Round Lake Michigan - Day Three

Warren Dunes State Park, Michigan to Holland, Michigan

The original online journal entry:

Actual Date: 2005-07-13
Uploaded: Wed, 13 Jul 2005 23:20:56 -040
Distance: 136.00 km

One of the genuinely nice things about bicycle touring is that it really gives you plenty of time to think. Today was brought to us by the letter i and more specifically the word irrelevant.

While pedaling along I rapidly realized that some of the measurements of previous tours are simply not needed since I have a daily minimum requirement to pedal 149 km per day assuming that my best guess of the total distance around the lake is reasonable and I actually take two rest days.

So these common questions can all be answered with one word:

Average speed: Irrelevant
Total elevation change: Irrelevant
Total riding time: Irrelevant
Average heart rate: Irrelevent

It also extends to these as well:

Head winds: Irrelevant
Lots of hills: Irrelevant
Weather: Irrelevant

See how neat it is to use just one word for so many things! However this is not the Tour of Irrevelance so there is at least one situation where it doesn't work.

As you can likely tell by my little speech above today was a tough day. I always have one rough day per tour and hopefully this was the one for this tour.

By the start of the day I had covered 302.54 km in two touring days. Not only is this a personal record for me but coming in the first two days of a tour only makes it more special.

Of course this also adds up to a somewhat sore body as it begins reacting to the extrordinary demands being placed upon it. Happily my legs are still going strong and I am quite pleased with how well my fixed-gear training prepared me for the tour. Unfortanately my butt is suffering. Wearing all three pairs of bike shorts made for a very hot ride but it did work. I believe that a change to my handlebar height should reduce the problem by at least allowing a different part of my butt to touch the seat. Trials tomorrow!

These early morning wake-ups are also playing a role in my body's recovery time. When I do take a rest day I plan to do almost nothing and sleep in too. Hopefully I will come out of that tremendously stronger.

Today did have a number of highlights including cooking my lunch at the side of the road, climbing what felt like every hill in this section of Michigan, barreling up the last few hills of the day and easily winning a race against an electric scooter.

I also travelled through some amazingly beautiful terrain and since my speed was slow I had the opportunity to see it for quite some time! :)

Laundry is finished and now it's time to go to sleep.

I ended up covering 136 km today despite pedaling for 7 hours and 57 minutes. This brings my current tour average to 146 km per day which is also irrelevant since the only measurement of real importance is reaching my ride home on schedule and in good health.

Tomorrow I promise to pick a different letter, perhaps r and relevant but only time will tell.

Have a nice night! (and yes it is indeed great to be living the touring life)

~Jamie N

Post tour comments about this day:

Probably the biggest thing on my mind this day was my sore butt. This sore butt issue was a relatively unknown issue prior to this tour so it took awhile to reason out what the problem was. Just before this tour I had the headset bearings replaced in my bike. As part of that process the handlebars were removed and put back in a slightly higher position. With the higher position more of my weight was placed on the tender areas of my behind and less on the arms. With a wider seat this probably wouldn't have mattered. With the B17 it was narrow enough to cause issues.

In my entry above I refer to making some handlebar changes as a possible corrective measure. I actually made these changes the next day and within a very short period of time the problem was resolved. It took a few more days for residual pain to go away but it did leave and I began to feel much better about the ride again.

Normally I would have caught this type of issue far in advance of a tour but I've really grown to love riding my fixed-gear Surly Crosscheck to work so I delayed riding the touring bike until almost the last minute. My previous policy of always riding the touring bike the last week before a tour is a good one that I should stick to from now on after this experience.

This day was also the first of a string of extremely hot days. In fact it wasn't uncommon to hear people commenting on the hot weather and how this day is listed as the hottest day of the year for that place. My water consumption stayed around 9 to 12 litres a day throughout this time period. I also stopped and purchased some Gateraid or Poweraid drinks from time to time. While the flavours weren't always so great tasting the cold temperature of the liquid really went down well!

While eating my breakfast I enjoyed a great conversation with a nuclear contractor. He serviced the nuclear plants in the surrounding area plus similar facilities like the water cooling tower that I passed yesterday. He seemed surprised that someone would want to ride a bike this far but after a bit of talking I could see his mind opening up to the idea of giving it a try himself one day. Apparently he retires in a few more years so hopefully he tries something new once his time becomes more available.

My speed was still lower then expected which by now I had figured out was probably related to the new items on the bike restricting air flow more then normal. Physically my legs were going strong. Even on the hardest climbing days I never felt the need to go to my granny gear so I climbed in a gear of at 25.6 gear inches instead of my much lower 17 gear inch granny gear. It was always nice to know that I still could drop three gears lower if needed.

The area I cycled through during the early part of the day largely consisted of sand dunes with pine trees. Lots of possible stealth camping sites and traffic volume was extremely low since the Lake Michigan Circle Route was actually inland of the road I was on. With the low traffic it was easy to hear the sounds of the birds and other animals in the nearby woods. Of course I also had the opportunity to receive motivation from deer flies to keep moving. My favourite insect, the dragonfly, was also very much in evidence as well. (As an aside the Dragonfly is my favourite insect following a time when I was up north being mobbed by black flies when I saw a Dragonfly snatch one right out of the air in front of me. They've been my friends ever since).

Compared to the previous few days this route was much hillier. Some people hate hills but I seem to have developed a real enjoyment of them. There is a sense of real achievement when you reach the top of one complete with a beautiful view and then of course you get to enjoy the need for speed as you fly back down.

Once the road veered more inland I was going to stop for lunch but I quickly discovered that in this part of Michigan many restaurants seem to close for the day at 2:00 in the afternoon. Eventually I just stopped underneath a shady tree at the side of the road and cooked myself a chicken rice dinner. I also made up a chocolate cheesecake dessert and washed it all down with some cold water. Very, very refreshing!

The word irrelevant gave me a great deal of amusement during this tour. It was kind of neat to use the word from time to time and amazingly enough it worked well for making minor problems disappear. I guess when all is said and done as long as you are having a good time then all the other items really don't matter that much. I was indeed having a good time.

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