More Photos Below!Gallery
My bro Tim recently scanned some slides from our first bike tour. He and I and a friend—when we were all 16 and 17 years old—rode around a lot of Michigan for over a month in 1979. We each took $150, planning on $5 a day, but we were on the road for more like 40 days. Less than $5/day, baby!
We experienced a whole buncha “firsts” on that trip! : )
Here’s a link to the online album of pics:
Our route was from Lansing > Grand Rapids (stayed at our grandparents—that was a really hard overloaded first day! we ditched a buncha junk there) > north to Cadillac, Elk Rapids, Harbor Springs (the “tunnel of trees” is pictured) > visited friends a couple days on Mackinac Island > Cedarville in the UP (visited friends at Cedar Campus) > Hayford (Burnt Lands Farm near the Soo) > Munising (more friends!) > Ishpeming (several days spent stalking a favorite writer, then going fishing with him) > Escanaba > Manitowoc (ferry across Lk. Michigan) > Ludington > GR again > home!
Bikes we used: me, 25″ Raleigh SC Mk2; bro, Dawes Galaxy, Campy upgrades; friend, Puch.
I remember we did this ride because we missed the sign-up deadline for DALMAC. How could we possibly know what we were going to be doing lik 6 months beforehand? I remember boggling at that and being frustrated. Plus, at $75 it was a bit pricey. We could just do it ourselves! Our route kind of followed theirs. (Today DALMAC is still only about $100…a bargain! Hopefully they’d give first-time teens a bye on the deadline…)
At the end we decided that 30 lbs was a good touring load. Not the 50 lbs we started with. Today I think 20 lbs is much more like it and totally sufficient and allows luxuries even. We also learned that getting rolling early, no dawdling, and synchronizing of stop-errands is critical—I remember tempers flaring at first when the stop-calls would happen every 5 minutes for a different reason.
Here’s a couple funny side stories to let you know how we learned to do such a big bike tour. I note that in all this we had no adult training or supervision. : ) We did read books, however. At age 13, I started hiring highschoolers to drive my friends and I up north to go trout fishing and camping on the weekends. Then at age 14, we did our very first unaccompanied boys ride after we’d been riding our bikes to school 8 miles each way. After summer started, our school riding posse of maybe 5 kids got together on our same route to school but we instead headed 30 miles south to a big ice cream parlor near Jackson. Once there we ate til we were sick then laid in the grass. After recovering we somehow rode home. The next summer 4 of us kids pedaled 200 miles to Cedar Point, tenting out both nights along the way. (I experimented with a highspeed sail-poncho and crashed and rode one-handed with rocks embedded in my other elbow.) The next 2 summers we had a 3-acre cash garden and then also a driveway tarring company and so we were busy. Only after such indepth training and experience did we attempt that big bike tour.
For those who are curious, here’s the list of “firsts” from that tour… I’ll stick to my own…
*My first long tour. (We prepped by riding to Cedar Point at age 13 on our own!)
*First weeklong string of 100-miles per day rides.
*My first long month on my own.
*My first decision to live life independently (I was going to keep riding west, no college, but then I found out I got accepted…now, here I am!).
*My first decision to stop attending church (everywhere seemed like church to me…except inside a church!).
*First time seeing a “salty” little cruising sailboat, a Flicker (wow, I could live on that, and travel the world!).
*1st time seeing the finish of a sailboat race (Chi > Mack).
*My first time aboard a yacht.
*1st time being offered champagne.
*1st experience of a bikes-only culture (Mackinac Island).
*1st time being hit on by girls in a truly exciting way.
*1st time *really* being offered beer (and pork rinds?)…by girls…declined!
*1st time hanging out with celebrity/hero (went fishing with Robert Traver; watched him play cribbage at local bar).
*1st time being offered an Old Fashioned by said hero and ex- State Supreme Court Justice (when I was age 17, not 21!)…forget if I accepted.
*1st time flirting with a young lady and getting her ph#.
*1st time on a long distance ferry boat.
*1st time seeing a dead person.
Full-on 1979 Bike Geek Ensemble…rockin’!
Brother Tim and Friend Craig, on Tour, 1979
We came on a “bridge out” over the Muskegon River (I think) way in the boonies, and had to portage across.
