NEWS FLASH!

To contribute to the Muscular Dystrophy Association, click here: JON'S MDA DRIVE

Hello friends!

I plan to ride home to Milwaukee Wednesday, Aug. 7. Probably I will stay a night before that in a hotel in Lake Country or Waukesha, thereabouts, and ride the New Berlin Trail through Greenfield Park to the Menomonee Parkway to Hoyt and the Hank Aaron Trail. Please join me at any point along the way!

MDA has promised a limited number of shirts for those who want them, to help us promote the cause.

It’s been a great ride and I am moved by all the support I’ve received from near and far.

I’ll spend a little time at home before embarking on the final leg to NYC!

I will send further details when I get it all figured out.

Jon
414-243-4550
jonolson7758@sbcglobal.net

Posted in Stillwater at 9:20 pm Monday, July 29, 2019

The countryside

To contribute to the Muscular Dystrophy Association, click here: JON'S MDA DRIVE

I've crossed and re-crossed the Mississippi several times, as my route wends and weaves, and, even more, as the river's route wends and weaves. This picture was taken up in central Minnesota, and I was thrilled to see it, but it was not the Mighty Miss it was to become. I crossed back, and then went over it again, and felt, "Come on." I think that I have finally crossed the Mississippi for the last time, somewhere above the confused course of the river through The Cities.

For Stillwater, the Saint Croix River is a bigger deal, its wide waters straddling the Minnesota-Wisconsin border until it joins the Mississippi about 24 miles south.

Here's some shots from recent days, what I see when I look left and right.

North Dakota.
The words say "Stolen Land."

North Dakota.
I stared at this for a long time. Were these spaces once dwellings?

Siesta in the corn

Colonel Cobber, in Backus, Minnesota.
The story is that Paul Bunyan cleared the land so the corn cobs could flourish. 

Minnesota

Rest stop.

Minnesota

Minnesota

On the Saint Croix.

Bridging the Saint Croix

Posted in Stillwater at 3:20 pm Monday, July 29, 2019.

Back when I had hair

1976. Me, Bruce Taggart and Mark Johnson.
A shakedown ride for our West Coast adventure.

This is kind of where it started. We rode from Seattle to San Diego after high school graduation. Bruce, in fact, had just finished 11th grade. I look at this now and wonder: "What were our mothers thinking?"

We took the train out to Seattle and biked 1,800 miles in 28 days, with a few days off. That's an average of 64 miles a day -- way, way beyond what I'm doing today. I was so young and callow that, one day when we met a rider who said he was a meteorologist, I asked, in all seriousness,"So you study meteors?" We survived aggressive logging trucks, and I lost my travelers checks -- remember those? -- and had to go to a bank to get them canceled and get new ones. And I hit gravel in the gutter and fell on one of our last days, or was it our very last day? Mark leapt over me and his pedal gouged my back and a quick-thinking pickup driver threw my bike in the back and took me to a nearby hospital, where I got stitches. I think we went to Bruce's grandmother's house, our endpoint, and then came back and finished the ride without bags. Is this right?

Bruce rode an early portion of this current trip with me, and Mark plans to join me in Michigan. Forty-three years later.

*

To contribute to the Muscular Dystrophy Association, click here: JON'S MDA DRIVE

*

So I had a little scrape with the law. I suppose it was inevitable. Actually, "scrape" is too harsh a word for it. "Discussion with an officer" is better. He was really quite nice about it.

In tiny Grandy, Minnesota, population 100, I needed a break, and a place to stay. I could have ridden 5 miles out of my way, for a hotel or campground in Cambridge, and then 5 miles back to my route the next day, but I hate to give miles away like that. So I went into Grandy's one business, a bar, The Brass Rail, and ordered a soda and fried potatoes. There was a guy whose tattooed arms bulged out of his vest at the next booth, and I asked him if the gleaming white motorcycle parked outside was his. He said it was, and that he loved it, but though he works for AT&T in LA, he keeps the bike here, in Grandy, his hometown, because it's too hard to keep a motorcycle in LA, and too dangerous to ride one there. 

He asked about me, and I told him about my trip. I said I was looking for a place to stay. He said, "There's a picnic table over by the post office, why don't you just put your tent up there." He told the waitress about this idea, and she brought it to the bar owner, Rod, who said that would be no problem. He called the postmistress at home just to be sure, and she said it would be fine. So I thanked them all and went over and set up my tent.  

The post office was a little building at the edge of a park, by the baseball diamond, and I put the tent up on one side, not hidden, but out of plain sight. I was inside the tent rearranging things when I heard a voice. "What do you think you're doing?"

I looked out and saw Officer Johnson -- khaki uniform, bullet-proof vest, wraparound sunglasses set up on his head. Pretty well equipped for a town of 100. Though maybe was a county deputy.

"Um, I'm setting up my tent."

"This is not a campground. There's a campground down in Cambridge."

I told him that would be 5 miles out and 5 miles back -- 10 extra miles. I told him Rod at the bar had thought this would be OK, and that he had called the postmistress, who had no problem with it.

He asked for my driver's license, which I handed over. He called it in, got some kind of response -- it could only have come back clean -- and gave it back. He asked where I was going. I told him New York City, from Astoria, Oregon, with a stop in Milwaukee. He said, "How does your wife feel about this?" My wife? What does that have to do with my camping problem? How does he even know I have a wife? I said I'd done a lot of long trips, and that she accepted it.

I said I'd gone 2,000 miles on this trip to date and that I was raising money for the Muscular Dystrophy Association. I offered to move my tent out of sight, if that would help, and I gave him one of my cards. 

He studied it and asked if somebody I knew had muscular dystrophy. 

"I do," I said. 

This seemed to change him. He thought a moment. "OK. I'm not going make you move your tent."

"Thank you," I said. I reached out to shake his hand, but he said, "I don't shake hands," and put out a fist. He wouldn't shake hands, but he would fist-bump. So I bumped it.  

"I can't promise you that another officer won't come around  and ask you these same questions."

"Sure, " I said.

But he must have called it in, because nobody else stopped. 

I got up early and rode to Osceola. 

*

Pix: 

My helmet has cracked in a few places like this.

So I got a new helmet today.

Ms. V joined me in Osceola for a couple days.

Posted 9 p.m. Saturday, July 23, 2019, in Osceola.

Cabin, cabin, wherefore art thou?

To contribute to the Muscular Dystrophy Association, click here: JON'S MDA DRIVE


I spent two nights and a full day in Walker, and drank it up. I had the walleye dinner at the Bayside, a Reuben at Benson's, and a multi-course breakfast at the Chase on the Lake.

I went to church Sunday morning at Hope Lutheran -- a huge, splendid church just outside of town -- and heard a good sermon on Martha and Mary when Jesus came to visit. By arrangement I met up there with Joyce and Gary Schuette, who bought the Leech Lake cabin we'd vacationed at all our lives, in 1995.

The Schuettes said it was built in 1949, which I thought sounded too late, but my mom was 16 then, and the youngest of her three brothers was 4, so that would be about the time the parents might have  had a little free time after 16 straight years of babies, one every four years. They called the cabin Mel-O-Manse -- Melford, Orla, preacher's house, with a nod at "mellow."

The Schuettes took me out for a tour. The cabin is utterly changed. It was a one-month-a-year cottage, and now it's a year-round home for Joyce and Gary. The little lane to the house is now paved and plowed, so winter access is no longer a problem, and the house is winterized and as much a suburban home as a house in the wilderness could be.

I showed my sisters this top picture and a couple of them complained about the color. It used to be a rustic red, but I think this color -- what would you call it? taupe? -- makes it less conspicuous in the woods, more in tune with the trees, and with the house next door.

Among the many problems with the cabin before Gary -- a carpenter by trade -- transformed it, was that the floor tilted. I remembered a little goofy dancing we did back when I was in college -- really pounding hard -- and thinking: We're all going to slide down the hill! The cottage sat on stacks of blocks or stones, not a foundation, and the underspace, Gary said, when he began work on it, was infested with creatures. He also found that the beautiful stone chimney was cracked and leaking -- smoke, water -- whatever a chimney can leak. So something had to be done.

He and helpers propped up the house on posts while they dug out a basement and build a foundation; enlarged the living room space; moved the kitchen; made the screen porch a porch for all seasons; took out the funny little stairway we had that went out the hallway to the front yard and turned the space into a bath and laundry room. And they moved tons of dirt and imported tons of stones to create outdoor sitting areas, a more graceful entry, and a landscape that is not an adventure to navigate.

Gary spent over a decade on the house while Joyce continued her career in the cities, and he said if he'd known how much work it needed, he would have razed it and started fresh. So, in a way, we're lucky that it stands at all. I think the general footprint, the preserved portions, and the old-looking new stone fireplace, does evoke the way it was. Gary and Joyce said what they like about the house, what's unique about it, is that every room has a view of the water. It all faces out.

Maybe I don't have a heart, but I don't feel nostalgia for what it was. It's like cars you love -- what are you going to do, save your old cars in the attic?

Oh, and L, S, K, you'll be thrilled to know the outhouse still stands.

Thank you Gary and Joyce, for spending so much time with me on Sunday!

Here's a bunch of  pictures:

What it used to look like.
Are the people Gary and Joyce after they bought?

The new fireplace stands where the old one stood, but now serves two sides, with the room extended beyond it.

Gary preserved the floor and ceiling boards and the posts that cross the room.
This room really does look very much the same. 

This sitting area is built on the hillside in front of the cabin.

I love this stone wall.

The kitchen sits to the side, where the front bedroom/bunks were. 

Driverlessness

The world's largest tiger muskie, in Nevis, Minnesota.

To contribute to the Muscular Dystrophy Association, click here: JON'S MDA DRIVE


For a couple days on either side of Fargo, I rolled through flat fields that just did not stop. Pictures don't show it, really, so I'll spare you that moment of tedium. But just as the upheaval that created the mountains I saw in the west is magnificent to ponder, the placid spaces -- the places where geologic forces seemed to not have touched -- are just as miraculous. (Now somebody will say that I don't know what I'm talking about, and of course I don't.) The plats, the fields, are all laid out, and every road, every single road, is straight, and every road that crosses another does so at a precise right angle.

*

In Fargo I stayed in a Warm Showers house owned by Shawn V. His two middle-school-aged kids came and went and mingled. Shawn is an engineer, and supervisor, for John Deere,  which is based in Fargo, and makes, of course, agricultural machines. Shawn's an unassuming guy but has a resume he could boast about -- an engineering degree, an MBA he earned at night school, electronic engineering courses on his own, an MIT specialty certification in a course Deere sent him to (the course was "really hard," he said). Also, he was going to Japan this week with two colleagues on a business trip for the company.

I asked him what was going on at John Deere. He said they are working on GPS-guided machines that don't need a driver. This is exactly what Jerry Schillinger, my farmer friend, discussed. While I don't think Schillinger's machines were fully driverless yet, they were pretty close.

Shawn said they are also working on machines that can precisely target a single plant for, say, insecticide treatment, as opposed to spraying an area, and wasting spray and unduly polluting.

In the pantheon of driverless vehicles, he said, the aerospace industry is at the top, the agricultural industry is second, and driverless cars are third. Of course, the number of people you can hit and kill are few in space, and few in farm fields, and quite a few on city streets. So maybe the scale is loaded.

Also -- bored yet? -- he said there are big farm operators who trade in their year-old machines every year for the new model, because the pace of change is so great. These machines cost half a million dollars or more. The old machines are sold to smaller and smaller operators over a 40-year lifetime. So, John Deere, while churning out new machines, has to keep supplying parts for old machines -- and some of the sensitive electronic parts, like computer chips, have a short shelf life, so I suppose they might not make it into a machine before their useful life is done.

Crazy!

*

Here's some recent pix:

This is Joey, from The Bronx (dig the hip hop way he wears his hat -- in NORTH DAKOTA!). He is an athletic coach and a reporter for the Valley City, North Dakota, newspaper. He interviewed me for a story about my ride, and found and removed a tick from my neck using his lighter. It only hurt a little bit.

This is Lauren, who drove the sag wagon for her doctor-husband who was doing hundred mile days across the country. She had a better trip than he did, I think, as she explored small towns and met people like me for lunch in interesting cafes. She offered to help me out, too, but at the time I was doing fine.

This is Dan, who was a nice guy despite the gangsta stylings. He and I rode together for parts of two days, and split a hotel room one night when we needed it. I gave him a discount on his share, as there was just one bed and he had to sleep on an air mattress on the floor.

This is nicest thing about the dying little small town I stayed in a couple nights ago. It rained.

Marketing an old man

Henry, Jasper, Jon, Chris, Satchel

Dig the new shirt!

We had a mini family reunion with the Sogn family -- my cousin Chris (Knutson) Sogn and his family and hangers-on. Kristi, his wife, has been my "social media manager," lining up interviews and making connections that I dutifully try to fulfill. She could have a career in this, and it's been a lot of fun. The shirt is the newest wrinkle in marketing Jon. The Sogns were vacationing in northern Minnesota and stopped by Napoleon, North Dakota, on their way home. Though I don't think it was quite on the way.

One of the recent interviews was by Alex Taylor of the Jamestown Sun. He's from Michigan and has been at the paper just a couple weeks, and I think is still getting used to North Dakota. It's tough finding work in the newspaper business, let me say, and congrats on the position. It's a small staff -- two news reporters, a sports guy, and maybe one or two others.

Here's Alex and his story:

His story:

https://www.jamestownsun.com/community/3972519-Cross-country-biker-with-muscular-dystrophy-stops-in-Gackle

Nice job!

*

To make a jarring segue, I want to introduce two guys and their innovative sag wagon.

Ron and Bill

Ron that day, at 81 years old, had ridden 70 miles. Bill, in his 70s, had delivered the trailer, which opens into a built-in tent, to their destination campsite, then biked out to Ron, and ridden back with him, getting 58 miles himself.

The trailer looks like something you might haul an ATV on -- square, flat-bed, a little fancy, but nothing special. But raise the roof, open it up, and you get this:

A bunk on each side, a common aisle in the middle, and all the stuff you didn't want to carry on your bike in the car or in the storage space in front. Better than an RV, and easier to park.

*

Here's Chris's dog, Harvi.

And here's me signing off:

To contribute to the Muscular Dystrophy Association, click here: JON'S MDA DRIVE

Yet another setback

My recreated map

To give: JON'S MDA DRIVE


Somehow in the last 24 hours I lost my North Dakota map, the dumbest thing I've done since I left my wallet behind back in Augusta, Montana, forcing Terri, the manager, to drive it out to me.

I called the places I'd stopped in yesterday, including a bike store where I got sealant ("slime" they call it) put in my front tube (my back tube already had it). But the bike store didn't have the map, as did nobody else. It's likely that I took it out when I stopped to sit in the shade and just lost track of it.

In between catnaps of depression, I went and bought a state highway map, which was helpful but missing many of the roads I wanted.  So I downloaded an Adventure Cycling digital map, which was pretty good, but didn't actually name the roads I wanted, just showed me where they were.

So I called them. I got a cartographer, Nathan, on the phone, and he sympathized with the digital map's shortcomings, and actually scanned and sent me the very map I'd lost. I could print it out if I could find a store like Staples or Office Max in this netherland of highways, but it seemed too much risk and too much work. So I transposed salient details onto my highway map, and between that and the phone app, I hope to be OK.

It cost me a day -- I won't leave till tomorrow. My sense of purpose has lost momentum, and the day has dragged and dragged. Because I'm cheap, I spent a couple hours looking at a thrift store and Kmart (yes, Kmart exists out here) for some way to pad my sore derriere, instead of paying three figures for a proper set of riding shorts to replace my flattened old pair. Here's what I wound up with:

I'm pretty sure the Attends are aimed at women, but a sore butt is a sore butt.

A little over two hundred miles to Fargo, and Fargo to me sounds like paradise.

Slow news day in Glendive

Just had to share this!

The media and me

Primping

To give: JON'S MDA DRIVE


Perhaps you didn't think I'd amount to anything. Well, let me ask you: Have you been on TV in Glendive, Montana? Are you preparing for a shoot in Bismarck?

This and more, my friends, have I achieved.

It's not just my naturally good looks. No. It's the strength in my legs, my ability to climb hills, and the way I laugh at a headwind. HA!

No, really, it's the MDA drive. Cross-country bikers are a dime a dozen. Well, let's say a dollar a dozen. I mean, it's not quite that easy. But it is done, usually by foolish youth. But to be 61 -- 61! -- with ailments, and to be raising money for others afflicted. That, my friends, is a TV worthy story.

In Glendive I had an audience with Chamber of Commerce director Christa Van Dyke and communications director Brendan Heider. Christa described some of the attractions of Glendive, including Makoshika State Park, Montana's largest state park at 11,000 acres, known for dinosaur fossil discoveries, including triceratops and T-rex fossil remains. Even from outside the park, it is a forbidding landscape, full of very creepy (from a distance!) badlands formations.

I also met there reporter Hunter Herbaugh, of the Glendive Ranger-Review, who interviewed me about my trip, my motivation, my MD (why I talk the way I do, why I walk the way I do), and the fund drive. I said I was at first only interested in the ride, and just, almost on a whim, threw in the MDA fund drive. Now I see the ride as almost subservient to the fund drive -- a vehicle (pardon the pun) to raise money for the MDA. Hunter's story is coming this week, I think. I'll post the link when it's available..

After these discussions Christa took me and bike in her pickup to the KXGN TV station where reporter Denny Malone conducted an on-camera interview with bike and biker. Open the link and scroll down to view! (I wish I had a better speaking voice.)

http://web.kxgn.com/2019/07/08/interview-with-cyclist-jon-olson/

The road, the hills, the wind

To give: JON'S MDA DRIVE

All I got for my birthday was North Dakota. Not a lot there, but I think the sign is pretty cool.

I've been thinking about the Great Plains -- on the bike you have a lot of time to think. I guess I pictured them as flat and empty, but today, at least, they were full of hills and full of wind. I tried to note truly flat spaces -- and you do see them, often in crop fields, but even among those there are plenty of crops that circle hillsides and run over rolls and undulations to the horizon. A road like Old Highway 10, which I rode much of the day, follows the shape of the land pretty closely, and you feel every change.

I've also spent some time on I-94 (it's got a lane-wide shoulder for bikers), but it is a different species of road. It takes what are maybe a dozen separate rises, fills the space between them and creates one grand, rushing uphill raceway. Except for the  distant scenery, you could be in New Jersey or LA or North Carolina.

I did 64 miles today, and that is really my outer limit. The wind is constant and exhausting. It blows hard enough to take all the fun out of a downhill ride, and you just have to accept it.

I was 10 miles from Dickinson today when I felt I could not go on. With another hill ahead, I pulled over, ate some snacks, drank my warm water, then stretched out on a flat space, used the inside of my helmet as a pillow, covered my eyes, and slept. I do this, actually, often. Give it 15, 20 minutes and you wake up ready to try again. I'm an easy sleeper, though, and this is probably not for everybody.

That's what i got today. I have other stories -- about Dan, who I rode with a couple days, the Glendive Chamber of Commerce and local media, and, and, and.

Thanks to my Uncle Mark for this night in the lap of luxury at La Quinta Inn!

Birthday dinner

Time for a break.

A day at the farm

On the farm.

To give: JON'S MDA DRIVE


Jerry Schillinger remembers driving a tractor for his dad as a boy, pulling a trailer that spanned 10 rows. He was out in the sun for hours. One day his dad attached a radio to the tractor and it made the job more fun. Then he put an umbrella over the driver's seat to offer shade. The boy might've thought that was about as far as you could go in making a hard job comfortable.

Today Jerry has a sprayer that has an air-conditioned cab, a full sound system, and drives itself using GPS. It covers scores of rows, and keeps track of what it has done and doesn't have to do, shutting off specific spray valves when it hits, say, an irregular edge, saving spray. A field that might have taken full days to treat is now done in a matter of hours. It's just one of the many miracles of modern farming that Jerry Schillinger employs.

On Thursday, July 4, through my amorphous network, the Schillinger's invited me to their house in Circle (blueberry pancakes!) and, with the whole family, to their son Brett's house out on the farm for a barbecue of stuffed burgers and chops. There was a lot of food.

I asked Jerry a lot of questions -- probably too many questions -- about his farming operation, and he was happy to show me around. They don't have livestock; they grow crops. This year they have their 6,500 acres planted in wheat, peas and lentils. The peas are not eaten as sweet peas, but are dried and, because they have a lot of nutritional value, they or their ingredients become part of foods that you may not associate with peas (I hope I have this right).

The wheat, Jerry said, may be used in bread, of course. A single, beadlike grain of wheat has two parts. The husk, or bran, and the white interior. It's actually the bran that has most of the nutritional value of wheat -- so whole wheat bread, raisin bran, foods like that, are more nutritious than white breads, like Wonder Bread, which have the bran removed through milling. I suppose this is widely known, but hearing it, right there at the source where it starts -- well, it seemed profound to me.

*

The kids -- Brett and his wife's four kids -- were all over at the farm. They have a full playground, and lots of vehicles, including mini ATVs. Biking, as I am, you do come to recognize the advantages of a motor, and, for getting around on a farm, well, two pedaled wheels just don't cut it.

*

I just want to thank publicly the Schillinger family for including me so completely in their holiday. I hope that some day I can repay it.

Kenny and Sage

Jerry and Carol Schillinger (left and right) and their friend Pete. 

Land, land and more land

What's next?

To give: JON'S MDA DRIVE


I fought hard yesterday for every inch against a ferocious headwind and came away with 44 miles, which I was proud to claim. Sometimes, against a gust, I had to push hard just to move downhill. 

I slept in the backyard of Sand Springs' only store, and as Tina the manager was leaving to babysit her grandchildren way off in Billings, she said, "I wish I didn't have to go. Are you gonna be OK? Do you want some cards to play solitaire or something?"

It rained much of the night, but it had stopped when I woke at 5:30. I wanted an early start to beat the wind and started to pack up. Then it rained again and I dove back into the tent, dozed a little, and went back at it. I ate instant oatmeal using the hot water in the bathroom, had a little leftover pizza, bought a gooey roll in the store, and was on my way by a little after 8:15.

I wanted to reach Jordan, 32 miles away, by midday, and then do 20 more and figure out a place to camp, to put Circle within reach the next day (tomorrow, Thursday). There was nothing but nothing after Jordan for 70 miles -- no store, no dot on the map, nothing but land, so I thought of stealth-camping, but any tent anywhere would stand out like a sore thumb. Which meant asking a landowner if I could set up in a corner of his field for a night. If I could find a landowner.

So I did 12 miles, 15, 16 -- halfway to Jordan. The wind was mild, the sky was dark, the air cool -- and then it began to rain. Dots, then more, then more. I put on my raincoat, pulled up the hood. Water began pooling in the low spots in the road, spraying up when I ran through them and when cars passed. I wanted an overpass to hide under, but nothing crosses Highway 200 in Montana.

Then a heavy pickup passed me and pulled to the side. When I reached it, the driver leaned out. "Do you want a ride?'

"Where are you going?"

"To Glendive," he said.

"Is Circle on the way?"

"You go through Circle to get to Glendive."

It wasn't a hard choice. We loaded the bike and bags and drove 80 miles to Circle.

We talked as the shoulder of the road disappeared, the pavement grew narrower, the hills more drastic. I imagined biking this and appearing, right past the brink of a hill, with trucks behind me not seeing me until they had crested the hill -- and nearly missing me, or not.

Jim 

The driver was Jim, a road builder. The rain had canceled work for the day, and the next day was the Fourth, the holiday, and the road crew never works the day after the Fourth, because traffic is so heavy. So he wouldn't work again till Monday, which he didn't like, because, after 23 years with the same company, he's paid hourly -- work an hour, get paid for an hour. He said he was a "permanent seasonal" employee -- he'll always have the job, but you don't build roads in the winter in Montana, so he's laid off and collects unemployment.

I asked if he had kids, and he said two daughters, one in Everett, Washington, and the other in Montana. I said that must be nice for him, to have them live so close, because our own kids are on opposite coasts. He laughed and said, "Everett is 1500 miles away." I will never get used to these distances.

Jim said his family owns a ranch -- 450 head of cattle on 24 square miles of land. They rotate the grazing parcels and have to keep peace between the bulls. They rent out use of the land to the owner of the cattle, though it's all held between different family members. "I just own two head," he said, and when the two get a calf, part of it goes to each daughter when it's butchering time.

I mentioned something I'd read about semi trucks, which he used to drive, and he said, right out,  "I'm illiterate." And later I felt bad when I used the word "meticulous," and he said, "What?" "Um, careful," I said. But on his subjects -- roads, trucks, pay -- he was a good talker.

I'm going to stay here in Circle two nights, courtesy of my amorphous network.

A real county!

A hint of what once was in Winnett

Another hint.