WISCONSIN!

After a few fantastic days in Illinois, we made our way up to Wisconsin, which came with its own set of weather and injury related challenges.

Wisconsin started out strong, with a nice ride into Milwaukee (below), which seemed like a pretty cool city. Like many of our previous cities, it was beautifully located right along the great lakes. The best part for me was the dinner that night. A food shack donated some amazing veggie burgers and I splurged on cheese curds, in honor of our new state. Cheese curds have to be the least healthy food known to man but they are delicious nonetheless.

The next few days were dominated by cold, wet rain.

The next event of note occurred on the ride to La Crosse. The first four miles of the day were easy, pleasant, and on a trail. Unfortunately, my ride that day ended after only four miles. The girl leading our group got a butterfly in her helmet and fell over trying to get it out. The person behind her fell and when I tried to stop I skidded out in some mud on the trail. I knew when I hit the group that it was a nasty fall. I laid there for a few minutes before sitting up and when I finally did, my vision was super blurry. Anyway, the EMTs came for the first girl that fell and told me that I had a concussion. I spent the rest of the day off the bike, but was luckily able to bike the next day.

Indiana, Illinois

So we also made it through Indiana and Illinois. Our ride into Indiana was a quick and beautiful one along the great lakes into Michigan City. Michigan City was a repeat host from 4k '09. It's a beautiful, creepy old church. Like, really creepy. I remember having serious trouble sleeping there in 2009 and it was just as creepy this year. However, I actually like Michigan City. It's got a beautiful lakeshore where we went to watch a beautiful sunset. We also walked along a nice rock path to a very nice lighthouse. The only real downside was the giant nuclear looking power plant right on the city skyline.

Our next day was into Chicago. This was a very exciting day because we were supposed to ride from Michigan City to Chicago in '09 but couldn't because of torrential storms. The ride was definitely a nice one, ending entirely on paved bike paths into the city. However, there were a lot of crazy bikers who almost killed us on the paths.

Our day off in Chicago was a great one. I saw the big silver bean that Chicago is famous for and stopped at a Puerto Rican parade. The parade was cool, although every fourth float was an advertisement for Wal-Mart. I did get a free t-shirt, which was nice.

We also went to the big art museum in Chicago, which had some really famous paintings, including American Gothic and that Edward Hopper painting of the diner. I love Chicago. If I wasn't so committed to living on the East Coast, I could definitely live in Chicago.

Michigan!

Michigan was a pleasant surprise. All I really knew about Michigan going into it was that Detroit is there and the whole rust belt thing, so I basically expected the entire state to look like a mixture of the worse parts of Baltimore and closed down car factories. As it turns out, we biked through a pretty cool, nice part of the state.

The first day into Michigan was our longest on the trip, 115 miles. I actually felt fantastic for pretty much the entire ride. There were some major logistical delays during the day which greatly complicated things. By 5:00 we still had 45 miles to go. Fortunately the sun did not set until 9:30, which is about when we finally rolled in. People we met during the day were also really nice and friendly. We were stopped on the side of the road changing a flat for a while and several cars stopped to ask us if we were okay. That definitely wouldn't happen in Baltimore, or at least it never has to me. Maybe people really are friendlier off the East Coast.

Unfortunately I spent most of my energy on that day and paid heavily for it the next day. Although it was only a 70 mile day to Lansing, I thought I was going to fall asleep on the bike. But we made it. Yay. We passed through a town called Hell on this day, which I thought was appropriate.

The following day to Rockport was one of my favorite of the trip. We were flying. Highlights of the day including seeing lots of llamas and getting an impromptu tour of a fire station that we stopped to get water at. The fire chief showed us all their trucks and equipment and even let us try on some helmets. We were also lucky enough to see a famous historical marker: The oldest roadside picnic table in Michigan. It was a pretty epic picnic table. We finished the day with homestays at a rider's house on a beautiful lake where we went tubing off the back of the motorboats. The tubing was pretty violent and difficult but was awesome.

The rest of Michigan was good. Stayed at some churches, ate some good food, biked along the Great Lakes.

That's all for Michigan. Stay tuned for Indiana.

OHIO

So I've been failing at blogging. There is so little time and internet access. But I am currently in Montana. I am alive and well and having a fantastic time. Fortunately I keep notes from which I can blog later. So here is Ohio!

We started out Ohio by biking into Cleveland, where we had dinner at a rider's house, which had a pool and was awesome. We stayed at a frat house at Case Western which was cool because we got our own rooms, but also felt kind of dirty because it was a frat house.

The next day we biked to Sandusky. This was our first real bike ride in the rain this trip. It was completely torrential but we got through. Another highlight of Sandusky was the wig that our team obtained. Some of our team members volunteered with a local cancer center, organizing wigs for cancer patients. One of the wigs was not in usable condition so naturally our team members decided to take it out of the garbage. We all had some fun trying on the hideous wig.

Also for anyone driving/biking from Cleveland to Sandusky, I would like to give a shout out to the Blackbird Baking Company, that donated pastries of our choice to my riding group that day.

On our day off in Sandusky, we went to Cedar Point, one of the best amusement parks in the world. It has the highest, fastest, and best roller coasters anywhere. Unfortunately, my group got stuck on one of the roller coasters for a little while, but the rest of the park was filled with thrills and other awesomeness.

That's all I've got for Ohio. I'll work on the backlog in the coming days and weeks. Stay tuned for Michigan!