Lost in Adventure 2019 – An Indiana Girl On A Bike

This post is dedicated to my dad, Carl Richey, who taught me well how to live a life lost in adventure. When the wind is blowing through my hair on a gravel road, I think of the times I sat on the gas tank of his Cushman Eagle motorcycle while he took me and my four siblings for a spin at the same time down the alley behind our childhood home. I think about the times I was too tired to climb back up the sledding hills at Memorial Park, and he would grab my hand and pull me back up the hill for another exhilarating trip back down the hill on my aluminum saucer. I also think about all those trips hanging onto the back of his painter’s truck with my friend Tracy after we would wait patiently every day for the sight of his truck returning from work. Daddy, I wish you could’ve been with me on all of these adventures of 2019. You were with me in spirit.

This past year has been an adventurous year of gravel racing, long road trips, and bike packing. I raced all but one of the races in the Michigan Gravel Series, as well as a few races outside of the series such as The Dirty Donut, Illinois Kanza, and the fall Lowell 50. I also had some amazing road bike adventures with the boys, which included a two day, 224 mile bike packing expedition with Austin and Marc to Van Buren State Park, a 220 mile round trip to West Olive, Michigan with the A1 Cycle group, a six day, 396 mile bike packing vacation on fully loaded touring bikes with Marc to Traverse City, and a trip to Ty Ty, Georgia to ride on some dirt roads in the middle of nowhere in 100 degree heat.

This blog got lost somewhere in between riding and life, work, and family. When I looked through the previous posts, I realized the blog fell off somewhere in April when the grass grows, flowers bloom, and yardwork takes up what little time is left.

The fifth race of the Michigan Gravel Series was the Barry-Roubaix gravel race in Hastings, Michigan on April 13th. Last year I had finished in 6th place and had just missed the 5-place podium. I was extremely hopeful that somehow I could pull of a 5th place and make the podium, as I was racing 20 pounds lighter, as well as racing with Black Floyd tires, which are slick 3.8 inch fatbike tires. I was hoping getting rid of the knobby tires and 20 pounds of fat was going to make me faster up hills! Barry-Roubaix attracts over 3,500 riders of all skill levels each year, and I had no illusions of actually winning the fatbike class. Even though the fatbike class is small and typically around a dozen riders, these are hardcore Michiganders who take their cycling very seriously. I needed to shave about 12 minutes off of last year’s time if I was going to make 5th place, if conditions were similar. The entire town of Hastings closes down for the after party and awards ceremony. It’s a podium you’d never forget if you could make it.

My favorite memory of Barry-Roubaix is fighting with Melanie Splitgerber, an amazing local rider, to get to the front of our wave before the race. Hundreds of riders line up behind people holding wave numbers, and the waves are sent off every few minutes. Melanie took charge and just started walking around people saying “excuse me, excuse me”, fighting to get to the front of the wave as I stuck with her. When the race started Melanie was off like a rocket. I drafted behind her, barely hanging on. I remember looking back and seeing the entire wave about a block behind us. I wished I had a Go-Pro camera to capture that moment! It wasn’t to last, however. As soon as we turned off of the pavement onto gravel, I could barely hang onto Melanie as other riders began to pass us. I lost Melanie somewhere in the first two or three miles.

I don’t remember a lot about the race, other than it was so incredibly windy, and even though I had raced Barry-Roubaix three times before, I didn’t recognize the course. I didn’t remember it being so hilly! About two or three miles from the finish line I came across Mark Goodrich, another local fatbike rider. He was suffering, and we rode together and talked. It was then that I saw a girl on a fatbike pass me. There was no way I was going to let her do that, so I immediately took off. Poor Mark. After the race he seemed upset that I had dropped him, as he thought I thought he was going too slow. I told him that it was the girl who put the fire under me, and it had nothing to with him!

As it turned out, I got 4th place fatbike in the 36 miler and the girl who I passed ended up in 5th place, two minutes behind me. Melanie ended up in 3rd place.

The podium experience was awesome, except it was just too funny that as I approached the stage they handed me a can of beer. I held it up as pictures were taken. As I walked off the stage they said they had run out of medals and would have to mail them!

Barry-Roubaix podium and the victory beer. Melanie is in green.

The next race in the series was the HellKitten Fiddie on May 5th. For this race I was riding my gravel bike as there was no female fatbike class. There were 9 women registered in the 55 plus age group, and I know that several of them were extremely strong riders. My sister Arlene was also racing in this age group. It was to be her 3rd gravel race since she won the first ever MGRS gravel scholarship. She was new to gravel and was still very nervous. For this race I encouraged her to stick to the left and pass riders in an attempt to get up front, which was my strategy in every race. Her instincts told her to stick to the right so that she didn’t get in the way of faster riders. I told her this was a race, and she needed to stick to the wheel of one of those faster riders! If you don’t try to stay with a pack of riders and draft, you end up totally alone against the wind, and your race time suffers. It’s definitely not a way to win races.

The HellKitten is one of the harder races in the series. The short course is 50 miles, and most of the climbing is in the last 20 miles. Also, the course is very sandy and rocky. I almost always cramp near the end. I remember this day as being mild temperatures in the 60’s and perfect wind conditions. I felt on top of my game as I drafted behind a group doing 18 mph for the first 20 or 30 miles. However, once the climbing began I found myself grinding it out alone. As it turned out, I finished at 15.6 mph which was my fastest time by a long shot on that course. I think my previous fastest was 15 mph. But sadly, my fastest wasn’t fast enough. I finished in 2nd place. I had won my Kitten Mittens twice before, and I vowed to get the mittens back next year. I did earn a nice big Cannondale sleep shirt for my efforts. Arlene finished in a respectable 6th place, and beat the woman who beat her at the Lowell Classic Gravel Road Race. She took my advice at the start and said that it made all the difference.

Five days after HellKitten, Marc, our friend Austin, and I decided to go on a bike packing adventure to VanBuren State Park in Michigan. Marc had been talking about taking a bike trip for years, and we had finally planned it. As it turned out, the day we were to leave, May 10th, it was raining and about 40 degrees. Since this was the only time we had off and was also the only time Austin had available since he was expecting a new baby, we decided to tough out the weather and go anyway. The day started out almost comical. We rode the 13 miles to Austin’s house to pick him up, and as soon as we got there it started raining. About ½ mile from Austin’s house Austin couldn’t find his wallet, so we turned around to go back to his house.

We stood outside freezing while Austin looked for his wallet. Once he found it, we hit the road again. About 30 miles into the journey we stopped at a Family Express gas station and got some clear plastic donut bags to put on our feet, which were freezing and wet. We had started off about 8:00 am and by the time we got to the gas station it was already almost noon. We were still approximately 83 miles from the park and we had been hoping to get there and set up camp before dark.

As luck would have it, the wind was coming from the north, which meant we had 83 miles of headwind to go! Luckily, as we crossed over into Michigan and hit some gravel roads, the sun came out and began to warm us. The wind didn’t settle down though, and it got really hilly. I decided that hauling 50 pounds of fully loaded bike up gravel roads is not an easy thing to do!

We had packed peanut butter sandwiches, bananas, and granola bars with us, so we didn’t stop for lunch. By the time we hit a small town called Coloma, it was almost dark. We decided to stop there and eat dinner, since it looked like we were going to be setting up camp in the dark and wouldn’t be able to shop and buy food and then cook it. We stopped at a run-down Mexican restaurant, and I remember being so hungry that I couldn’t stop eating chips and salsa. I didn’t care that the restaurant was bordering on the sleazy side.

We got to the VanBuren State Park Campgrounds, 113 long miles from home, after dark. Austin and Marc went into the campground headquarters to reserve a camping site and buy some firewood. The temperature was dropping quickly, and it was predicted to be in the low 30’s all night.

We set up camp in the dark, using the lights on our bikes to light up the campsite. Austin tried to build a fire, but the logs just smoked because they were wet. He kept at it for quite some time, adding sticks from around the campground and some fire starter that he had brought with him, but he gave up in a coughing fit when the just smoked even more after all his effort.

We walked to the bathrooms and discovered that while the showers had hot water, they were unheated and the entire top of the shower stall was covered in screens that kept bugs out, but let all the weather in. That was quite an experience after riding in the cold all day!

After the freezing shower, Austin settled into a hammock, and Marc and I settled into a backpacking tent that left us shoulder to shoulder with barely any room to move. It was destined to be quite the night. I could not get warm, and the hard camping pad made my hips ache. I kept rolling from side to side trying to find the sweet spot. It was not to be! The next morning, I got up early to get dressed and pack to go. I wanted to go into town someplace warm, but I could not get the boys out of bed! Austin was quite snug in his hammock and wouldn’t budge, and Marc was happy to have the whole tent to himself. What finally got them moving was the threat of rain. As we packed up to go it began to sprinkle. Before we even got out of the park we were stopping to put on full rain gear as a torrential downpour began. We headed back to Coloma to get to a restaurant to eat breakfast. We stopped at a small Mom and Pop type diner and stripped off our rain gear as the rain had stopped. I don’t remember ever being so hungry in my life. We ate omelets, hash browns, and toast, and when the waitress suggested blueberry pancakes we said “why not?” I think I would have been content to just sit there and eat for the rest of the morning. This big breakfast turned out to be our best idea ever, because as it turned out we would not stop to eat a meal for the rest of the day and we would spend the last 62 miles of the ride in 40 degree pouring rain.

After breakfast we stopped at a grocery store and bought some peanut butter Uncrustables, bananas, and some other snacks to get us home. The first 40 miles or so were pretty nice, as the north wind was now a tailwind blowing us home! When we passed a church that had been converted to a haunted house, I had to stop and take a picture. Marc and Austin wanted to keep going, and they asked me not to stop. But I decided that I deserved to stop and take as many pictures as a I wanted after riding all those miles and that night at the campground!

Soon after I stopped to take those pictures, the rain started up again and never stopped until we got home. My feet were frozen by the time we said goodbye to Austin. The last 13 miles home were hard miles!

The cold, wet ride home. Austin doesn’t look too happy.

The last week of May we decided to head to Ty Ty, Georgia to see family for the Memorial Day week. I was in desperate need of sunshine and warmth! My hopes and prayers for warmer weather were definitely answered, as it turns out temperatures were in the 100’s for most of the week! It was an odd kind of heat, though, as there was little humidity, and we discovered that taking shelter in the shade offered almost immediate relief from the blazing sun.

Marc had decided to take his Surly Ogre to ride on the Georgia dirt roads, and I took my Niner RLT gravel bike. Our plan was to explore some of those amazing roads in between visiting family.

Georgia was much different than I expected. The roads in the country were a sandy, red dirt and clay that quickly turned to an extremely slippery mud when wet, then very rapidly turned rock hard in the blazing sun. My gravel bike was definitely the wrong bike. The 34mm tires slipped and slided all over the sandy roads, and they wiped out in the mud from the farmer’s pivots.

We saw no other cyclists anywhere the entire time we were in Georgia, even when we went into town. However, the people of Georgia were very polite. I noticed that motorists moved way over when they saw us, and they waved and smiled. One day when I walked into the local Dollar General in my bike helmet and bike kit, a woman looked me up and down and laughed. She said “Well that’s something you don’t see every day!”

This Mimosa tree looked almost prehistoric

The week after we returned home from Georgia, there was a race scheduled in Martin, Michigan which was not a part of the Michigan Gravel Race Series. The Series starts out with a bang, with back to back races every weekend for the first month of the series, then there are a few weeks break between Barry-Roubaix and the HellKitten Fiddie in May. After that, there are no races until The Divide at the end of July, and then Uncle John’s Dirty Ride the first week of September. I always find myself getting racing soft during the lull, so I had asked my sister Arlene if she’d like to do the Dirty Donut Race in Martin, Michigan on June 9th. I had been seeing ads for the race in my Facebook news feed for months, and I thought it would be a fun race. There were several donut stops throughout the race, and riders could earn five minutes off of their total race time for every donut eaten. In addition, anyone eating a dozen donuts would find themselves being awarded the “Dirty Dozen” award. You could also enter the sprint race, where eating donuts was not required. I opted for the sprint race, as I’ve discovered that donuts are not the greatest fuel. They either sit in your belly like a lump, or they burn off so quickly your blood sugar crashes.

Marc said that he had no interest in the Dirty Donut as he was simply tired from all the back to back racing, and also from the trip to Georgia. He had also planned an overnight biking trip to Holland, Michigan with the A1 cycling group that weekend. So Arlene and I decided to go by ourselves to the race, and the plan was for Marc to ride with his buddies to Holland, camp overnight, then ride over to the Dirty Donut in Martin and we would take him home.

As luck would have it, it rained all day the day of the race. Arlene opted for the 18 mile sprint race, and I opted for the 40 mile sprint race. My race started about an hour before Arlene’s, so she would have to sit in the car in the rain waiting until her race began. Marc had ridden to Holland the night before, but all the camping was sold out and he was lucky to find a hotel in Holland. The weather was no friendlier in Holland than where we were, and Marc had to ride all the way to Martin to meet us in the pouring rain.

The rain stopped for the first ten miles of the race. It was fast and flat, and I found myself riding with a group of a dozen or so riders, dodging endless water filled potholes, at about 20 mph. It was great fun! I remember as we came to the first donut stop, everyone stopped and I ended up alone. As I looked ahead, there was a huge hill in the distance. I thought that was unnecessarily cruel for those stuffing themselves with donuts. It was shortly after that first stop that it began to rain…and rain…and rain…and rain. It never let up, the hills kept coming, and there I was, solo for most of the race, being left behind by all the donut eaters. My brakes were filled with grit and sand, and they made a terrible noise. My gels were covered in muck, and I had no choice but to eat some of the grit. At the last donut stop I saw two guys lying on the ground, moaning with their hands on their stomachs.

About a mile and a half from the finish line there was a very big downhill with a sharp turn to the left. As I sped down the hill and started to turn left, I realized my brakes were gone. The sand and grit had apparently worn down the pads. I unclipped my foot and put it down in a pile of sand at the the edge of the road, just stopping the bike before I crashed into the woods. It was at the end of this road that we were to turn right to head towards the finish line. In the distance I could see a volunteer waving traffic on at the intersection. I saw her wave on a car as I yelled “I have no brakes!” She quickly put up her hand to block traffic, as I rolled around the corner. When we got to the finish line I was thankful we had to turn left onto grass, so I could slow down before stopping at the tent to get my finisher’s medal.

The mess afterwards was almost comical. I had sand and mud in my hair, inside my pants, and over every inch of me. I have no idea why I didn’t think to bring a towel or a trash bag for all of my clothes, when I knew rain was forecast all day. As it turned out, Arlene and I had to go to the bathrooms, fill our water bottles with cold water, and dump it over our heads over and over again in an attempt to clean off. The race was held at some type of motor speedway and there had apparently been an event the night before. The bathrooms were filthy and were littered with wrappers, cups, paper, and garbage. After we managed to get as clean as we could, we saw Marc at the car. He had ridden in the rain all day and didn’t have clean or dry clothes with him, so he stopped at the local Dollar General and bought a complete outfit, including shoes, for $20! Gotta love the Dollar General!

It turned out that I got first in my age group in the sprint race. Arlene managed to get first in the sprint race and the donut race, and third overall in the 18 miler. We teased her and accused her of sandbagging, since most of the riders in the 18 mile race were recreational riders and not serious races. Since there was no food we could eat in the park, and awards were hours away, we opted to leave and go find lunch and let the medals be mailed to us. This race lived up to its name.

On July 2nd we were invited to ride to West Olive, Michigan with the A1/Alt Red Cycling group. The plan was to ride to West Olive, have a cookout at one of the group’s couples’ beach house, spend the night in a hotel in Holland, then ride home. This was a 150 mile one-way trip, and I was told the group would average 18 mph. I was seriously worried about being able to keep up, as this was a group of guys and only one other girl. I was told not to worry, as the other girl was also concerned about being able to keep up, and the group was not going to ride hard and leave anyone.

Marc and I decided to drive our bikes to our friend James’ house and leave our car there. This would cut 30 miles off the trip, and would make it so that we didn’t have to leave our house at 4:30 am or 5:00 am, as we were scheduled to meet the group in Michigan City around 7:00 am.

As luck would have it, we had a south wind all of the way to West Olive! It was extremely hot, hovering close to 100 degrees, but the tailwind was sweet! We easily averaged 18.6 mph for 120 miles. The worst part of the trip was dodging thousands of potholes on Highway 12. It was like an apocalypse road. It was hard to believe that there are highways in America in such bad condition.

When we got there, we all had to go out and put our feet in Lake Michigan. I seriously wanted to just dunk all of myself, but we still had to get to the hotel, which was 20 miles away in Holland.

Our friend Brad, who was spending the night with family and had his wife come up with the car, offered to take us to the hotel. I was extremely grateful! Our hotel was a Day’s Inn, but it was cheap and the beds were hard as a rock. Still, I didn’t care. That bed felt pretty sweet!

The next morning we went to a Mom and Pop type restaurant and pigged out on breakfast. We learned from our previous bikepacking trip not to skimp on breakfast! The ride back was hot, hot, hot, but we were once again blessed with mostly a tailwind. We decided to ride along the coast and take the highway once again, to avoid the hotter, hillier inland. The ride along the coast is so pretty when it goes through the tourist areas, such as St. Joseph. We stopped for some photo ops because it was so lovely. A few miles from New Buffalo, the highway got really bad. The potholes were enormous, and asphalt rocks were scattered all over the road. It was pretty unbelievable that a highway that goes through a touristy town would be in such bad condition. These last few miles were so tiring I found myself being extremely thankful we had parked the car in Michigan City! Still, I was very impressed we averaged 16 mph all the way home, as we weren’t with a group, and we had some cross winds to deal with. This is a trip I’d love to take again.