Michigan was only 10 miles away, and about 5 miles out of our way, so we figured we’d just go!
I stopped standing in holes, to make it look like I'm bigger than Quinn & Andy
Harumph, Indiana.
Then we turned back south into Indiana and promptly took a wrong turn, so we’ve gone close to 30 miles, but we’ve only advanced something like 12. Also, it’s raining and Indiana roads are terrible. We’re at a diner now, and they take American Express. Thanks, Dave.
It’s a good week to totally screw up. We’ve got plenty of time to kill.
I try to make it hard to daunt my positive outlook. In the most adverse of situations, I always know an end is imminent and this minor suffering will soon cease. Challenges are things to relish. When I absolutely must bear through an awful situation, I do it with the knowledge that this is something I know I can deal with, and can only be stronger because of. Having said that, I couldn’t wait to get the f*** out of Gary, Indiana. What a f***ing s***hole.
Every minute we spent trudging through the poisonous air of that town, I felt worse and worse about life in general. The overwhelming stench of industry permeated not just every gasp of air I sucked into my lungs, but tarnished my soul as well - nearly irrevocably blackening it to any positive account of my day and this trip.
Our past week in Madison, Milwaukee, and Chicago recharged our zest for the vibrancy of the city and reaquainted us with the connections of friends and family that make life worth living. This second half of our trip was rooted in a refreshed physical and mental state. We felt great. Gary, Indiana almost killed that.
Ron Howard as a little kid, you’re out of your mind.
Rest days seem to be our best friends right now. We took a long weekend in Milwaukee, even though it hurt Quinn and me, and wasn’t always that *restful*. Since Tuesday, we’ve been in Chicago. What day is it? Friday? Yeah. I guess it is. We’ve cranked out a stellar 100 miles over the past six days and spent most of yesterday watching movies or old Simpsons episodes.
Is twoarmparty slipping? Are we giving up? Balderdash! How could you possibly suggest we give up? After we’ve pulled off multiple back-to-back centuries, climbed the rockies, braved the perils of South Dakota, roughed it out in Iowa, and navigated the woody mazes of Wisconsin? It’s not US that gives up when we get to Chicago. It’s those OTHER friends of ours from last summer, and they started on the EAST coast. That’s the SHORT way to Chicago. We’re just hanging out. It’s been tough.
It’s also been inclement. It’s like April weather out here. Yesterday, we had to cancel the barbecue at Dumptruck’s place and go to the brand new Art Institute Modern Wing instead. Blech! Art! (It’s free on Thursdays & Fridays from 5-9!)
Dumptruck. This is the name he goes by. Image from Gus Legit.
This is a good time to give our thanks to Brean. Hey Brean, thanks. For letting us stay at your place for three nights, watch all your roommate’s DVDs while it rained, and meeting us in Kenosha to guide us into Chicago. We’ll never forget you. Come back to New York. Don’t just say it, do it finally. And good luck with the kids you’re coaching out at the track.
Goodbye, Chicago! Nice lake.
Oh wait! I totally forgot to explain why we’re wasting so much time. It’s because we’ve got time to waste. The next place we have to be is in Dayton, Ohio, and we need to be there by next Friday. It’s less than 300 miles away, and we can easily make it there by Tuesday. So instead of pushing boring, 30-mile days through cornfields and Gary, Indiana (which is not nearly as nice as the song from the Music Man leads one to believe), we figured we’d hang out in the windy city and visit our friends. So there you go. That’s why we’re here.
This weekend, I woke up more sore than on any other day during the trip. My knees hurt to bend and my ankle hurt to walk on. Jumping right back on a brakeless fixed gear bike weighing 1/5 the weight of my fully loaded touring bike and sprinting back & forth all day long in the rain didn’t come with as much ease as I might’ve expected it to, having powered nearly three thousand miles by this point. Quinn & my polo bikes were stored by friends in New York, and shipped out here for the tournament. They’re both fixed gear bikes. A good number of the people reading this blog know what that means, but for the rest of you - our moms’ friends, the ladies at Curves, maybe a few lurkers who haven’t left comments - it means that the bike only has one gear, no brakes, and doesn’t coast. To slow down and stop, you pedal slower or lock up your legs to completely stop the rear wheel from turning. It works an entirely extra set of leg muscles than riding a “normal” bike because stopping the bike requires applying resistance to the pedals’ constant forward motion. Sure, Quinn and I have worked the crap out of all the other muscles, but the fixed gear muscles had been more or less dormant for the past two months. Then we go and hurl ourselves into round-robin competition using them. I personally hurt a lot Sunday morning. It probably didn’t help that I fell on my knees & ankle once or twice - and the half-bottle of vodka I shared with my teammates before the last match of the day probably didn’t improve my coordination either.
These idiots also showed up. If you haven’t watched their videos, you don’t understand bike polo.
My team’s Saturday win/loss ratio suffered. 1-6-2, I believe. One of the two ties was 0-0 with a Chicago team. Disappoinment all around. The other tie, we TRIED to lose 0-5 like most of the rest of our matches, but Ch0mb0 kept scoring goals! WTF!? Our one win came against Quinn’s team, “Ladies”, made up of herself, Birdie from Madison, and Amandaconda from Tampa/Seattle.
Quinn’s brother, Jarrett, by the way, is on my team. No mercy. Another good lesson we learned is that we tend to play better sober and maskless. We did much better on Sunday. Yet another valuable lesson learned is that we’re great dancers. Watch this video! Here’s a caveat - you have to lay down or turn your entire computer sideways to watch it, and imagine there’s music playing. It’s got a fantastic ending.
People come out of the woodwork for these things, especially the well-sponsored and hyped events. Sven, Kat, Dustin, and Sue I met in Minneapolis; Ben Hunter, Johnny Hunter, Birdie, Jill, Pierre (from France as of a few months back) and Sam from Madison; Jason from Baltimore; Jarrett, Ch0mb0, Doug, Paul, Bad Zach, Good Zach, Red Chris, Johnny Midwest, Adam Ackbar and Cecily from New York; Amandaconda from Tampa/Seattle; Sea Bass & Leon from Seattle; Lucky from St. Louis; Alexis from Ottawa who’s Canadian teammates backed out at the last minute and left him with Sea Bass & Leon (they came in 2nd place); Rory, Gentleman James, and Pieter from East Vancouver; Gus, Jav & Nick from Boston; Nick, Ben, and Ian from Richmond; Ben, Dumptruck, Joe, Tucker and Brian from Chicago; all those kids from Portland whose names I forgot. There are names I’ve unintentionally omitted, and for that I apologize. And too many names from Milwaukee to recall - except for Jake and Kremin, who orchestrated the entire event with near flawlessness. Well done, in spite of the disagreeable weather and less-than-expected attendance, guys.
This is a good time to express our gratitude to Ben’s Cycle/Milwaukee Bicycle Company. One of the two main sponsors of the event, they also accepted the shipment of our bikes from New York, and had no apparent qualms with us loitering in the back of their shop for hours unpacking and assembling them. COG Magazine, the other major sponsor, made it possible to coordinate 22 teams into a two-day round robin/double elimination tournament on three handmade courts.
Before competition even began, Tucker from Chicago cracked two of his teeth in half after an errant mallet swing collided with his face. International polo medic Johnny Midwest leapt onto the scene of the carnage with aplomb, and Jarrett somehow found the teeth fragments on the surface of the refashioned tennis courts. Tucker fortunately lives a mere hour’s drive away, and his nearby family came to shuttle him to some emergency dental work. Polo can be a dangerous sport. As if it doesn’t take enough coordination to maneuver a bicycle while weilding a mallet and trying to hit a ball through a goal, you have to do this while five other cyclists swerve, twist and sprint, trying to do the same thing. Crashes are inevitable, and there are few rules prohibiting defensively rough play. Bike Polo is a contact sport.
Even the spectators are often at risk. Andy’s Mom, for instance, took a mallet to the face from Jarrett. Andy has given me free license to exaggerate the retelling of this event, but it’s good enough in real life to not have to.
Andy’s family lives across Lake Michigan. They ferried to Milwaukee for the weekend to meet twoarmparty and observe the polo. Tournaments, unfortunately, are all-day events, and they never got to take us out for some one-on-one dinner time. On Sunday, they came with sandwiches for the day and cookies for the trip. Quinn & I took a break from the crowds to hang with the family. As Jarrett walked up to play a game of pickup on the adjacent court, Quinn introduced him as her brother. At this exact moment, Jarrett was hurling his mallet onto the court. He missed. Instead, as it left his hand, it caught on a part of the plywood wall and redirected itself towards Andy’s Mom’s face, Jarrett’s hand extended in an expectant handshake. WHAM!!! In slow motion, this moment is spectacular. Andy’s Mom staggers back. Jarrett’s handshake turns into two hands covering his face in horror and humiliation. Quinn is mortified. Andy is in shock. I can’t believe that just happened. Bystanders shake their heads humorously, wondering how Jarrett can make this ok. He really can’t. Andy’s Mother was fine. No cuts, no scrapes, no shattered teeth or broken glasses. Jarrett only got that one chance to make that first impression, but he went as far away as he could afterwards to play his game. Well done, Gigante. Gigante smash!
Sunday’s weather was far more forgiving than the cold, intermittently rainy Saturday. As teams got eliminated from the bracket, more kegs were tapped and more courts were opened for pickup. The sun brought out more babies & dogs than I’ve seen at any other tournament. Our friend Roxanne brought out her baby, Mabel, who’s one of the most adorable babies the midwest has ever seen. And that’s saying a lot, since it seems an apparent requirement to have a baby out here. Like they give you one for signing a lease.
That’s Nan, Ben Hunter’s daughter. She’s teaching me how I can become a fairy. (Photo by Gus).
We stayed with Roxanne & Mabel Monday night after packing our bikes back up and saying goodbye to our friends. It was far more comfortable than my Sunday night slumber party at Kremin’s, sleeping next to Nick from Boston, who accurately warned me that he snores loud. While a party went on around us and he snored, I struggled to sleep on a dusty matress with no pillow or blanket. It was raining too hard for me to go back to the hotel, and my phone had died (more than just the battery) so I had no way of getting back into the room at this hour anyway.
I wandered downtown Milwaukee in the morning and found some girls handing out free Stone Creek Coffee in honor of Bike To Work Week. I gave them our blog and explained Bike Polo to them. We saw them again the next day in front of the Stone Creek coffeeshop on our way out of town. It was a good time taking some exhausting rest days in Milwaukee. We reconnected with people we’d met along the way, and saw some of our best friends for the first time in months. One of them in particular was impressed with how good we’re starting to look. I think he has a crush on me now…which is actually kinda disturbing. But flattering of course. Everyone was happy to see us and tell us how much they enjoy following us on this blog. We’ll see you soon guys. Thanks for a great weekend.
Before we hurl ourselves into the madness & mayhem that is a major underground cycling event, we need to reflect on the much more bucolic past few days. By the time the chaos, camaraderie and competition of COG’s big tournament in Milwaukee wears down, we’ll forget that we spent two days touring rural Wisconsin, climbing up and down forest roads, the rumble of an approaching car’s engine such a rarity that we had the luxury of the whole street to ourselves. We’ll forget the absence of all noise but the wind rustling through the leaves and whirling by our ears. We may not forget the constant struggle of battling yet another hill, but we might forget how awesome some of these roads were:
Stanek Road! Parties everywhere!
Oh, it’s true. Pausing at this street sign, a dog chased us down, then promptly lost interest when it realized we weren’t moving anymore. It’s owner came out & asked us if we were lost. “No, we’re just taking pictures of the street sign,” because of the whole last name thing”. “Oh, are you related to any of the Stanek’s? Dan & Bill? They live right over there.” As far as I know, I’m not, but I’m going to wait for my Grandmother’s deference on that one. Hi, Grandma!
Jonny confessed that there were less challenging ways to bring us into Madison “but I figured it’d be easier to keep you here for an extra day if I tortured you a bit first.” Jonny’s a methodical kind of guy. He had at least two advantages over the bulk of our previous hosts: 1) he keeps up to date with our blog and knows the generosity we’ve already been shown, and 2) he’s competitive about it. He wanted to make sure he planned a tour that rivaled everything we’ve encountered so far. And he’d be the one to do it. In addition to the underground food collective, he organizes an annual Bike The Barns ride & fundraiser, which tours local farms and raises money for low-income families to afford CSA packages. Also, since Jonny was in charge, he took most of these photos.
The Wisconsin River
somewhere in wisconsin, near a barn
Our first stop, which was supposed to be lunch, happened at a clandestine restaurant tucked away into the hills. They only take reservations for Fridays & Saturdays, but Jonny works with them a lot, and coordinated a late lunch / early dinner for us. All of the produce is grown & harvested within the 16 acres of their property.
Lightyears restaurant and farm
They had a lot of chickens & ducks there
We kept going. Jonny took another wrong turn, turning our 60 mile day into a 78 mile day. I’d like to think this was completely a mistake, but then again, he wanted to make sure we stuck around in Madison for a while, so I’m not sure. We ended up at Caitlin & Andy’s place - a beautiful renovated barn at the top of yet another hill. Andy makes gruyere cheese. Caitlin makes paintings.
We got there sweaty. Jonny snapped photos. He thought I looked hilarious.
My future combover
it took some time, but we convinced andy to keep going with us instead of staying with the cows
but i mean seriously, this cow was adorable
i left my waterbottles at the house in the morning and had to backtrack 4 miles to get them. Jonny took this as I finally showed back up.
Andy the cheesemonger wakes up early in the morning to make Upland Cheese Company’s award winning gruyere. By the time we got to his dairy, he was well into the process of separating the curds from the whey. For his tour, we had to don some stylish hairnets & booties
new style!
Andy gave an amazing tour
cheese. young.
cheese, older
one of america's best cheeses is made here
One thing we have just about no documentation of is rhubarb. Ever since staying with Arone’s mom in Spicer, Minnesota, we seem to have had rhubarb in some form for every meal. Apparently it’s in season. We knew just about nothing about rhubarb before this trip. Like what it looked like. Here you go. DON’T EAT THE LEAF! That part’s poisonous. Most rhubarb isn’t this huge. This is Jonny’s friend Lee’s photo.
Meeting up with Jonny Hunter in Wisconsin was one of the most anticipated parts of our trip. The week leading up to the COG tournament in Milwaukee is what we based our entire schedule around. Jonny was going to meet us two days out of his home in the capital city of Madison, and take us on a riding tour of some of the local farms.
Jonny Hunter and his brother Ben are menaces in two places: polo courts and kitchens. Ben can fly and score goals while doing it. Jonny’s got some kind of sixth sense. Both of them run The Underground Food Collective. While Quinn, Andy and I were already biking, they came to New York to cook a few more spectacular dinners. Back in the fall of 2008, I attended their five-course (or more?) Pre-Industrial Pig dinner. It was a brilliantly assembled, attended, and delicious event. Not only was Johnny going to show us how to get into our second big city this week, he was going to make sure we ate well along the way.
Before we met him though, we had to get there. Minneapolis is a big city. And there’s another city, St. Paul, right next to it. We foolishly didn’t ask for another guide out of the city, and foolishly followed the vague directions of the founder of Black Label at the Hard Times Cafe. I’m sure that the Gateway Trail he recommended we take is a spectacular ride, but you kinda gotta know how to get there in the first place. We didn’t. And instead of being out of the urban area in the morning, we didn’t make it to Wisconsin until the early afternoon. There was still 170 miles between us and Johnny Hunter. The good news was that it was along some of the most gorgeous parts of the country, following the Mississippi River. The bad news was that there was a 15-20mph headwind. The other bad news was of course that there was still 170 miles to go.
The Mississippi lopes and roams, backed up into lakes miles wide at times, its enormity fed by rivers already massive - tributaries that snake hundreds of miles away up the mountains this side of the Continental Divide. Route 35 hugs its banks for most of it’s length in Wisconsin. Motorcyclists roam up and down in packs, dropping off in groups to explore the roads up to more scenic vistas along the tree lined bluffs.
After 97 miles, stormclouds starting to threaten us and we paused in the town of Nelson, with hopes of finding a fine place to pitch a tent. The railroad that had paralleled us and the river went through the town like it had for all of the small, lovely towns along route 35. The locals recommended we camp in the town of Alma, 9 miles away, but after our obvious conviction towards not riding anymore, formed a consensus that the city park behind Beth’s Diner was probably a fine place to spend the night. We moved some picnic tables from under an overhang, pitched our tent, stashed our bikes away from any rain, and walked into Beth’s Diner for a dinner that could not possibly satisfy our appetites.
Last night's campsite
In true twoarmparty fashion, as soon as the doors closed behind us, the skies opened up and drenched the town.
The rain let up quickly, and we devoured our meals with similar haste. Sleep set in easily on our wind battered and grumpy bodies. Hours later, because commerce never stops, our dreams were shaken by the rumble of approaching locomotives. The movement of miles of freight was announced by a blast of the engine’s massive whistle, rendering slumber impossible, but waking us to a resounding echo from the mountains behind us. It was immensely disrupting, but strangely beautiful.
The next day’s trip was much further than the 97 miles we had just tacked on. It was supposedly less hilly (until the very end of our ride), and if the weather wasn’t lying to us, we were going to have some tailwinds. Both assumptions ended up being true. We even found a shortcut that Jonny hadn’t pointed out. Wisconsin, like Minnesota, has done a fantastic job turning old railroad tracks into bike trails. We followed this flat, straight trail for 12 miles into La Crosse. Quinn took a video, thankfully, to give you an idea of what it’s like. It might make you queasy, but…train bridges! Woods! Mississippi marshland! No cars whatsoever! Possibility of alligators on the trail! It was pretty.
We followed route 35 until Ferryville, where we were to pick up route C, headed away from the river and uphill all the way for the next 15 miles. This was at mile 107. We knew dinner was waiting for us with Johnny in Star Valley, but since the burgers at the biker joint were only $4, it only made sense to inhale one before climbing.
Maybe it’s because we psyched ourselves out, or maybe it’s because we’re just getting stronger, but that last 15 mile climb was no sweat. Maybe those burgers had something extra special in them that made them taste so great. Whichever way, we beat Jonny to his friend Josh’s house. Josh, a farmer, rolled out, and let us make ourselves comfortable in his house while he went out to plant some seeds. By the time he got back, Jonny was still on his way. So Josh took us on a tour of the farm. Quinn is the only one of us who has any knowledge of the fields at all, but we still learned a ton of stuff that city kids don’t know just from listening to him for 45 minutes. And we saw a bald eagle. Check.
A Bald Eagle. These things are beautiful. It opened it's beak and went "America!"
What had taken Jonny so long is that he was trying to get his bike together. He has the luxury of owning one of the last bikes every produced by Johnny Cycles. All of his components though, were hastily borrowed from friends. While he cooked dinner, Josh’s brother Noah gave us a tour of the farm equipment. He had no idea how to give a tour, but it was OK, because we had no idea what we were looking at. He ended up giving us a spectacular explanation of some of the 100+ pieces of equipment they use to manage their farm.
By the time we finished eating, it was nearly 11, and we’d added 220 miles to our total. It was time to pass out. The next morning, just like any other day, we got ready to ride.
Josh, Johnny, QAK
The whole point of the previous photo was to have us in front of a tractor, but it turned out that you couldn't see the tractor at all. This one is from the 40's.
Like I said when I mentioned how we got lost *leaving* Minneapolis - when you’re biking in a big city, get yourself a detailed map. Our map for the way in was Bjorn. And Bjorn is an example of why Twitter is not as useless as I thought it was going to be when I signed up.
Minneapolis was the first city we were coming across since Portland. There are buildings there over 10 stories tall! A bunch of ‘em! And there’s a metropolitan area of the Twin Cities that takes up a huge chunk of the state. According to our host, Katie Behrens (an ex-courier from Philadelphia), Minnesota is a traditionally democratic state in the middle of red country. They even voted for Mondale back in 1984, when no one voted for Mondale. I tweeted a plea for someone to ride us into this metropolis. Within an hour, Rick Reinhart called me up (always lookin’ out, Rick) and said he knew someone who could guide us in by motorcycle but not until 6pm. A bit too late for us. Within the next few hours, I got calls from some Minneapolis Bike Polo heads who hooked us up with Bjorn, who gave us directions and met us in the fancy suburb of Wayzata. Getting there was some of our first extended times on dedicated bike trails, and Minnesota & Wisconsin are full of ‘em. The rail system here was sprawling at one point, and with the advent of other methods of freight, a lot of these tracks were left abandoned. Many of them have been converted to a web of bike trails.
Our rest day in the city took root at Katie’s place. Bjorn from Portland (a completely different Bjorn) was in town for a wedding, so we all met up, barhopped, and ended up at a place called “Dusty’s Dagos”. It took me a minute to get comfortable saying that. Turns out a “Dago” is a delicious sandwich that we’d be remiss if we didn’t try. Unfortunately, Andy and I had *just * had burgers before we were told this. Fortunately, we can eat just about whatever we want, so we ordered Dagos. And you know what? They were amazing. Molten explosions of sausage patty with greasy sauteed veggies and greasy grease bomb. Good thing we work all this horrible food off within a day.
We got a few more examples of “Minnesota Nice” when we were there. The owner of Grumpy’s, our first bar hop, approached our table and pointed out the buffet he’d cooked up a few tables over. Our insatiable appetites must’ve been slightly satiated by the pot pie Katie had just cooked for us though, and we ignored the buffet until all that was left was banana chips and mango salsa. Still delicious. Then on Sunday morning as we were caffienating ourselves & trying to figure out how to get out of town, a stranger came up with some suggestions. After his advice, he said “would you be terribly offended if I gave you guys $20 for a decent breakfast?” We kinda stared blankly…not offended, but not entirely comfortable taking handouts like that. “Tell you what. I’ll just leave the $20 on the table, and if you want to do something else with it, feel free.” I asked the baristas who that guy was, and as far as they knew, he was just a regular.
It’s important to note that we went bowling again.
Andy must’ve been thinking about his form since South Dakota, because he was throwing rocks out there. But not as many as the boy on the teenage date in the next lane. He started his game with 5 strikes in a row! He had a 143 in the 6th frame! And his date wasn’t too bad either. She may have been showing a bit too much skin through her torn black jeans than her mother would’ve approved of, but she probably left the house with a tank top on underneath. Katie could’ve sworn she saw the same boy a few days ago on his bmx, riding down the street with the same girl on the pegs in the back, drinking a huge Slurpee.
Before we left, we made sure to watch Revenge of the Nerds and have a pizza party. Words cannot describe this.
Oh, I also played polo. Minneapolis’s court was huge! I played on my touring bike until I started knocking things loose, then realized that was a horrible idea. Sven loaned me his bike (too big, freewheel) for a few matches. It was good to know I’ve still got the polo legs, since it’s only a few short days until the COG tournament in Milwaukee.
