Tuesday, September 25, 2012

DC Detour

Whew! I can't believe I haven't had the opportunity to update the blog until today. What have I been doing? Good question. Biking? Eating? Sleeping? Making preparations to engage in those three activities? It's hard to say what occupies my time. Before starting the bike trip, Ben and I thought we'd be dealing with plenty of free time--we each brought several books, journals, and I even considered bringing running shoes--a fact that seems hilarious now. But we somehow manage to fill the days with something other than free time. It's a busy lifestyle, this bicycle touring!

This past week was a little disorienting, as Ben and I took a slight detour to Washington D.C. On an airplane. Some of you may have heard, but I won this National Geographic Traveler/Matador U Travel Writing Contest a few months ago, and the prize was a free trip to Washington D.C. to meet National Geographic editors. I found out the date for the event right before we left on the trip, so Ben and I tried to guesstimate which airport we would be near on September 20th, and we came up with Buffalo, New York. Wonder of all wonders, we actually made it to Buffalo on the evening of the 19th, where we were hosted by my friend Cristin Lambert's Aunt and Uncle, Tricia and Marty Lambert. They were so incredibly kind to take us in, and they did everything they could to make sure we were well taken care of, including driving us to and from the airport. 

We flew into DC the day before the NatGeo event, so we got to spend time with Ben's friend Zeeshan as well as Ben's aunt Cathy, uncle John and cousin Woods. Ben's family took us out for a really wonderful middle eastern dinner in Alexandria, where we were for some reason treated like royalty and the chef himself kept coming out to bring us special, free foods. I now have met nearly all of Ben's extended family, except for his parents. Pretty good for only 6 months of dating! Anyway, we spent that first night at Cathy and John's house and the next morning Cathy and Ben drove me to the subway and pointed me in the direction of the National Geographic Headquarters.

Let me just interrupt this story to say that being thrust into Washington D.C. after spending nearly two months in Rural America/Canada was quite the culture shock. In the airport alone, I was surrounded by more diversity than we've seen in the past 2 months. I stumbled around the streets of DC with my freakish tan lines and the one outfit I brought that isn't padded spandex, weaving my way through hordes of fancy, clean, professional people with places to be.

I finally made it to the National Geographic Headquarters, where I met the three other "Winners" (as we were referred to all day--a title you can get used to, let me tell you). We then spent the next 12 hours  schmoozing in various styles--a "meet and greet" with coffee and snacks and the entire staff of National Geographic Traveler, a tour of the museum, lunch in the staff cafeteria, sitting in on various meetings and presentations about the magazine and travel writing, a meeting with the editor-in-chief, Keith Bellows, a wine and cheese schmooze-fest, dinner at a lovely restaurant, and an evening event where Andrew McCarthy was interviewed about his new travel writing book. I feel like I made some great connections for a potential career in travel writing. The NatGeo Traveler staff were all friendly, creative and surprisingly approachable. Perhaps the best part of the whole event was meeting the Matador U staff, four energetic, fun and encouraging gentlemen who we spent most of the day with. It was a truly eye-opening experience, though exhausting, and I was deliriously happy to have a Mayflower Hotel room to crash in at the end of the day.

We made it safely back to Buffalo on Sunday and kept right on biking that afternoon. It's strange to be back on the bicycles--but even stranger to think that this tour is almost complete! We're now in Syracuse, NewYork, which means we only have about 300 more miles to go...in this moment I'm feeling more sad than ecstatic to be done biking. My body had finally adjusted to this lifestyle so much that I'm actually sore after walking for a day, and I only feel normal when I'm "back in the saddle" as they say. I'm also not quite sure how to stop consuming the insane amount of calories we do on the daily, once we're not burning quite so many. Anyway, all this is to say that we should be rolling in to NYC sometime on Sunday. If you are in the area, come meet us! Happy Revolutions!

Monday, September 10, 2012

Say yah to the U.P.!

After dedicating over a week of our lives to ride bicycles across Wyoming and South Dakota (each), it seemed miraculous that we were able to spend the next week crossing Minnesota and Wisconsin combined. Ben's uncle Dave set us up with a really fantastic route across northern Wisconsin that included about 50 miles on a rails-to-trails bike path called the Gandy Dancer. 

The bike path was phenomenal. Being an old railroad, it passed through the middle of several tiny towns the grade was never even remotely steep. It was incredibly relaxing to not have the anxiety of biking next to 60 mph traffic, it was in the shade, there was no wind....so basically it was a bicycle tourist's paradise. Biking through the small town of Frederick, Wisconsin, we noticed that the old railway depot was still standing, so we stopped to check it out. Apparently the Frederick Historical Society had just concluded their meeting at the old depot, so 3 or 4 interested looking people flocked around Ben and me, asking us all kinds of questions. We talked to them a little about the trail, at which point they gave us a very animated history of Frederick and the surrounding towns, insisted we take a tour of the depot (which they had converted to a pretty decent museum), and gave us a full detailed account of every town we would pass on our way from there out of Wisconsin. It became clear that they weren't going to stop talking any time soon, and we were quickly losing light, so we literally started biking away as they were still shouting after us about Danbury's casino/restaurant which really isn't as expensive as it looks and actually has reallygreatpancakes.....!

We spent one night in a city park in Siren, Wisconsin, another night in Hayward in a random field at a trailhead, then woke up on Ben's birthday and proceeded to bike 80 miles into the U.P. (Michigan's Upper Peninsula). We had a random connection in Ironwood, Michigan--Ben's cousin's friend's wife's parents happened to live there, and so generously agreed to host us. Pat and Chuck and their daughter Ellen took good care of us, fed us plenty of steak and beer and told us all about why they loved living there. According to Chuck, in the 1970s and 1980s there was a big movement towards combining northern Wisconsin and the U.P. to create the 51st state--the state of Superior.

The next morning, Chuck insisted that we not leave Ironwood without seeing a little of what made Ironwood so special. So he took us on a brief but informative tour, showing us the World's Largest Indian (a ginormous fiberglass statue of Hiawatha holding a 3 foot long peace pipe), as well as the Stormy Kromer manufacturing plant (an essential Michigan hat--woolen baseball cap with ear warmers). Ben bought a neon orange Stormy Kromer, claiming that it wasn't fair that hunter's had a monopoly on such an awesome color.

For the past couple of days we've been biking across the U.P. The colors are started to turn, which is a beautiful sight to behold in these mostly deciduous forests. It's significantly colder here than anywhere else we've been, and it's rained most days, making us a little wet and a little homesick. The towns we bike through are a trip. Most of the towns seem to have sprung up over one particular industry, such as mining (iron or copper mostly), timber, smelting, etc. For whatever reason many of these industries had their heyday and packed up and left, leaving behind towns with gaping holes in their economies. The towns are almost eerie...there's still plenty of houses standing, some of them look like they were really nice at one point, but are now slowly decaying. Most of the businesses, cafes, bars, grocery stores--are all for sale. It gives you the feeling of walking through someone's house who has left party decorations hanging for an awkwardly long time after the party's over--streamers and balloons still hanging around collecting dust, waiting for the next party so they can finally feel useful again. Most of the houses have signs in their yards that are wholeheartedly in support of mining, "STOP the whining, START the mining," etc...

We actually decided to take a small detour and check out White Pine, a town that Ben lived in from age 3 to 5 while his father worked in the copper mine up there. It was a pretty similar scene to the towns we had passed through already--wide, hopeful streets, neighborhoods set up like a model suburbia, several churches (one of which was playing creepy hymnal chime music), a sorry looking playground. There was a tiny fire station, but the fire truck had a for-sale sign on it. All the larger looking buildings were deserted. We thought we might buy groceries, but the grocery store had long since been abandoned, as had the laundromat that had taken its place. There were several people around, mowing their lawns and walking their dogs as if it wasn't bizarre that they were living in a ghost town. It's strange to think that Ben could have just as easily grown up there than in our little wet city way up in Alaska.

Last night we made it to Marquette, the cosmopolitan hub of the U.P., as well as the home to Northern Michigan University. A lovely lady named Jessie hosted us from Warm Showers. She made us a pork roast (delicious) and took us out for beers at her favorite neighborhood pub. She gave us a little bit of the environmentalists' perspective on the mining up here and told us about her reasons for loving the U.P. (naked Lake Superior midnights dips, traditional music festivals, brew pubs, a different sensibility....). 

For all it's worth, the U.P. appears to be somewhere people love, or hate, or love to not even think about, or think that anyone who lives up here must be insane. I'm not sure what camp I'm in yet. Thankfully we still have 2 or 3 more solid days of biking across this lush, colorful no-man's land to develop our own perspective. Until then...say yah to the U.P., eh!

Tuesday, September 4, 2012

A CoupleFew Photos

Kate Dehmer and me! And corn!

Welcome to Minnesota!

Huron, South Dakota, and the World's Largest Pheasant

South Dakota Sunset

Mountain Mike and Linda in front of their homestead. Caputa, South Dakota

Ben, Mountain Mike, and Linda, of the previous post's fame

One minor correction...

Oops! I forgot to mention that I somehow made a mistake in one of my previous blog posts. When I talked about the woman we met in Spotted Horse, Wyoming, I called her "Colette" but her name is actually "Coleen." My only explanation for the error is that I had just received my first shower and cold beer in a few days, and must have been slightly intoxicated from the experience.

That was brought to my attention by another fellow bicyclist and blogger, whom I have never met but gave me a shout-out in her blog! Check it out:

www.apoetandaonemanband.wordpress.com

Turtles and Tidbits

Hello everyone! Well, it's been a while since I've had internet access, so I'll do my best to update you on the past week or so's events. We made it across South Dakota! Finally. Good. Lord. That state just goes on and on. Though there were some redeeming factors (Black Hills, the Badlands, Mountain Mike, beautiful sunsets...), I don't feel compelled to pack up my entire life and move myself to South Dakota any time soon. Those that call that state home seem perfectly content that they live there and hardly anybody else does. As one farmer we met put it, "We tell everyone that this is the worst land in the country, so that nobody else comes here..."

After we stayed the night in Pierre, we biked about 65 miles and decided to camp in an teeny-tiny town called Ree Heights. There happened to be a bar there, and apparently about 47 residents inhabiting the smattering of houses gathered around the town's one street. We went inside the bar, only to be met by the curious and hardened faces of about 4 bar patrons and one bartender. They gave us a good long stare, until we exposed that we would be more than happy to try the bar's local specialty, "bloody beer" (homemade bloody mary mix with an ice cold budweiser. They quickly warmed up to us, and we ended up talking for a long while with the 4 old, mostly toothless men and the one bartender, who cackled like a devious fourth grader and told us of all his travels around the West that had eventually led him right back to small-townville, South Dakota. We were fast friends by the end of the night, and the bartender let us pitch our tent right behind the bar.

The next day we biked about 60 miles and made it to Huron, South Dakota, a town of a few thousand whose main claim to fame is that fact that they host the South Dakota state fair (which we missed by two days), as well as the world's largest pheasant (a glorious 3 story tall colorful pheasant replica we hit up on the way out of town). We weren't sure if we were even going to stay in Huron, but our Warm Showers host got back to us just as we were deciding what to do next, so we headed over to his place.

We followed his directions to his apartment building, where we were greeted by a collection of rather derelict, down-on-their-luck looking men, as well as one very clean-cut, very cheerful man who happened to be waving us down. We then met Steven (not his real name), our host, who showed us up to his apartment while explaining that the apartment building was for low-income residents who experienced some sort of mental disabilities. His "apartment" ended up being a tiny room, smaller than my dorm room freshman year of college, in which he had a bed, a closet, a desk and a table full of plants. He also mentioned in an off-hand sort of way that he had found a turtle by the side of the road a week ago and took it in as a pet, but he didn't want to put it in an aquarium so it was just sort of free-floating in the room somewhere.

 It took us a while to kind of figure out what wasn't being said...was he a client here, or a counseler? was this his entire apartment? were we supposed to sleep in this room with him? Eventually we discovered that the answers to all these questions were "yes," and he also insisted that we bring our bikes into this tiny room because he was a bit wary of his neighbors and there unpredictable behavior. The whole situation had the potential to be incredibly sketchy, although there was something very genuine and normal about Steven's disposition, so we wordlessly decided that we would in fact spend the night with him.

We ended up having a lovely evening with Steven. Turns out he was actually a professional cellist, pianist and organist who had had a difficult time in life recently and came to Huron to sort himself out. He worked as a music teacher, judged 4-H music competitions at the state fair, and played the piano and organ at the local Presbyterian church. We all went out for Mexican food together and then he took us to the church he attended and played us some beautiful hymns. We ended up going to bed fairly early, he in his bed and Ben and I smooshed together, 2 feet away from him on the ground.

All was well until about 3 o'clock in the morning, when I felt a gentle scratching on my cheek. I was still half-asleep so I shrugged it off, but the scratching continued, followed by what felt like a smooth round disc sliding slowly over my face. At this point of course I was well awake, as was Ben who I had started shaking like crazy. We both rolled over in our middle of the night stupor to discover Derodimus the Turtle clinging to the end of my thermarest, making weird gulping sounds and glaring at us with his beady little eyes.

I don't have much experience with turtles (Ben apparently doesn't either), so I wasn't really sure how to go about getting the turtle off my inflatable mattress. I started lifting the mat, hoping the turtle would crawl off, but then I thought he might start digging his claws in like a cat and pop my precious air mattress, so I stopped. Ben lifted the turtle up eventually, but it started flailing around with its creepy prehistoric limbs, so he immediately dropped it again, and the poor turtle landed on its back. We eventually decided to put it in a plastic crate I found in Steven's closet, which we placed on the only piece of open floor, about 2 feet away from our heads. For the rest of the night we heard the gentle scritch-scratch of the turtle moving the crate slowly around in his little piece of open floor. Amazingly, Steven slept through the entire ordeal, and was a little surprised to find his free-roaming turtle in an upside-down crate by our heads in the morning.

A few more Tidbits:

After Huron we had a solid day of biking to Brookings, South Dakota, where we stayed with our CouchSurfing hosts Josie and Ferdinand and their 4 day old baby, Roslyn. I don't think I've ever held any human that new to the world before. We were surprised they even wanted to host us dirty travelers, what with a brand new baby and everything, but they ended up being incredibly hospitable and friendly and even let us hold tiny Roslyn (there's photographic evidence on Ben's Tumblr blog). She mostly just slept and gurgled and made facial expressions freakily similar to Derodimus the Turtle of the previous night's escapades.

The following day we finally made it to Minnesota, and were happy to leave South Dakota behind. We stayed in a local park in Walnut Grove the first night, a tiny town whose main industry is Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House on the Prarie tourism. The following night we made it all the way to Mankato, Minnesota, where we were hosted by Eric and Christie and their 10 month old baby Lolo. They made us an amazing meal of salmon and vegetables and told us all about their travels, which included a 14 month tandem bicycle journey all the way from Mankato to Buenos Aires, Argentina.

The next day we biked into the Twin Cities, where we were planning on taking 2 days off (our first day not biking in a month!) to hang out with Ben's huge and wonderful extended family. As a bonus, I also got to see my dear friend Kate, my roommate when I studied abroad in India three years ago. We went to the Minnesota State Fair, ate a bunch of fried food and touched some soft baby animals. That afternoon we headed across the state line to Houlton, Wisconsin, to Ben's aunt Michelle and uncle Dave's house. I got to meet a bajillion delightful people all related to Ben, ate delicious food till it hurt, and drank plenty of local beers.

Yesterday we rounded off our "vacation" quite nicely by kayaking down the Apple River with some of Ben's cousins. We ate pizza at his aunt Joanne's house and enjoyed one more night of precious sleep in an actual bed. This morning we're heading off for more adventures in rural America! Wish us luck. It's been a great time thus far.