Round Lake Michigan - Day Ten

Long Lake State Park, Wisconsin to Waukesha, Wisconsin

The original online journal entry:

Actual Date: 2005-07-21
Uploaded: Thu, 21 Jul 2005 21:13:50 -040
Distance: 87.62 km

It's become a bit of a tradition of my lake tours that on the expected last day I sleep in a little bit, shave and put on what I call my Canadian National Jersey. Today was no exception.

After a nice freeze dried egg omelette, some water and a Milky Way bar I resumed climbing the hills of the Kettle Moraine State Forest. It's a very nice area complete with many beautiful hills to climb and descent.

Last night I spoke to a ranger about bicycle touring and back packing for awhile. She mentioned that although they will accomodate cyclists who need a spot while touring in reality she can think of no other recent time in the past five or more years when the option has been used. It's a shame because this is one of those great areas to explore.

Along the way back to Waukesha I encountered many interesting towns and people. One fascinating place was a town called Slinger. It's a neat kind of place with many older type buildings to look at as you pass through.

While in Slinger I spoke with two men likely in their early twenties. We talked about bicycle touring for awhile and then naturally the discussion turned towards my future route. They mentioned that they had only driven the route I planned to ride but their impression was that it was flat all the way. Wait until I share some pictures!

They also mentioned that the second or third highest point in Wiscousin was within a couple of miles of where we were talking. When I went close to the area, the church they mentioned really didn't look much higher then where I was already.

One on the day's highlights was pulling into a McDonalds just before reaching the Waukesha city limits and noticing two little boys watching me approach on my bike with their eyes open really wide. As soon as I went in they had some questions for me. It was really neat to visit with them, their grandma and their aunt for awhile. It turns out that they are five and six years old. I wonder how long it will be before they start exploring further and further in their neighbourhood using their bikes. I seem to recall exploring most of mine for around 10 km in all directions by the time I was 8 or 9.

I just added up my total distance. Over ten riding days I covered 1281.09 km. This works out to an average of 128.10 km/day.

If you remove the two forced short days (the movement day to St. Ignace and the last day when I ran out of distance to cover) then the average comes out to 138.57 km/day.

For comparison I averaged 120 km/day going around Lake Erie and approximately 103 km/day when I went around Lake Huron.

In reading the daily journals you likely have the impression that I was focused entirely on distance. While distance was a major focal point there was much more to it then that. Over the next few days I will be updating all of my journal pages with pictures of the things I saw and adding a lot of missing information to the entries.

I will also be writing a few more pages about the following topics that I've been considering while touring.

- Routing methods/Planning your route - Daily distance - What's the magic number?- Equipment issues, flat tires, mechanical failures and planned modifications for future tours especially if I plan to carry the bear barrel with me.

A page will be added about my thoughts now that I've circled most of another great lake.

As expected Lakes Erie, Huron and Michigan are all very different and unique in their own special ways and I'll probably discuss that a bit too.

See, lots more stuff to put you to sleep yet! (grin)

Tomorrow will likely be a travel day home so Saturday is when the pictures will likely start showing up.

-Jamie

Post tour comments about this day:

The last day of any tour is usually one when you feel sort of elated that you are likely to accomplish your goal while also feel a bit of disappointment that the tour is almost over.

The reality is that touring is a wonderful experience. It seems like it doesn't really matter how many tours you've experienced or how much distance you've covered in the past there will be unique things that make this touring experience an unique adventure in it's own right.

When I wrote my journal entry for this day I mentioned some of the people I met on this day but there were others too. During a very heavy rainstorm I popped in to a combination McDonalds and gas station to find a sponsored employee soft ball team trying to determine if their game was going to be cancelled. While I took my break and they waited for word we ended up getting into a long conversation about bicycle touring, camping in general, the people you meet while doing things and a bit about their lifes and dreams. I heard about bicycle rides that they had experienced as very young kids where they cycled over to the next town, 10 miles away, just for fun. All this without their parents knowing of course! (grin).

Just before leaving the quieter roads behind I encountered another bicycle tourist on his way from Chicago to Lake Winnepago to see an airshow the following week. His bike was in rough shape and he was using duct tape reinforced garbage bags for his panniers but he was a very interesting man to get to know while we both ate a breakfast bar before saying goodbye and heading in opposite directions.

The last few miles of the tour were probably the hairest ones of them all. I had to go through a busy construction zone where they were adding a second lane. As a result of this the bail out shoulders had been replaced with an abrupt four foot drop and to make things worse the construction cones actually took up part of the remaining single lane making it even narrower then normal. I went through this zone at an average speed of 35 km/hour partly propelled by an interesting downhill but also by my constant pedaling along the way. The ride through this zone became much more interesting when traffic increased at the same time that the pothole course was being navigated.

The rain storms hadn't finished with me yet. 20 minutes from the tour's end the skies once again opened up dousing the bike and I with a layer of cool water.

It was strange to be ending the tour in a strange city far from home. My other great lake tours ended at my home in my home city of London, Ontario so I am used to arriving at the outskirts of the city and feeling the elation build as I get closer and closer to home. In this case I reached the city limits of Waukesha and then the pickup point in short order. While still an achievement I missed the feeling of walking in the door of my own home having completed another ride around the block.

As I complete the articles that I mentioned in the journal entry I will post the links here.

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