I’m taking off for the next week on my first solo bike tour in decades. I’ve done solo multiday/multisport adventures, though—all jalopy-based.
I’m riding from the yard—all the way to the Mighty Mac bridge.
I hope I don’t go nuts with parchment for water and paddling on the way. I can’t hardly stand seeing lovely rivers without getting into them. We haven’t been up north all summer! (Except for a freaky bout of art fair work.) No paddling on the crystal blue Caribbean waters of Northern Michigan yet for me this year. (Bite my knuckles.) What I think I’ll do in a couple days is stop riding and take a break from the bike tour for an afternoon and rent a canoe and paddle the Pine, eh?
I meant to do the famous huge DALMAC tour riding this same route this year. But it fills in a week in Feb. So I plan to ride with them some of the way and just camp and eat on my own.
DALMAC is a decades-old tour from back when cycling first got popular. A congressman started it by riding from the Capitol to the Bridge and inviting anyone along who wanted to go. Now a couple thousand do it, over several route options.
Vans carry your bags and everyone camps out together and has a big feast cooked by bike club volunteers (I think). I’ll just use my own panniers and get food along the way and find my own camping.
I plan to go light—15/20 lbs. I’ll use my 30-yr-old Bike Ware (from the old Bike Warehouse) panniers and handlebar bag—in groovy orange 70’s nylon. On my red 70’s Paramount. Of course I started riding in the 70’s as well. Buncha old farts!
Actually, the last time I rode this route was my first time on a bike tour! It was when I was 17, with my 16-yr-old bro and another 16-yr-old friend, on our first big adventure away from home—a month-long tour around Lake Michigan. [That’s us in the photo for this article. Me, carrying my first bike, a 25″ Raleigh green Super Course Mk2. See our luggage on the far side of the river? The bridge was out. Around Cadillac.]
Anyway, I won’t be filling OYB orders while I’m gone. Ta-ta!
