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August 28 Sunday Bicycle touring from Port Wing Wisconsin to Bayfield Wisconsin to Asheville Wisconsin I showered at 6 AM and we were on our bikes and on the road by 6:30. The rain stopped, but it is still windy. It seems to be swirling around in the sky above. It comes sometimes from the side, then shifts to the front, and, on rare occasions, it shifts around and comes at our back. Nothing like a tailwind when you're bicycle touring. There is nothing open yet in the small towns of Hurley and Cornucopia. Some of the roadway is sheltered by trees; the trees are beginning to turn red in a few patches. We cross through a Chippewa Indian Reservation. There is no noticeable difference in most houses here. They may be older and smaller, but no one throws rocks at us, unlike the time we were riding our bikes across a Micmac reservation in Nova Scotia (I came to the conclusion Micmac means 'stone thrower'). The highway comes close to Lake Superior at this point and we can see the Apostle Islands with Madeleine Island being the largest. Yesterday we glimpsed the lake in a few places and there was even a signpost reading: Lake Superior (just in case you were wondering what that vast body of water was). Yesterday, cycling on a lost bicycle tour, we had just gone down a steep hill and rounded a 15 mph corner, to be faced with a steep climb. I heard something rubbing on my bike tire. Thinking it was my fender, I kept going. Nothing serious I figured. Suddenly a huge explosion emanated from somewhere in my vicinity. My bike tube had exploded like a gunshot. My bike tire ripped right off the rim and the tube was sticking out. We seem to be having a bear of a time patching our tubes. I wonder if it could be the humidity? The IGA was open in Bayfield when we cycled up early, so, after buying fruit, yogurt, and chocolate milk we cycled for the beach front. We found a secluded bench behind some condominiums and settled down to enjoy a view of sailboats in the distance. A huge tree was growing by the water with rocks and a piece of driftwood. As I was soaking my Grape-nuts in my yogurt to make the crunchy little rocks softer, a fellow rode up on a ten-speed bike. His name was Vince. After asking us the usual questions, he told us he would like to cycle in Ireland. "After sailing there, of course," he added. It turns out he is part of a crew from St Paul that races a sailboat on weekends. There is no race this weekend, but they are going out with the owner and a couple of other people. Would we like to come along? He points out the boat's mast across the next harbour and says, "We're the tallest mast there. That is ours." He rides off saying, "Come over if you want to go." We hurriedly packed up our food and jumped onto our touring bikes to head over in the direction of the harbour. We waited until the owner, Chet, arrived so that Vince could formally ask him, explaining to us that he wouldn't want to upset protocol. A girl named Leanne is also there. She works for 3M and is going to work in South Africa for six months. Her folks live in Omaha, Nebraska. She has worked in Mexico also. Soon, Chet, and another crew member, Jeff, arrive. We get the formal okay that we can come along as ballast, -- two landlubbers from landlocked Alberta who have never been on a sailboard let alone a quadriga, a 42-foot racing boat with a sixty-foot main mast. The weather report is for a gale warning with sixty knot winds. Almost all of the boats are safely anchored in the harbour today. A charter starts to leave port and then, part way out, decides against it. Sharon asks what they do when it is too windy and Jeff replies, "Put out more sail." We are waiting for Vince's girlfriend, Michelle, to arrive from Duluth. We wait until 12 and when she still hasn't arrived we leave. Just getting out of the tight port, using the motor to navigate the long boat, is quite an ordeal. The boat is so big there is barely any clearance on any side to swing her around. As we were waiting to leave, a tug-like boat went by loaded with divers. The lead guy was huge and stuffed into a neoprene suit; he looked like Neptune himself. We motor to open water, then unfurl the main sail. Mike, an owner of two boats, is helping with the operations. Jeff is working the tiller; Mike and Chet work the sail: Chet has the main sail, Mike is on the jib sail; while Leanne, Sharon, and I are at the rear of the boat beside Jeff hanging on for dear life, trying to not fall off and stay out of the way at the same time. There is not exactly a lot of deck space on these racing boats. One time, when Jeff reefed on the tiller, the end of it smacked me hard against my leg. Vince watches the computers that tell everything from wind direction and velocity to the depth and a view of the lake bottom. We are traveling at eighty knots which is very exciting as we skim along the tops of the waves. It gets even more exciting when we tack, that is turn. All of a sudden the side of the boat that was moments before high and dry now becomes the side skimming the surface of the water as the main sail swings quickly around. Leanne, Sharon, and I have to scramble to the other side, all the while remembering the dual code of the sailor: keep low and always hang on to something. The first time Sharon didn't know about this always hanging on stuff and we nearly lost her overboard. Every once in a while a rogue wave will send up a refreshing spray that smack into our faces and Gore-Tex jackets. It is sunny, but it is cool racing on the water. Luckily, Sharon had convinced me to put on a pair of long pants before we left and now I am glad I did. Leanne has only cutoffs and she is constantly covered in goosebumps. The main sail is made of Dacron, and Kevlar where the biggest stress areas are. The smaller jib is Kevlar and costs over $5000. It lasts a couple of years when used for racing. It is too windy today to put out a spinnaker, those huge colourful sails that balloon out to catch a lot of wind. After about three hours we head back in. It was a fun experience, but I think I would rather have a cruiser and sail to islands and live on board. Once we were safely on shore, I read in a paper that this was the busiest 36 hours the coast guard has ever had, picking up people and towing disabled boats in due to the high winds. We didn't wear life jackets. Jeff said that if we fell in the water, it was so cold it would kill us before the coast guard could pick us up anyway. Gee, that was a comforting thought. I hung on real tight. I didn't think they could just swing the sailboat around and come back to pick me up very easily. They could radio the coast guard, I suppose, and say something like: "Yep, the last we saw Neil he was bobbing 30º North with a green hat...." Chet told us that was about as good as sailing gets. It was almost the most wind he has even been out in. I am pretty sure we could have pulled a water skier today. Jeff was kidding us about how fast we were going. "We're in Lake Ontario now," he announced. "There's Toronto over there." The wind was still blowing as we cycled out of Bayfield at 4:30 PM. When we pedalled down Hwy 2, heading east, the wind was pushing us at a good clip. We made good time to Asheville. I still wanted to go farther, to use the wind, but we ran out of shoulder on the edge of town. It was beginning to get dark anyway, and if there's anything worse than riding a loaded touring bike, it's riding a loaded touring bike at night. This is the last weekend before the kids are back in school. It is quite busy, with the last of the holiday traffic. We decide to pull our bikes off the road and get an early start in the morning, instead of trying to dodge motorhomes on a busy two-lane highway with no shoulder for riding a bicycle on in the dark. We found a picnic table next to an industrial plant and made pasta. There is a company park across the parking lot with a "No trespassing" sign posted. A trucker is in the parking lot, waiting for morning so he can unload. I walked over to see if he thought anyone would mind if we set up our tiny bicycle touring tent in the park's trees for the night. He wasn't a local; he was just delivering some goods from Oklahoma City, but he said, "The folks around here are hard-headed, but they seem pretty nice. I don't think they'd mind. Besides, all they can do is ask you to leave ... and by then it will be morning." We watch the red sun set over Lake Superior. I walk back to the picnic table and tell Sharon what the truck driver said. Sharon says, "Oh, yeah? A guy just came out of the building while you were talking to the trucker and said to me 'You're not planning on staying around here are you? We try to discourage it.'" I found that amusing. The motto for Wisconsin is: "You're among friends." Under streetlights, we hop on our touring bicycles and head down a dark dead end road in hopes of asking a family if we can set up for the night on their lawn. As the streetlights end, it becomes quite black. We decide to push our bikes onto the back part of the company's park and set up. We plan on leaving early anyway. At 12:30 AM, Sharon, who doesn't wear a watch, nudges me and asks if it is time to pack up yet. I assure her we have at least another hour of shut-eye. Just before my watch alarm goes off at 5 AM, I have a peculiar dream. All of the plant workers have arrived for work. The proceed to do morning gymnastic exercises in the park. Two girls do exercises right on our collapsed tent. After everyone else has gone inside to begin work a man with a French accent verbally abuses us, telling us that just because we are cyclists we think we can do anything we want. I awake to the sounds of brakes squealing. As I look out the mesh door, I see bright red brake lights parallel with the tent. The truck stops and then turns up a side street. Soon after this, lights from vehicles start pulling into the parking lot. In the still darkness we succeed in stumbling around and getting everything packed up and put back onto our bikes as quickly as possible. In the process I nearly forgot the fly on the ground -- it blends in amazing well with the black ground. If I hadn't tripped over it, I probably would have left it. It is still dark at 5 AM as we get on our fully loaded touring bikes and pedal away. We find ourselves on another dead end street, alongside the highway. Since it is still too dark to venture out onto the highway with our little bicycles, we sit on a low fence near a sign warning of the dead end and eat breakfast, shivering in the predawn. Hwy 2 has lots of truck traffic, so we sit on a guard rail and eat bananas and peanut butter sandwiches with the last of our Grape-nut cereal. We end up cycling back into town, so we can find a restroom. By the time we emerge it is light and little safer to be riding bicycles on a busy road. |
