Columnist Kim Brown is bicycling across the country. Here’s an update on his travels.
As the railroad expansion was changing forever the nature of life across the continent, one of the most perplexing challenges was the definition of time in train schedules.
Eventually, a system of time zones was devised.
Indiana was one state where, with its multitude of different rail lines, the creation of a unified schedule was most complex — a fact that can be confirmed today as you study the line between the Eastern and Central time zones. On a map, it seems to wind haphazardly across the state like a drunk wending his way home from a bar.
For The Scribe, making it back to Eastern Daylight Time was a tangible sign that his long journey was nearing its final stages. Over the last week, the route covered a series of bike paths providing safe and enjoyable passage from Madison, Wis., into the excitement and energy of Chicago and, after several days of rest, safe escape into Indiana came easily on more paths and rail trails.
The two days spent riding from Madison over toward Milwaukee and then down to Chicago were about as low-stress as you could imagine. The cinder surface of the trail was good enough to allow progress at a rapid clip. You would see bikers and pedestrians in modest numbers, and every 6 to 10 miles you would pass through small towns, friendly to cyclists and equipped to provide food and beverage as required. Ponds and rivers, interspersed with open fields, provided the scenic backdrop.
This was the final section where The Scribe was being accompanied by good friend Chris Cady, and it was fun to have a conversational partner along the way.
Chicago was a very good
layover. Your Scribe has limited familiarity with Chicago, but
had always heard it was a
great city. Welcomed into the home of Robert and Meesha Pike and of their 10-year old daughter, Elise, he got two much-needed days of rest.
Robert is a Stowe native, raised in Nebraska Valley, but has gotten to know Chicago very well after more than a decade there. It was fun to follow him around from a Cubs game at Wrigley Field to meals in good local restaurants in the West Town district where the Pikes reside, to the Wicker Park Street Fest, replete with food, beverages and live music, which coincided with The Scribe’s visit.
Riding out of the downtown on Sunday morning through quiet streets, there was time to visit Millennium Park with its exciting sculptural elements and then join the gaggle of walkers, runners, in-line skaters, bikers and even cops on Segway scooters making their way up and down the spectacular Lakefront Trail.
Robert and Elise, on Robert’s sturdy Surly bike, provided an escort until the border with Indiana was reached.
From here, The Scribe rode on alone as gradually the metropolitan mass of the Chicago area was replaced by the more rural sights of Hoosier farm country.
Two and a half days of riding brought The Scribe all the way across Indiana. His route was again dominated by vistas of farm country, the predominant crop being soybeans.
The highlight was a short stretch in the Amish Pennsylvania Dutch country, where the farms were as clean and orderly as you will see anywhere. In the nearby town of Nappanee, you would see horses and buggies hitched in diverse places such as a supermarket parking lot or at a McDonald’s.
Now the road has led on into Ohio, the last full state to cross before the home stretch through the Empire State begins. Pennsylvania is just a blip on this route; its northernmost section butts in between Ohio and New York on the way to Lake Erie. The Northern Tier Route, mapped by the good folk at the Adventure Cycling Association, will be rejoined on your Scribe’s first full day in Ohio, incidentally the land of his birth, and will take him up to Cleveland and on toward Buffalo, where next week he will begin wending his way down the historic course of the Erie Canal.
Perhaps a visit to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame lies in the offing. The Scribe is a veteran of Woodstock, back in 1969, and it would seem appropriate to pay homage to the great figures of rock immortalized in the museum.
Rolling down the Hudson and on through The Bronx, Manhattan and across the Brooklyn Bridge into Brooklyn and onward toward Coney Island and the beckoning Atlantic Ocean seems very real now. Now, if only wet weather can be avoided for the better part of two remaining weeks.
Kim Brown, a ski bum by winter and a hacker by summer, lives in Waterbury Center with his very understanding family. Comment on this column here, or email letters to news@stowereporter.com.
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