13 | September | 2013 | The Unix Curmudgeon

Our tenth day of riding without a break dawned cold, but warmed fairly quickly. Trucks were again as annoying as mosquitoes, but much more dangerous. The narrow shoulder did not get any wider.

After about an hour of riding, we heard the tell-tale “pssht-pshht-pshht” that signaled a flat. When we examined the rear tire, we found that riding on the rough, sharp limestone trails in North Central Michigan had completely worn the grooves down to the Kevlar belt, and that a chunk of tread just outside the belt had been completely sliced away, exposing the cords, and, eventually, the tube. Fortunately, we do carry a spare tire, a folding model that is slightly lower pressure rating.

Spreading our tarp on the gravel shoulder, we managed to replace the tire and tube fairly quickly and were on our way, but on-road repairs always cost time and energy, to the rest of the day was hard.

We finally arrived in Menominee, Michigan, to find the road detoured. We weren’t sure where the detour came out, so we tried to parallel the closed section through side streets, but ended up backtracking a lot, before finding the detour simply brought us out to the same street we would have turned on, anyway, which was U.S. 41. At the edge of town, the shoulder again disappeared entirely, but we turned right into a residential area soon, crossing the railroad.

While taking a water stop after turning onto a residential street, Bruce, a local retired cyclist, stopped to chat. We got directions from him to Schloegal’s, a waterfront restaurant he recommended, and to the local bike shop, both just a few blocks off our route. To get to the restaurant, we crossed back over the tracks once more, waiting for a train this time, then walked our bike two blocks down the busy highway sidewalks to the restaurant. The food was every bit as good as promised, and we were soon ready to seek out the bike shop. Just then, Bruce appeared, with a bag of fresh pears picked from his own trees, and led us on the shortest route to the bike shop.

Of course, small town bike shops do not have Schwalbe 40-406 high-pressure tires in stock, or even a close substitute, so the owner marked a local map with directions to the bike shop in Marinette, Wisconsin, just across the border. We quickly got back on our mapped route (for which we only had a hand-written cue sheet), and we crossed the river (bike lane on the bridge!) into Wisconsin.

Despite the map, we got lost in a maze of oddly-angled intersections and had to backtrack a bit, before finding the bike shop in a largely residential neighborhood. They had a 40-406 tire, cheap no-name brand with a lower pressure rating, but it would do for a spare, so we discarded the damaged Schwalbe and packed the new emergency spare, which we hope to never have to use.

Following the county map to Peshtigo, we got disoriented a bit, as the old road had been displaced by a Menard’s: we ended up making a U-turn at the highway light and ducking down a walkway to the re-routed street. At the next crossroad, we had to cut through J.C. Penny’s parking lot to keep on the old road. Finally, we followed the quiet country road parallel to the US41 freeway for a few miles, then passed under it and turned on the business route into Peshtigo, a charming little riverfront town. The Edgewood Motel was at the edge of town, but close to a laundromat and grocery. It was also the cleanest and best-appointed of the “mom-and-pop” motels we have been staying in. Of course, we chose to eat from the groceries for supper, and have a light breakfast of yogurt and bagel before setting out into the cold, clear morning on the next leg of our journey.

DSCF0645 — “Escanaba in da Sunrise” – riding south on US2/41 toward Escanaba, early morning.

Leaving Scott’s house early, we rode along the waterfront park, then onto US2/41 toward Escanaba. The shoulder was good until we got to the city limits, where it was four-lane, no shoulder, so we rode for a mile or so on the rough sidewalk. We stopped for groceries, then wove our way through shopping center parking lots close enough to brave the main road for a couple of blocks, where US2/41 turned right and Michigan 35 continued straight.

We thought the “scenic route” along M-35 would be relatively traffic-free, but it turned out that, because it is shorter and there is only one “town,” it is the main truck route south. There was a good shoulder until we reached the Menominee County line, where it shrank to barely as wide as our trailer track. We also entered the Central Time Zone here.

A stop at a roadside turnout with an artesian well was all too brief, as we were immediately swarmed with mosquitoes, the product of a combination of rain and hot, muggy days in the last two weeks. We pedaled furiously for more than a mile before the last of the swarm fell away.

We arrived at Cedar River early, because of the time zone change: the Lighthouse Pub, the only food in town other than the gas station down the road, had just opened, so we had a leisurely lunch (bar food) before checking into the only motel along the 60-mile stretch. The Riverview Inn did not have a view of the river because of heavy brush behind the unit, and, like almost every commercial establishment in the U.P., was for sale. The owner said she stayed open through deer season. Since it was not deer season, we were the only customers. The only WiFi was a community paid subscription service, too weak to be reliable, so we took our computer back across the street to the Pub for free WiFi, but ended up consuming huge quantities of fried bar food in the process.

We retired early, but I awoke about 4:00am and found I could now get good enough signal to fork over $3.00 for slow internet access from the room. Once again, breakfast was from our stash of emergency supplies (the gas station had nothing we could eat).