Month: April 2021

Well, we lived through 2020 and somehow made it to 2021, and the race season has begun. Despite the Covid pandemic raging on in Michigan with an infection rate higher than all of the other states, the promoters of the races that are a part of the Michigan Gravel Race Series have had a year to figure out how to comply with Michigan’s Health Department standards and still have their races continue.

Waterloo Grit and Gravel was the second race of the Michigan Gravel Race Series 2021 season, and was to be held at the Waterloo State Recreation Area in Chelsea, Michigan. The Waterloo Recreation Area is the largest park in the Lower Peninsula. It has fishing lakes, picnic areas, mountain biking trails, equestrian trails, swimming beaches, and hiking trails. It’s an absolutely beautiful area with rolling gravel hills that pass through breathtaking forests. It’s one of my favorite races. Last year when Marc and I were riding the course, we passed through a meadow with literally a sea of yellow butterflies fluttering across the road. Below is a picture I took while warming up before the race on April 17th. Spring has not yet arrived in Michigan, so the canopy of trees covering the roads is still sparse.

The race was to begin at 9:00 am, which is 8:00 am Indiana time. This meant that Marc and I would have to get up at 3:00 am in order to be on the road by 4:00 am. This is the hardest part of racing, and the part which Marc hates the most. He struggles with the lack of sleep and the driving in the dark. It also makes it extremely difficult when we’ve had a three hour car ride and we get to the race with little or no time to warm up. This race would be no exception. The fog and dark on the Interstate made for a difficult drive, and we got to the recreation area about an hour before the race was to begin. However, we had to get our race packet and prepare our bikes, which meant we might have 15 minutes to ride before we had to line up at the start.

When we got to the park we had to pay $9 for a day park pass, and we were directed to a parking lot. Once in the park, we were told we had to wear masks. I asked the man who parked next to us where our packets were, and he pointed to the end of the parking lot where there was a hill that led to another parking lot. I got on my bike and rode to where he pointed, and there was a woman there who scanned my race admission ticket on my phone and pointed to a long row of metal bike racks with numbers on them. We were to look for our race numbers. Our bag with our race plates and other goodies, such as a water bottle and some gels, was below our number. It was really a brilliant system, because we were able to get our stuff and not have any contact with anyone. A picture of the bike racks is below. Usually races have tables set up where everyone lines up to get their packets. However, with Covid regulations, they had to minimize anyone having contact with others as much as possible.

I had about ten or fifteen minutes to ride around before the race, however, Marc was busy getting his bike ready and he immediately rode over to the start to line up. I was out riding and rode right past him when 9:00 approached, thinking the fat bikes were in the second wave. Marc flagged me down and scolded me for not getting up front with the fast guys for the race start. All the fat bikes, tandems, and single speeds were to start in the first wave at 9:00. We were to stay six feet away from each other, so I was stuck and couldn’t move up to the front of the wave. We were also to wear our masks for the first mile of the race, however, I noticed that while everyone was respecting each other’s space, hardly anyone was wearing a mask. The start of the race, pictured below, is in a parking lot and proceeds out of the park onto pavement for a few hundred feet before turning onto a gravel road.

As soon as the race began, I immediately began trying to pass people to make it to the front of the pack. Marc was right behind me. We turned left at the park entrance onto a paved road, and rode a short distance to where we were to turn right from the paved road onto gravel. At the corner, I saw a man on a gravel bike who had crashed. There were orange cones at the corner marking the turn, directing racers to the outside of the cones. It looked like he had gone to the inside of the cones and had wiped out on the gravel that was spattered on the pavement, which the cones has apparently been protecting us from. He got up and got back up on his bike, so it appeared he was OK. I always hate seeing crashes right at the race start. With so may riders packed together, race starts are the sometimes the most dangerous part of the race. That’s why I usually stay to the left to avoid and try to pass others.

This race has about 1,000 feet of elevation gain in the first nine miles. So I knew right away we would be climbing hills, and I wouldn’t be warmed up. It typically takes me at least a half an hour to get my heart rate up, so I knew that I would be gasping for air up those hills. Marc has planned to stay with me during the race as he didn’t want to compete. He immediately began yelling at me to stay on a wheel. I call him Coach Marc the whip cracker, because he is a pretty ruthless coach. He constantly yells, and he tells me he’s doing it for my own good. It’s so funny, because we have this conversation all the time. I tell him to be nice and encourage me, and he says it’s not a coach’s job to be nice, and I need to toughen up. It makes me laugh because he is right. Well, Marc was not being nice today. Every time a fast wheel would pass us and I couldn’t stay on it, he would get upset. At one point he told me “you’re so close to being an 18 mph rider if you could just stay on a wheel!” Then I snapped back, “I’m a girl on a fat bike chasing guys on skinny tires. What do you want from me?! Be nicer!” I also told him to just leave me and I would be fine, because I’d won plenty of race without him.

I can’t remember how many miles we were into the 30 mile course when I saw a photographer at the top of a very steep hill. That was all the motivation I needed. No way was I going to get my picture taken being the last one up a hill. So I stood up and passed all the guys who were riding up that hill, including Marc.

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Shortly after the hill, we turned onto a sandy road that runs past the Cassidy Lake Special Alternative Incarceration Facility. This is a prison that used to be a minimum security boot camp. It is surrounded by high fences and barbed wire, and the road that runs past it is poorly maintained (maybe to discourage prisoners from escaping?!) and it can sometimes be in very bad condition. A few years ago during a winter race, there were deep ruts in the road that made it extremely difficult to maneuver. Today it was loose sand with a few pot holes. We settled into riding behind a heavier rider doing about 17 mph. Every time a faster rider would ride by, Marc would motion for me to follow but I just couldn’t. I was barely hanging on to the fat guy with my 3.8″ tires on sand.

After the prison road, the course turned onto some very smooth, rolling pavement. This would continue for miles until the sprint finish. It was discouraging that we had a headwind for the last few miles. There was a girl ahead on a mountain bike and Marc said “there’s a girl up there!” I tried sprinting several times to try and catch her, but every time I would get close there would be another hill and she would slip past me. As we turned right into the park towards the finish, I saw my break as she hesitated with the line of cones. I pulled ahead of her, thinking I had crossed the finish line, but the finish line wasn’t there. It was very confusing and I yelled at a guy in the road “where’s the finish line?” He pointed to the right, where there were more cones, and I could see the arched finish line with the finish time in big red letters. The time said 1:53. As I crossed the finish line and heard my name being mentioned over the loud speaker, I immediately looked around the parking lot to see if any other girls on fat bikes had finished ahead of me. I didn’t see any. In fact, I hadn’t seen any girls on fat bikes the entire race, so I had no idea if they were ahead of me or behind me. I pulled out my phone and checked the race website, and saw that I had finished first. There were no other finishers yet. Since there was to be no awards ceremony due to the Covid restrictions, Marc and I went back to the car. After we changed, I asked Marc to take a victory photo of me in front of the backdrop they had set up for that purpose.

As it turned out, I beat the 2nd place fat bike female by almost 55 minutes! I laughed because Marc had pushed me so hard and I could have easily won the race just going for a leisure ride. My average speed was 16.4 mph and the 2nd place finisher averaged 11.1 mph. The 2nd, 3rd, and 4th finishers were within less than five minutes of each other. 5th place had some mechanical issues and didn’t finish. I finished 12th overall out of 23 (men and women combined). I beat 8 men!

Two days after the race, I went to Terre Haute for my mom’s 83rd birthday. When I proudly showed my mom my race pictures beating the boys up the hill, she looked at the picture, then was silent. After some hesitation she said “Lou, that doesn’t look like you.” I laughed because Mom did not think it was a flattering photo. I told her that I didn’t want to look pretty, I just wanted to look tough!

I love living so close to Lake Michigan. The Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore (which has recently become the Indiana Dunes National Park) has a magical quality to it. It literally looks different every time I visit it. Sometimes on a sunny summer day, the water will reflect the sky and be so blue that it looks like the Caribbean Sea. On a really clear fall day, Chicago is usually visible across the water. In addition, the rising and falling of the waves make the shoreline disappear and reappear. In the winter months, when the shelf ice forms, the lake is at its most majestic and mystical. Just one night of below zero temperatures can turn the sandy shore into an arctic playground, complete with ice caves and ice mountains. Along the protected lakeshore, there are the houses from the 1933 World’s Fair Exhibit, “The Houses of Tomorrow”. My favorite is the pink Florida House, which is pictured above. I snapped the picture on a recent bike ride. The trip to the beach from my house is almost exactly 100 kilometers (62 miles), and is one of my favorite weekend destinations.

But something sinister has been afoot on the lakeshore. In the last six years the water level of Lake Michigan has risen by three feet. While fluctuations of the water levels are not uncommon throughout history, the rising of the waters in the last six years is unprecedented. This is due, in part, to the rising temperatures of the lake and climate change. I’ve lived close to Lake Michigan since 1992, and it is most definitely not the beach that I took my boys to when they were little. Kemil Beach used to have a beach beyond the boardwalk,and large boulders surrounding the shelter. That portion of the beach has since disappeared. The boardwalk has been swallowed up by water, and the road that runs along the lakeshore was destroyed by the waves last summer. To save the road and the homes along the lakeshore, the National Park Service had to haul in tons of sand and rocks to rebuild the shore. It’s ironic that a large part of the National Park and protected lakeshore is not natural, but man made.

On March 2nd of this year, after we had a week of warmer temperatures, I decided to take my fatbike to the beach to see if the shore was still rideable. Because the temperatures were still close to freezing, I was hoping the sand would be frozen enough to ride on. I drove my fatbike to the Kemil Beach shelter and unloaded it, then rode the short distance down the road to get to the shore. It was an incredibly beautiful day, and the water was almost as blue as the sky.

When I first set out, I thought it was a mistake to have made the trip. The sand was soft and there was a lot of foot traffic, making the sand very difficult to push through. I ended up walking the bike down to the water. Once down close to the water, I got on the bike and was happy to see that the sand was hard enough to ride on. It didn’t last long however, as there is a large section of Kemil Beach where pebbles always wash to shore. It was almost impossible to ride through the pebbles, but I kept going. Once I got past this portion of the beach, the sand became hard packed and I found I could ride almost as fast as being on the road! This was exhilarating, and I hoped I could ride the the bike all the way to the steel mill, which is about 7 miles down the shoreline.

However, this was not to be. Once I got past the pavilion at the state park, the shore ran out shortly after Porter Beach. This portion of the beach used to be rideable, and it was possible to ride all the way to the mill. In the winter when the shelf ice forms, it’s still sometimes possible to make the trip. But on this day, since the shelf ice was gone, going any further was a no-go. Below are some pictures of the end of the line, where there was no way to get around the seawall.

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So, I reluctantly turned around and headed back. At first I thought I might time the waves and be able to make it to the other side of the seawall before the next wave, then I decided it would not be wise to get wet at temperatures hovering around freezing. Although of course, Marc would have totally just kept going. Below is a picture of him forging ahead in close to the same spot a few years ago. The wooden planks he is riding around can be seen in the distance of the first picture above.

As I flew back down the shore to Kemil Beach, I was disappointed that I couldn’t have kept going. I decided that I would ride back to Kemil Beach, then back to the the Lakeshore Drive, and over to Central Beach. When I was almost to Kemil Beach I saw a fatbiker that I didn’t know walking his bike through the section of pebbles that were difficult to ride through. It looked like he was re-thinking his decision to try and ride the beach. I told him to not be discouraged and that the beach got really hard packed and fast in just a little while. He said thanks. It was strange to see someone on a fatbike that I didn’t know.

When I got back to Kemil Beach, I rode my bike as far as a could in the soft sand, then walked my bike up to the road. I then rode along the lakeshore road to the road that goes to Beverly Shores. It had been years since I had been to Central Beach, and I wanted to see if it was possible to ride the shore there. Central Beach, when the boys were little, was a beach that mostly only the locals knew about. You had to park your car in a small lot, then do a hike through the woods to get to it. Central Beach is known for its large sand dunes, and the boys used to sled down it with plastic sand sleds. Below is a picture of Central Beach from the end of the lakeshore road, which dead-ends on a waking path that leads to a cliff, with a view of the beach. I took this picture on another one of my bike rides.

When I got to Central Beach, I took a road that has been blocked off to traffic, that leads straight to the beach (bypassing the parking lot and hike through the woods). There used to be a pass between the sand dunes that you could walk down, that led directly to the shore. I assumed I could still do that, although the last time I had been to Central Beach was about 15 years ago when my nephew Michael was a teenager.

I got to the sand at the end of the road and I dismounted my bike. I then started walking through the deep sand, thinking I was going to be able to walk down to the beach. I was totally shocked to see that the sand just ended, and I was on a cliff with the beach about thirty feet below. I was shocked and confused for a minute, and was trying to figure out where the beach had gone! I looked to the left and right, thinking there had to be some way to get down to the beach, but there wasn’t. The beach had completely eroded, and it appeared they had trucked in millions of pounds of sand and rocks to build out the cliff I was standing on. This must have been in an attempt to save the road and the bathrooms that are still there. I just stood there, completely shocked that the beach no longer existed. I was flooded with all of the memories of the boys swimming there. I stayed for a while and took pictures, although the pictures below don’t really show the height of the cliff I was standing on. My bike is lying at the edge of the cliff in several of the pictures.

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As I rode back to my car, I couldn’t help but worry about the future of the beach. If the waters keep rising at the pace they have in the past six years, there is no way anyone can truck in enough sand to save it. It made me even more incredibly grateful to live so close to such a natural wonder, and to have the physical ability to enjoy it.

This year, spring in Northwest Indiana has come early. The months of March and April normally see cloudy skies and snow or freezing, cold rain everyday. The sun doesn’t typically shine on most days until May, and our growing season is much shorter than the southern parts of the state. This year, however there have been more sunny skies and warmer temperatures than I can ever remember. Because of this, most free weekends this spring I have taken a trip to the beach on my road bike or gravel bike. It is wonderful to have a destination, instead of riding the same country roads everyday, surrounded by nothing but cropless fields (and lots of wind!)

The last time I rode to the beach it was about 54 degrees with a north wind the entire trip. The sun was shining and the cloud formations were just amazing. I knew that once I got close to the lake the temperature would instantly drop by about 10 degrees, so I wore thermal gloves and a jacket. I took the long way to the beach, which was exactly 42 miles to this spot where I always love to stop and take a picture. The sky and the water were close to the same lovely shade of blue!

I sat on the stairs of this little pavilion in the picture and took some pictures of the beach. I thought about eating the peanut butter sandwich and carrots I had packed, because I was crazy hungry after riding 42 miles against the wind. Plus, I just wanted to look at the water and listen to my 70’s music on my headphones. However the north wind coming across the lake was so cold my hands were freezing without my gloves when I attempted to get the sandwich out of my backpack. So I decided to ride to the shelter down the road to see if it was a little bit warmer there. I sat on a bench in the sunshine when I got there and ate 1/2 of my sandwich. Whenever I pack food for a ride, I try to eat it in small bits. They say you only need about 120 to 180 calories an hour to sustain energy. Too much food in the stomach is like throwing a big log on a fire. It can smother the fire, but putting no wood on the fire can make it go out. So you have to eat. The trick is when I pack food, I try to eat a little bit every hour, instead of eating it all at once, so it is like little bits of kindling on the fire. I had eaten a nut bar at about mile 20.

As I sat and ate, I reminisced about taking to the boys to this beach when they were little. One Easter we even had an Easter egg hunt at this spot. The boardwalk and the beach are now gone due to the rising waters, as I had mentioned before. I have a picture of Andrew at age 2 sitting on the rocks of this beach. I thought of that as I snapped a picture. The beach used to extend for quite a distance after the rocks.

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After I was done eating, I rode down the lakeshore and took some picture of the homes built for the 1933 “Homes of Tomorrow” Exhibition in Chicago for the World’s Fair “Century of Progress”. The houses were transported by barge across Lake Michigan and are now a part of the National Park. Private owners were able to work on restoring the houses in exchange for a lease to live in them. Some of the houses have been under restoration for years. In 1992 when I first moved to the county they were all abandoned and were falling apart. The only two completely restored are the Florida House and the prison-like house called the Wieboldt-Rostone house. It was designed by an architect in Lafayette, Indiana, who designed many buildings on the campus of Purdue University. It was made with Rostone slabs, an exciting new material in 1933 that was said to never need repairs. It has withstood the test of time very well, but it is not pretty!

The Armco-Ferro House is a steel framed house with a porcelain enamel exterior (it’s the house on the right below). This too, is not an attractive house, but looks like it has held up well. To the left of it is the House of Tomorrow, which is the house that has suffered the most and is still under renovation.

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Shortly after they were moved from Chicago across Lake Michigan by barge in 1933, this is what these two houses looked liked:

After I took a few more pictures of the beach, I was ready to head home because clouds had started to move in and the temperature kept dropping! I was looking very forward to the tailwind on the way home, and I figured the tailwind would keep me warm. It was not to be. I was so cold I was thinking there was no way I could make the 30 miles home without a heavier jacket. But, an amazing thing always happens once you get just about 5 or 10 miles past the beach. The clouds part and the sun shines and the temperature raise by about 10 to 15 degrees!

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At mile 54, about 18 miles from home, I was enjoying a tailwind and a very fast downhill when I hit a bump and the seat of my bike came off! Luckily I wasn’t hurt, but I had to ride the bike for a mile to get to a safe place to pull over. Of course this was the day that I forgot my multi-purpose tool, so I had to call for a rescue from my bike mechanic and hubby, Marc. My old Trek has a seat post that accommodates seats with different rails than the ones that are on my bike seat. Mine are oval, and the Trek accommodates round ones. I knew the seat always needs tightened because of this, so it was kind of silly to forget my tool. The problem is that the only seat my butt can tolerate is the seat that is on the bike. So my mechanic showed up and fixed the seat, and I was on my way back home to ride another day!

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Maintaining fitness through a seemingly never-ending northwest Indiana winter is a continual challenge. Daylight savings time begins the first of November, and it is pitch black at 5:00 by the time I get off of work. When you add in the wind, rain, and close to freezing temperatures, exercise after work outside is a no-go. Then the cruel wind, rain, and darkness turns into foot-deep snow as the winter wears on. Temperatures typically drop in late January or February to sub zero or single digits. Riding a stationary trainer or jogging on the treadmill hardly prepares you for racing and climbing dirt and sand hills, doing a 100 mile group ride, or chasing fast wheels all summer long. It doesn’t entirely escape me that as I get older, if I let fitness slide in the winter, then summer fitness may be harder and harder to achieve; or it may be impossible to regain at all.

What, then, is the solution? This year I decided to try and cross-train outside in my own back yard, which I can do in the dark, after work, without worrying about dangerous traffic on slick, icy roads. So I asked Marc for cross country skis for my birthday. I decided I definitely needed more than spinning my stationary bike in front of the TV screen, or jogging mindlessly on the treadmill.

The cross country ski idea turned out to be a bit comical at first. For starters, I had no idea that skis come in all different types. There are skating skis (OK, I NEVER want to go that fast on snow and ice!), classic skis, backcountry skis, or touring skis. In addition, you can buy expensive skis with mohair skins, and there are some types of skis that need to be waxed. The mohair is in the center of the ski to give you traction, and the ends of the skis are slick and are waxed to make you glide across the snow. Marc opted to buy me skis that didn’t need mohair skins or the waxing (too high maintenance!), so he bought me fiberglass waxless touring skis (these skis have rough scales in the middle and are slick on the ends without the need for waxing). He found a pair of skis on clearance with mohair, but he said if they discontinued the skis I wouldn’t be able to buy mohair for them when it needed to be replaced. I also had no idea that ski length is based on your weight and the poles’ length is based on your height. In addition, I had no idea that the bindings are the part of the ski that your boots clip into, and there are different types of ski boots. Mark initially bought me backcountry ski boots, as these boots are heavier duty and he figured they would be warmer. That was a $150 mistake! Apparently backcountry boots have thicker rods that clip into the bindings, making it extremely difficult to clip in or out of the skis.

So, finally after getting all the gear, here I was, all set to ski off into the sunset in my new skis. I got the skis for my birthday in October and then I waited for snow. And waited. And waited. And waited. Northwest Indiana typically sees snow the first of December and we don’t see the ground again until March, but the past couple of winters have been freakishly mild and unpredictable. Most of December and January had alternating rain, freezing rain, or light snow. I was super excited when we finally got our first snow near the end of January. The weather swiftly shifted from 40’s to the teens overnight, and it snowed. And snowed. And snowed!

After that first snow, I trekked outside in my winter gear all ready for my adventure. It was quite comical because it took me about ten minutes to clip into the skis (I had no idea at the time that it wasn’t my fault that Marc had bought the wrong boots!) Once clipped in, I was off. I had watched a YouTube video about how to step and glide in the skis. It was actually pretty easy and fun until I hit the little downslope behind the garden. I almost fell backward from going so fast, and I realized I had NOT Googled how to ski on a downhill! I figured I needed to keep my weight forward, and it worked. After a few passes of the yard, I was feeling pretty pleased with myself, so I went a little faster. And I went down. Hard. I had Googled how to get back up once you fall, but it didn’t work. I was not strong enough to push myself back up, so I attempted to unclip my boots. It was impossible. (Again, this was not my fault as I didn’t realize I had the wrong boots, which were almost impossible to clip out). So there I lay in the snow trying to figure out what to do. I was seriously hoping the neighbor wouldn’t see the crazy girl skiing in her backyard who had just fallen down. Then I noticed Marc running across the yard. He had been watching from the back door and thought I had broken a leg or something. But alas, the only thing hurt was my pride. And the funny thing is during the entire ordeal, Titan, the neighbor’s hound dog, was running back and forth in the yard next to us barking his little hound dog head off at the crazy lady sprawled out in the snow.

After skiing around the backyard after work a few times (and getting the right boots!) and listening to my sweet 70’s music on my headphones, I decided I really wanted more adventure. Loops around the backyard can get pretty boring, even though skiing was the great workout I was looking for. I can’t even express how tired your arms and legs get moving like that for over an hour. So I decided to take the skis to Lake Michigan. That was quite the experience! The day I went to the beach it was about 14 degrees with a foot of snow, and the beach was deserted, except for one other skier and a snow shoer. The shelf ice made it look like I could ski all the way to Chicago! Making tracks in the deep snow was challenging though, and I regret that I had to turn around after a couple of miles because I just couldn’t get my hands warm. That is one thing I have yet to figure out – keeping my hands from freezing. I was wearing two pairs of winter gloves but the cold poles just felt like they were next to my bones. I really didn’t have any idea exactly how deep the snow was until I took off my skis to get off of the beach and back to the main road, because I didn’t think I could ski up the hill. I took off my skis and quickly sunk into the snow over my knees. It was absolutely hilarious because my legs were stuck and I couldn’t lift them out of the snow! I somehow managed to get them out and hike up the hill, because there was no way I could get the skis back on. And yes, that is a picture of Chicago below! It’s amazing how you can see across the lake to Chicago. I wondered how long it would take to ski there if I could. I ended up skiing about four miles and wished that I could’ve been out longer, but it was just too cold.

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As luck would have it, the snow that came at the end of January stuck around until the end of February. I bought skis for Marc for his birthday on January 2nd so he could join me in my escapades, but his skis ended up not arriving for several weeks – just in time for the snow to start melting! He did join me in the backyard a few times, and on one particular evening as we were skiing, the snow turned an incredible pink the second the sun set and hit the horizon. It’s amazing that all of the pictures below were taken in our backyard.

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In addition to my skiing escapades, I was bound and determined to do at least one ride a week outside. But riding bikes on the icy roads where a car can slide into you is not wise, and it is also very painful to ride out on the open road with the winter winds. So every weekend all winter long I try to ride either on the shore of the beach with my fatbike, or on the trails surrounding the beach, where there is lots of wind protection (and no cars!). Plus, taking a tumble off the bike into deep snow typically doesn’t hurt and is almost always hilarious.

Shortly after the first snow, Marc, our friend James, and I headed to the beach to see if the shore was rideable. The amazing thing about Lake Michigan in winter is that the shore literally changes daily. Shelf ice can form overnight and turn the shore into an arctic landscape. The shore also recedes and disappears, so that at times there are parts of the beach that aren’t rideable. Pebbles and rocks also get washed ashore during the winter that can be impossible to navigate through before the shore freezes completely. On this particular day, since temperatures had not yet fallen to the teens, the snow was extremely soft and deep. Trying to push 4″ knobby tires through the snow was an incredible workout, and at times laughable. Marc attempted to ride through some ice at the shore and got his bike stuck. He left it there and walked away (see the pics below!) while James and I couldn’t stop laughing. I took a picture of his bike, stuck in the ice. Then Marc decided it was a good idea to try and dodge the waves, but his timing wasn’t quite right. He got hit by one, and almost ended up taking a nose dive into Lake Michigan. I always just ride the shore, but boys will be boys, and they almost always do something either daring or stupid (which makes riding with boys all the more entertaining!) On this day, we rode the bikes from Kemil Beach to the pavilion at the state park, which is about 4 miles. The snow was so fresh and soft that it took us about an hour to get to the pavilion.

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When we got there James asked if we wanted to ride back on the beach or through the trails in the nearby woods. I opted for the trails, thinking it would be an easier way back. That was a mistake. The beach turned out to be pretty rideable because the wind blows the snow across the shore, and there are some icy spots where the snow isn’t too deep. There is no such luck in the forest! With all the trees and wind protection, the snow just stays put. It was so deep that I could barely get the strength to push the wheels through it. James and Marc went in the lead so I could try and keep my wheel in their tracks. This was quite laughable, because I felt like I was in kindergarten and I couldn’t stay inside the lines! My wheel kept going outside their tracks into the deep snow, where I would get thrown off the bike. Then when I tried to get traction to get going again, it was quite the feat. We ended up riding out to the Calumet Trail, which was more rideable. I managed to stay right behind Marc for the four miles it took to get back to our cars. When I looked at my watch I saw that it took us about an hour and a half to go eight miles. When we got back to the car I felt like I had gone 12 rounds in a boxing match.

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