Final thoughts

Now that I’ve been home for a few days, I’ve had a chance to think about the trip and what to write to bring the blog to an end. But somehow the concluding message has not become clear. For one thing, as soon as I got home and fell back into my normal routine, the trip began to seem very distant – in some way it felt like maybe it had never happened, it was all a dream, and I’d never left Seattle. Of course, it did happen and it was real. When I think of each place that I visited, and the people that I met in towns and on the road, those memories are very clear.

So how to wrap up a trip of almost 3 months, almost 3,500 miles, across nine states and one province, up and down hills, through big cities and small towns, across rivers, lakes, and streams, in and out of countless restaurants, cafes, bars, convenience stores, motels, campgrounds.

The Adventure Cycling route is mainly through small towns and rural areas. Coming from a big city on the west coast, these areas are not familiar territory to me. I saw a lot of small towns where there are a few businesses in operation but many empty storefronts. In tourist areas, the towns are full of restaurants, bars and gift shops, but in many areas, there may be a grocery store and a tavern, or just a convenience store at the gas station. If there is a Walmart nearby (within 30 or 40 miles), the grocery store might be permanently closed. I saw commercial and industrial buildings sitting empty, and factory farms where there used to be family farms. I often thought of the book Hillbilly Elegy and the author’s comment that many people are “stuck” in rural areas and small towns, in part because they own a house or business that they cannot sell:

Federal housing policy has actively encouraged homeownership … But in the Middletowns of the world, homeownership comes at a steep social cost: As jobs disappear in a given area, declining home values trap people in certain neighborhoods. Even if you’d like to move, you can’t.

In Michigan, I saw abandoned houses with signs pasted on them for upcoming auctions due to unpaid taxes. I listened to a motel owner in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan complain that she wished she could sell the place and get a job where she could actually make money, but no one wants to buy the motel and restaurant. I saw towns in North Dakota where there are almost no families with children, only retired farmers and ranchers who rent out their land to the big corporate farms and ranches. The children that grow up in these places leave town after high school and never come back. Quite a contrast to my surroundings in Seattle.

Cars, cars, cars: When you ride a bike every day, you become very aware of how all our cities and towns are built for cars. Bikes vs. Cars is an excellent documentary on Netflix about the challenges for cyclists in our car-oriented world. Many times I would be riding on a road with a nice shoulder and then suddenly there would be no shoulder at all. Many times I rode through towns on sidewalks when the only road had no space for a bike and the cars and trucks were whizzing by me.

So, please give cyclists three feet of space when passing them. When the road had no shoulder, I really appreciated the drivers who would slow down and wait if there was an oncoming car or limited sight distance. (But if it was a truck behind me and there was oncoming traffic and no shoulder, I would pull off the road and let them get by.)

I also appreciated it when I got a wave from a driver or motorcyclist – especially when I was grind up a big hill or mountain pass.  Just that little bit of encouragement meant a lot to me.

Weather: I had four weather forecast apps on my iPhone, and I checked them multiple times a day to see what they said about the wind direction, chance of rain, and temperatures. And every time I checked them, I said to myself: What’s the point? The forecast isn’t that accurate. Besides, whatever the weather turns out to be, you will have to deal with it, so knowing it in advance is really no help.

And I was right. The forecast for wind is almost useless. The apps could not even accurately tell when rain storms would arrive where I was, when the storm was only 40 or 50 miles to the west. In Manistique, Michigan, I decided to wait for a thunderstorm to come through town before continuing west: Dark Sky said it would start raining in 10 minutes and end in 45 minutes. No problem, have another cup of coffee and a cinnamon roll. But then the storm stalled just west of town, and I ended up sitting in the cafe for three hours! It was a big thunderstorm and it was probably worth it to avoid riding through it, but it showed the fallacy of depending on the weather forecast.

After the first few weeks, I stopped keeping track of headwinds and tailwinds. There were days where I had a headwind part of the time, but often the wind would come and go during the day, or the route would be changing directions, so I would have alternating headwinds and cross-winds as the day went on. The last full day in Ontario was the only day where I battled a strong headwind (lake effect) and rode at 7 mph for much of the day. I just had to get used to going slow and taking lots of breaks.

On the ride from the Mackinaw Bridge to Escanaba along Lake Michigan, I should have had the lake effect winds from the southwest but instead the wind blew from the east for two days, so I flew across the Upper Peninsula in those two days. So you just can never tell about the wind and weather. For one thing, on a bike tour, you are in any one town for just one day, and that day might be an exception to their typical weather.

Good luck: I feel lucky that on the entire trip I never got sick, never crashed, never had any scary encounters with people that I met. Everything went well. A few drivers could have given me a little more room, but they all got by me.

East to West: I still feel very positive about riding east to west. Every morning, the sun was on my back, not in my eyes (and not in the eyes of drivers passing me). I rode through the eastern states before the weather got too hot and humid, and before the peak of tourist season in the popular areas, especially in Michigan. I missed the black fly season! In Minnesota and eastern North Dakota, the weather was in the 60s and low 70s, which made for pleasant riding (with occasional drizzle and a few thunderstorms). After a drenching rain the last day in Wisconsin, I never got wet on the bike again.

And for me the best part of the ride was from western Montana to western Washington. It felt so good to get off the train in East Glacier Park and see the mountains and trees. Every day from there had spectacular views of mountains, rivers, lakes, and waterfalls.

Now what: I have started to look at some organized tours for 2018. I don’t think I will do another solo trip, at least not right away. I might look for something in the spring or fall, so I can be in Seattle during the summer. There definitely will be more bike tours in my future!

Thank you to everyone for your support on this trip. Special thanks to the relatives, friends, friends of friends, friends of relatives, and Warmshowers hosts who took me in and gave me a place to stay. Your friendship and encouragement means so much to me. I hope to pay it forward to touring cyclists. And I hope to see you sometime in Seattle.

Home in Seattle

Minnesota

Eastern North Dakota

Billy Parker, Ontario

Bull River valley, Montana

Bismarck, N.D.

High Lake, Wisconsin

west of Wibaux, Montana

Bridge designer, Kootenai Falls, Montana

Dalbo Bunkhouse, Minnesota

Cross-country cyclist, Michigan