', c. 2005. we both have front and rear ortleib panniers. neither of us is a racer, but we both can take the tortoise route and cover some good distance, slowly and steadily through a day. we expect to do 80 to 100 miles a day.
i'll try to post our mileage for each day, as well as our cumulative mileage for the whole trip.
okay. i'll post a gear list when i gather stuff up late tonight or tomorrow.
since i started this blog to document our trip in 2007, and neither john nor i finished typing up our handwritten journals from that trip, we are skipping (for now) that trip (which was glenwood springs, CO to lawrence, KS, via pueblo, CO).
so: this trip. late spring, 2009.
john and i are leaving logan square, chicago, on saturday morning, may 30th. we're riding our bikes counter-clockwise around lake michigan. we don't have an exact route, so we don't have exact mileage, so we don't know exactly how long this will take. i have randomly selected 12 days as the amount of time. it may be more than that. we have maps, and an iphone with gps. we are planning on camping most of the time. we will carry sleeping bags and a tent with us.
our first night, we plan on camping at warren dunes, michigan, which is eighty-something miles from john's house in logan square. my friend tom allen (photographer/x-acto knife artist) lives a few miles from there and may come to see us. if we do really well on saturday, we may decide to ride to tom's house, instead, so we can see his chickens.
due to time, we know that we won't be able to see every awesome thing along the shore of lake michigan: we're going to mostly skip the leelanau and old mission peninsulas in michigan, and door county, wisconsin. these are lovely places, but we can't go to every lovely place.
i plan on posting from the road, from my iphone. i hope john's blackberry will do the same, but, to be honest, i don't know since we haven't talked much at all due to both of us having a ton of stuff on our plates work-wise and travel-wise. this is probably the least planned-out trip i've taken in quite a while.
john is riding a bianchi 'volpe', roughly a 2004 model. i'll be on my surly 'long haul trucker', c. 2005. we both have front and rear ortleib panniers. neither of us is a racer, but we both can take the tortoise route and cover some good distance, slowly and steadily through a day. we expect to do 80 to 100 miles a day.
i'll try to post our mileage for each day, as well as our cumulative mileage for the whole trip.
okay. i'll post a gear list when i gather stuff up late tonight or tomorrow.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
testing, 5 days to go
i'm in lawrence, ks, at the replay lounge, seeing my brother's band, the F holes. we leave saturday to ride around lake michigan, and i have a lot of training to do. this is all going to be last-minute.
-- Post From My iPhone
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