Richard Treks: BALM: Week 4 Day 6

After 27 days of riding around Lake Michigan and all of its bays--Sturgeon Bay, Green Bay, Little and Big Bays du Noc, and the east and west arms of Grand Traverse Bay; after riding 1270 miles, always with the water to the right; after all of that, the BALM has ended.

The ending was sort of anticlimactic. The camp last night in Yogi Bear was uneventful. The ride out of Portage was dull. The lake had been absent since Michigan City yesterday. The traffic into Chicago was challenging in that the bucolic roads of the first 26 days had suddenly become all roads lead to Chicago. I bet for over three weeks we had seen maybe two MacDonalds, a Burger King, one or two Taco Bells, and several Subways. Today, in almost every mile were repetitions and duplicates of every fast food chain imaginable.

A remarkable thing about riding your bicycle for weeks at a time through remote territory is the appreciation you develop for cities. Cities give you comfort. They give you art and sports. They give you parks and barbecues and Fourth of July fireworks. They give you tacos, fried chicken, hot dogs, sponge candy, rock and hillbilly concerts. They satisfy the reptile brain that wants survival and pleasure.

Gary and I were lucky that we did the BALM from middle May through early June. We had cold weather, sleet, gusty wind, and hills. But we had most of the lake, its bays, its peninsulas, and roads all to ourselves. All of Wisconsin and Michigan that we biked through was not yet in season. For the most part, the land, the towns, the villages, the state parks: everywhere was mostly empty of the campers and RVs that come when the season starts in July.

This is what I was already missing for the forty miles today into Chicago. Then we biked around a bend in the trail and there, as far as we could see in three directions--west, east, and north--as far as we could see was water. Sometimes you do something, and when the realization hits you that you did it your spirit lifts. As mine did today when I saw all that water. As far as I could see I had pedaled: from Chicago northwest into Wisconsin, making a turn east at Escanaba into the Upper Peninusla of Michigan, the land of the UPers, then dropping south across the Macinaw Strait into the land of the trolls, lower Michigan, and then futher south into Indiana, and finally west back to Illinois, to this spot, Chicago, where the lake stretched out to the end of the world.

This was no great feat. Anyone with the time, the health, and the money can pedal fifty to sixty miles a a day. That might seem like a lot, but after a week or so the days become routine, as normal as getting up and going to work and coming home and going to bed. The difference is that your home is a tent and your work is the bike. You just do it.

I am so very fortunate. I have a family that I love, who love me. I have a profession that gives me summers. I live in a country with great cities and citizens who pay taxes to maintain rural roads, develop town, county, state, and national parks. They set aside wilderness spaces. Whether we like it or not, we all are environmentalists.

Praise cities. Without them, the wilderness areas of the United States would be devastated by an influx of people who would strip resources just to maintain simple comforts. Cities do all they can to preserve the wild spaces surrounding them.

Today began on an anticlimactic note. Then Gary and I biked around a bend in a trail into Chicago, and there, as far as we could see in three directions--west, east, and north--as far as we could see was water. And there, to the south, at the very end of this enormous body of water--we biked around it--was the city of Sandburg, the Windy City, the City of Big Shoulders.

Follow YOUR Balm