Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
tional—“real”—avenues of transportation. More than once as I rode the trails along a
corridor of woods, out of sight and even earshot of a main highway that might be just
a few dozen yards away, I had the dreamy sense that I wasn't really traveling but being
propelled from station to station like old-fashioned office mail in a pneumatic tube.
That sounds weird, I know—who doesn't like to own the road?—but bike trails are
still new to me, as email once was, and I'm just learning to accept them as a legitimate
way to negotiate the world as a cyclist.
When I emerged from the Wisconsin trails at Reedsburg, I had to ride the last fifteen
miles of the day on a two-lane highway that is the main thoroughfare between two siz-
able towns, and I was quickly reintroduced to the hazards of cycling in the real world:
crowds of harried drivers in a hurry, exhaust-belching trucks, construction. With my
motel within a quarter mile—I could see the sign—the road curled around and pitched
down, from one pedal stroke to the next the shoulder simply vanished, and for four hun-
dred harrowing yards I found myself riding against a curb with rush-hour traffic whist-
ling by within inches. Yikes!
Still, for most of those fifteen miles, I had a fine time. The shoulder was wide and
smooth. The wind, chilly and brisk, was nudging me from behind. The late-afternoon
light was golden, and the scenery was a handsome mix of suburbia and farmland. I was
pedaling hard at the end of the day, sweating, cruising, enjoying myself and glad to be
back on a good old American road.
Monday, September 19, Kenosha, Wisconsin
With its angry waters stretching to the horizon and breakers rolling in, Lake Michigan
looks enormous and intimidating on a blustery, gray afternoon. I had my first, awe-in-
spiring glimpse of it yesterday in Racine, just before the rain began in earnest and gave
me a good soaking. For the next hour, I made my way through the city's stately and
historic Southside neighborhood along the lakeshore, turned west for a bit through a
considerably less stately neighborhood and finally south again into Kenosha, not too far
from the Illinois border.
It was a day of urban riding, part of a day, anyway, something I haven't done, really,
the entire trip. I was lost, or at least in a muddle, about half the time. After all the pedal-
ing through daunting, wide-open spaces, I'm still getting accustomed to making dozens
of turns in a day and keeping my eyes peeled for the one street sign among a million that
will point me in the right direction. And after riding bike paths and missing the rough
streets, on these rough streets I miss the bike paths.
