Dennis Rides – Motorcycles & Bicycles

Another rough day, but sometimes you just  gotta make time. Wasn’t gonna get any better.

Woke up at 5, checked the NWS alerts and they added gale & wind warnings for Green Bay with 50 to 60 mph gusts starting at 10 AM through 4 PM.

My original plan was to wait for the overnight rain to end around 8 or 9 AM, then head out.

With the wind warning that plan was out, I needed to boogie to beat the worst of it. I headed into the rain at 6 AM while it was still dark, luckily the yoopers are not early morning folk so there wasn’t much traffic.

And it rained and rained with gusty 20+ mph winds off the lake.. until exactly 8 AM and then it pretty much stopped.

The wind, however, was relentless and continued the whole way. It was, indeed worse around the Green Bay area, but it was windy and gusting the whole time.

I’m not sure what to say about the scenery as I was mostly concentrating on riding. Although upper Wisconsin mostly smells like cow poo.

There’s another big system moving through tonight & sunday, so I’m staying put in Lake Geneva until that passes (why Lake Geneva? I don’t know – I wanted to stay some where decent but not crazy expensive and not by a freeway or in a big city. This hotel is on the “cheap” end of Lake Geneva so it isn’t quite as expensive.)

Fingers crossed for Monday – I’m running out of states to go to, so my directional options are limited.

Audio book: None. Was too busy in the rain and wind!

Had to book it today into the U.P. – some serious gusty wind was on the way, and the Mackinac Bridge is pretty sketchy in high winds (you can pay someone to drive your car across if you aren’t comfortable!)

It’s extra sketchy since usually there’s a paved lane and then a metal grate (aka “cheesegrater”) lane.. but it is under construction, so it is down to a single lane each way and the only choice is the metal.

I’ve ridden lots of metal grate bridges before, especially up in Alaska.. but not 5 mile long ones in gusty wind.

So I got up early and tried to get there before noon. The winds were just starting to kick up when I got onto the bridge, it was not super fun. The metal grate part is pretty worn out and wiggly so you just gotta let things wander around. I would not want to try it in 50 mph gusts.

Since I got across early, I went and had breakfast: Mackinac Whitefish cake benedict. It was pretty good. Then I popped into a random local barbershop and got my crazy man hair and beard trimmed down. It is a tourist area so everybody is friendly and casual.

By this time the winds had really kicked up and it was a semi-sideways ride up to the hotel an hour or so away. Tomorrow might be interesting, as part of wisconsin is also calling for crazy wind gusts around the time I’m rolling through.

Audio book: Return of the King. The ring is destroyed! Still 8 hours of endings left.

Weather forecast continues to change around, so I made a game time decision to go into MI instead of bypassing it. Plus I have 2 different friends I can visit, so that works out ok too!

Another thought is to continue north over the upper peninsula (aka “the U.P.”) and then go down through wisconsin. To that end, I looped over to Indiana today to cross that off.

So I turned a 180 mile ride into 6.5 hours and 320 miles by taking all state/county highways. Maybe 45 miles of interstate, it was consistently cold the whole way, never varying much from 41-42 degrees with a few sprinkles. The overnight rain was pretty much gone by the time I rolled out.

I did pass through “Hicksville Ohio” which I felt was very important.

Most of the Ohio roads and almost into Indiana were pretty much barren farm land, with a few lakes and canals here and there. But that upper right corner of Indiana was actually pretty nice – lots of rolling hills and even a few turns.

My path also took me through Lakeview, OH.. they had a tornado back in March.. wow was that crazy destruction. I cannot even imagine. It’s laid bare straight from the highway. Even large steel framed structures were mangled.

Tomorrow is technically another short hop “as the crow flies” – so I will loop north and ride around lake Huron to navigate to the other side of detroit via the back roads.

After that I’ll decide if I’m doing the U.P. or back down to Illinois.

Sometimes I literally just pick a spot on the map and then decide to stay there. In this case I wanted to be in Columbus the next day, so I just divided the miles in 2 between Saratoga Springs and Columbus. The middle was Kane, PA. So I’m staying in some odd little motor-hotel next to the Texas Hot Lunch restaurant.

The route today was another (mostly) back road route through the Allegany national forest and along the now-standard set of rivers & lakes. This whole stretch is all summer camp towns – cabins, campgrounds, etc. It must be quite a thing during peak season.

The terrain was not as interesting as vermont/new hampshire, but it was pretty decent and not as cold. Got pretty windy coming into PA. I’ve been riding along the edge of various weather systems this whole trip, so probably toodling along whatever front came down. Took about 6.5 hours again to wind my way through all the little cities. Once I got to PA, there was once again a ton of mowing. Definitely feels more spring-like down here than in the NE which still felt locked in winter.

Some pre-frontal rain going to fall Tuesday night, but I think I’ll dodge it for riding tomorrow. This weekend however is looking pretty grim, I might get stranded a few days in wisconson to wait it out.

Unfortunately the weather forecasts got worse and didn’t align with my stomach issues, so I stayed in Maine for an extra day. The hotel is convenient to restaurants and shops and Day 11 was looking like another cold and rainy day.

Did laundry, went to REI (fail, they are also in spring mode), grocery store, etc.

I can ride in the cold and the rain.. but forcing myself to LEAVE when it is cold and rainy is tough when the next day is forecast to be dry.

Canada is out due to the colder & wetter forecast, so I’ll start heading west. This was always the gamble with the April departure, leaving later would mean risking crazy high temps and humidity in the southwest & south, but risking cold & rain in the NE. Win some, lose some.

Tomorrow I want to ride through the White Mountain & Green Mountain national forests and doing that in icy and wet would have been no fun.

Stomach seems to have improved and I was able to consume a lobster roll, a critical part of visiting Maine. I actually got the “lobster roll flight” consisting of 3 different varieties: plain+melted butter, coleslaw+melted butter and traditional Maine. Yes, they were all delicious. And so far no untoward noises from my guts.

Maine definitely feels more like Canada than the US (sorry if that is offensive to mainers?)

The rest of today will be dull since it is raining and I’ve done most of my chores. I’ll probably spend an hour arguing with my Garmin to route me where I want to go and that’s about it.