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Kind Strangers Let us be of good cheer, remembering that the misfortunes
hardest to bear are those which never happen." Our day was filled with kindness from strangers. It began early, the morning air already muggy, as we pedalled toward Duluth. A van with dark tinted windows, slowed, then paced alongside Sharon at our mere twenty kilometres per hour. I found it a trifle unsettling. The passenger window rolled down. I got ready to duck. "Do you need anything?" a woman asked Sharon. "No," Sharon stammered. "But thank you for asking." The woman smiled, thrust a camera out the window (those cute helmets), snapped a shot, and off they zoomed. "Ah, next time," I drawled, "see if they have any iced Coke." The wind growled and snorted with the smell of thunderstorm on its breath. Heads down, we humped a strong headwind until we smacked into a bridge spanning St Louis River. Our road, linking Minnesota to Wisconsin, suddenly became Interstate 535. Not unlike a pair of tykes who had spotted a Dickie Lee ice cream truck but were forbidden to cross the street, we stopped, and stared longingly at the river's far side. "Think we should go for it?" I wondered aloud. Traffic, rumbling cheek to jowl, threatened that any attempt to bicycle across the bridge would be met with a short and unhappy end to our illustrious cycling careers. "I don't like the looks of this," Sharon muttered, wagging her head, and glancing behind at the solid stream of traffic. "I'd bet we have about as much chance of making it across as we do of winning the lottery with a bus ticket." "Maybe we should flag down a bus," I suggested. But before we could, our very own fairy godmother (disguised as a state trooper), zipped in behind us. His cruiser's rooftop lights flashing like colourful gum balls, the highway patrolman vaulted out of his vehicle and strode jauntily toward us. "You can't go on the Interstate," he advised, shaking his head like a protective Mama bear. "Follow me," he offered. "I'll show you where there's a pedestrian walkway." Headlights and rooftop lights winking, he grandly escorted us to an exit. As we rode up the off-ramp, the man in blue gave us a cheery salute, gunned his screaming gasser, and roared off down the freeway to attend to more pressing matters than tourist escort duty. Where was that nearest Krispy Kreme doughnut shop? On the bridge walkway we were met with a strong, fast-moving cold front. It yowled in our ears like an air raid siren, ripping unfettered across expansive Lake Superior. I was positive that my helmet was the only thing preventing my hair from blowing off. "Welcome to Wisconsin!" I shouted. Within minutes, the previous agreeable temperature plummeted to a miserly 15 degrees Celsius. Coal-black clouds, sooty and brooding, tunneled into the area. Low growls of distant thunder warned of an imminent and monumental storm. Just as a few spatters of rain began to fall, we spied a Welcome Centre and ducked inside to warm ourselves and keep our tail feathers dry. We were about to experience another round of kindness from strangers. "I've never seen it blow from that direction before!" a grandmotherly woman behind the welcoming counter exclaimed. A shotgun-like blast of thunder, as if punctuating her statement, rattled the Centre. Gazing out the large windows (with eyes almost as wide), we watched as purple-tongued lightning forked across a lampblack sky. Suddenly, torrential rain writhed forth from the smutty cloud banks. Wind gusts slammed wave after wave of the deluge into the Centre's picture windows. Streams, the thickness of my thumb, wriggled like snakes down the panes. "You folks bring your bikes in here, right now!" Quick as two bunnies, we retrieved our wet bikes from the entryway, and leaned them, muddy and dripping, against the nearest wall. "Do you have a mop?" I asked the woman, eyeing the growing puddle with concern. "It's no problem," she assured me. "Relax. Make yourself at home. I think we have some hot chocolate around here somewhere." She slipped into the back. Our matron reappeared holding forth two mugfuls of steaming cocoa. "Looks like a doozy of a storm," she said. "It's a good thing you made it here when you did." We nodded and accepted her offering. The toasty mug felt delicious against my numb fingers. For a long while, we just cradled the mugs, silent, enjoying the tingly sensation creeping back into our extremities while watching mauve-coloured lightning flick across an ebony sky. Two motorcyclists clomped in, a watery muddy trail accompanying each footstep. They unfastened their helmets, revealing flattened hair. "Helmets are hell on hairdos, eh?" Sharon quipped to the burly motorcycle mama. The strapping female shot Sharon a less than amused look. "Hail up the highway smashed out some windows," her male counterpart stated. Ouch, I thought. That would'a left bruises. "A weather warning is for winds up to 80 miles per hour." "That's calm in Newfoundland," Sharon said, pressing her luck. That statement pretty much killed any chance of conversation with the bikers. They headed for the washrooms and that was the last we saw of them. Half an hour later, our hot chocolate mugs empty, the storm had passed. At least the most severe clouds had diverged toward other locales. We thanked our Welcome Centre host and went to haul our muddy steeds back outside. "Promise you'll send a postcard!" the information centre's matriarch said, and handed us a business card with the address. As we departed, she set to work with a mop, swabbing up our not-so-small mucky puddle. In a short distance, I spotted a sign for a Lake Superior Circle Tour, and turned to follow it. Dairy cows, comfortable in their fields, complemented the rolling Wisconsin countryside. Zinging down a steep hill as if I had been shot out of a cannon I ignored a 15 mile-per-hour sharp corner warning sign. Then, just before the bend, sensing I was not going to make it around at my speed I hit the brakes - hard. Skidding, I released the death grip on my brake levers. Leaning like a motorcycle racer, I swooped around the 90-degree corner at twice the recommended speed. Whee! Luck was with me. There was no gravel on the roadway! Not unpredictably, after our screaming descent, a stiff climb smacked us in the face. I grunted and shifted onto my smallest chainring. At a barely perceptible four kilometre per hour ascent, I concentrated on ignoring the whish-whish-whish emanating from somewhere rearward. Probably my fender, I thought. No big deal. Whish-whish-BOOM! My rear tire exploded in an ear-splitting blowout. Like a discombobulated rickshaw driver, I wobbled onto the gravel shoulder. I gaped down. The blast had blown the tire right off the rim! The inner tube hung off to one side like a stricken black mamba. The dangers of not properly maintaining one's ride became crystal clear (one of these days I may even change my evil ways). I thanked my lucky stars it hadn't happened on the downhill. When Sharon caught up to me, I explained (with much waving of arms and cool sound effects) what had happened. She looked at my brakes. Apparently they weren't adjusted properly (now there's a surprise!). When I applied them for the corner, they rubbed the tire's sidewall ... and then hadn't released completely. "From now on," Sharon advised, "if you hear something rubbing, please stop and investigate!" "To maintain or not to maintain," I said. "That is the question." "Yeah," Sharon retorted, "if you don't maintain this thing you may not be around next time to ask the question." Hmmm. She had a point. I dropped my bike and installed a new tube and a new tire. I even tweaked the brakes a little. At dusk we arrived in Port Wing, a small Lake Superior fishing settlement. Storm clouds, plum-coloured like a two day old bruise, threatened. We found a park and, under cover of a picnic table roof, assembled sub sandwiches. A cottony mist settled in, cloaking us and our surroundings in wet gauze. I watched, fascinated, as water drops condensed on fine wisps of hair framing Sharon's face. I was still marvelling when the skies opened. Bitter cold, dime-sized raindrops, driven sideways by wind gusting from its very heels, popped against our Gore-Tex jacketed backs. We were about to abandon our soggy picnic when four touring cyclists materialized out of the foggy dinginess like ships coming into port. Three swept past silently, giving mandatory waves. The fourth fellow stopped. His bike sported the most immense front light I had ever seen on a bicycle. "I'll bet that lights up the roadway pretty good," I said, and wondered what size batteries the thing ate. "Oh, yeah!" he replied. "Car drivers flash their high beams at me! We really need the big lights though. We're riding across America, but we only have a month off work, so we ride a lot at night." I nodded. Sure glad we're not forced to ride in the fog or the dark. That magnificent Michigan Upper Peninsula scenery they had missed! How could they appreciate that in pitch blackness? (I could understand riding across Kansas at night ... just the thought that one might be missing something would make it more exciting.) For us, bike touring was about slowing down and enjoying a more peaceful pace than the headlong frantic race we endured at our workplaces. We consciously tried to not let goal setting become the focus. And, having no jobs to hurry back to, we had the luxury of setting a more relaxed pace. "Where are you going tonight?" Sharon asked. "Oh, still down the road a ways," he answered. "We're headed for my aunt's place in Duluth (60 kilometres away). She's got hot showers and steaks waiting." "We'd better not hold you any longer then." With thoughts of hot showers and barbecued steaks ruminating in our heads, we watched him push off, his light illuminating the morose gloom. We stowed our bikes under a plastic sheet, pitched our tent, and, just as a serious deluge struck, dove inside. Snug as two bugs in our sleeping bags, we listened as the wind snapped the fly in an upbeat tempo, while chubby raindrops drummed down like tom-toms. "Those poor guys," Sharon said, imagining our four intrepid comrades battling the inclement conditions. "I'm glad we're not out there." "Barbecued steak sure sounded good, though!" |
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