June 29, 2024
Heading north
You’re gonna ride HOW FAR???!??
I’ve been talking about riding up to Duluth in my velomobile for a year or two now. I’ve had various iterations of the plan, generally involving a 3 to 4 day affair, sometimes as a camping trip, and sometimes with hotels. Last summer I discussed it with my friend Tom, but we never settled on a suitable date for the trip. The plan ended up on the back burner until I saw a Facebook post from a couple of cyclists inviting people to join them in riding from Minneapolis to Duluth. In one day. 165+ miles in one day. I pitched the idea to Tom who was surprisingly interested in the madcap scheme. I put us down as a maybe.
I have once ridden 100 miles, last summer. I did the 71 mile Tour de Tonka route and came home and thought since I was 29 miles from a century, I might as well finish. I failed to properly fuel, bonked bad, and decided I was not a big distance rider. That was, until my recent Europe tour when I had that magical day, you know, the one where I rode over the Reschen Pass in a prototype velomobile and then spent the next 75 miles riding downhill on flat perfectly magically paved rail trails followed by an 82 mile ride the following day. That got me thinking that maybe, just maybe, I might actually be able to ride 340 miles in two days. It’s pretty flat after all, being mostly on converted rail trails.
We’ve had terrible unpredictable weather this year. I would be lying if I didn’t say I was counting on the weather bailing me out of this crazy plan. I figured there was a pretty high percentage chance of nasty storms. Wouldn’t you know, the weather had other plans. After several weekends of nasty weather, this weekend just happened to be rather nice. Mid-70’s, sunny, and nothing more than a howling wind out of the north with persistent 25mph wind gusts. Not anything extreme enough to get me out of this. I told Tom I was a go. Tom lives about 60 miles north of me. I considered riding up and crashing on his couch Friday, but naturally we just had to have extreme humidity, heat, and thunderstorms that day. I consoled myself with the thought that it’s quite flat the whole way. How hard can that really be?
The official group was planning to meet on the north side of Minneapolis at 6am. For me to get there I would either have to load my velomobile on my car or leave my house by velomobile at some unearthly hour of the morning. I don’t trust myself to put a 55lb velomobile on my car nor do I really want to leave a rather nice car sitting anywhere on the north end of Minneapolis. I am definitely not about to get up early enough to ride up there by 6am either. Given how efficient Velomobiles are, I figured we’d be cruising at 25mph and not need that much time anyway. I set my alarm for 7am with the intention of leaving the house around 7:30 and meeting Tom in North Branch by 11am.
There is one other velomobile rider across the river from me in St Paul. Don does randonneuring which involves a lot of long-distance riding. I had invited him to join us, but he had some other plans coming up that precluded such a long ride. The best route to head north involves riding along the river into downtown St Paul and then following mostly rail trails north. The only problem is, we’ve had a lot of rain leading to flooding. The best route to St Paul is presently under quite a bit of water. So is the second-best route. Since Don lives in St Paul, I contacted him for advice. Not only did he have a route for me, but he also offered to meet near his house and ride together across St Paul as far as Forest Lake. I planned to meet him around 8:30.
I ended up waking up well before my alarm went off. I think there was just enough of an adrenaline rush to mess up my sleep. I finally gave up and got up at 6:30am. This was a wise choice. It took me twice as long as I expected to eat breakfast and make some food for the ride. I ended up leaving at 7:30am just as I planned. What was not planned was the extensive portion of my route across Bloomington that was closed due to construction. This slowed my anticipated progress quite a bit. The stop and go with a full load of camping gear didn’t help either. I finally got so fed up with the construction that I walked my velomobile across the closed street to get onto my planned route. Don’t worry, I got it on video. I promise someday I’ll even post the video!
My route to St Paul is one I’ve actually ridden many times. Straight shot East across Bloomington, up along Lake Nokomis, and then past Minnehaha Falls and along E River Parkway. The new part happened when I crossed Lake St into St Paul. From there I had a maze of bike lanes up to the state fairgrounds and Como Park. My mapping software insisted on taking me through Como Park. While quite scenic, it was slow going with all the wiggly trails and pedestrians. Lots of pedestrians. What so many people were doing out at 9am on a Saturday is beyond me. Speaking of which, I was now a full 30 minutes behind my intended schedule.
Don met me on the northeast side of Como Park. From there he led me across the rest of St Paul up to White Bear Lake and Hugo where we joined the beginning of the Hardwood Creek trail. I have to say it’s a lot easier to ride a maze of streets with someone who knows where they are going. It’s also a lot less stressful. Don knew some nice quiet roads that were more pleasant to ride than the route Ridewithgps had selected.
The Hardwood Creek trail eventually turns into the Sunrise Prairie Trail. The trail is very nicely paved and fast running. This was a good thing because I was quite a bit behind schedule. In fact, Tom had already been hanging out in North Branch for awhile. By the time I met up with Tom I was a full hour behind my intended plan. Even so, I figured from here we’d be cruising pretty fast. The official group had posted a Garmin tracking link. They were about 25 miles ahead of us. We figured we’d catch them in due time.
What we did not anticipate was the wide open stretch of old highway 61. This is a 30 mile stretch with no bike path. There is a wide shoulder along the road with varying qualities of pavement including an extended section that looks like it had been used for military bomb testing. It also turns out this section is a mostly slight uphill gradient, just enough to slow us down. And then there was the headwind. Velomobiles are not especially impacted by a headwind like a traditional bike, but the combination of near constant wind gusts, the slight uphill gradient and cars whizzing past really does take the fun out of riding. It ended up being 30 miles of my brain asking if we were there yet and questioning what possessed me to think this would be a good idea. Tom and I both couldn't help but think about the return journey down MN61 in the morning....
It was a great relief to reach Hinkley at the roughly 100 mile mark where we could pick up the Willard Munger Trail. We stopped at the Whistlestop cafe for some food. There wasn’t much in the way of vegetarian options, so I ended up with a plate of tasteless hashbrowns and a root beer float. However, it was out of the wind and that definitely counted for something.
Refreshed and refueled, Tom and I hit the Munger Trail. This is one of the older rail trails in the state. Online reviews indicated it was in pretty poor condition, so I expected we'd likely have to bail to the shoulder of the road nearby. While the path was certainly not perfect, it was much better than I expected. The path has quite a lot of trees lining it. On the one hand that blocks the view a bit, but on the other, it also was blocking that fearsome wind. It was really refreshing to finally be on a quiet path away from cars where we could listen to the birds and the hum of our tires. In fact, there was so little happening on the trail that we were able to ride most of the time side by side and chat. It made for a really pleasant 70 miles.
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Unfortunately for us, the trail was not as fast running as I had anticipated. Our average speed for the day ended up being a quite mediocre 16mph. That meant instead of arriving around 6pm like I had anticipated, we arrived instead at about 9pm, so late in fact, that the lady running the campground actually messaged me worried that something had happened to us. It was incredibly nice of her to check in on the two crazy cyclists! Thankfully the last 10 miles were downhill. Not only were we able to move a lot faster, but we also didn't have to do much pedaling. I think I can speak for both of us when I say we were running out of muscle power. On the way through Gary New Duluth to the campground, we stopped in at a pizza place to order a much-deserved dinner. With the sun going down, we decided Tom would wait for the pizza while I went to the campsite to get the tent up. The campsite lady was very relieved to see me arrive in one piece. She quickly got me checked in and I headed to the tenting area to get set up. By the time the tent was up, Tom had arrived with the pizza. Perhaps it was ravishing hunger, but to me it was the most delicious pizza I had ever eaten. I'm not saying I would ride 170 miles in a day just to eat that pizza, but it was awfully good.
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After dinner, we both got much needed showers and bedded down for the night. 11pm was not exactly when I wanted to be falling asleep, especially since we needed to be packed up and on the road pretty early because we still had those 170 miles to get home, preferably before dark. Oh, and we never caught the main group of riders. Just a few stragglers, but we did stop a couple times to eat and take pictures.
Today's ride: 169 miles (272 km)
Total: 169 miles (272 km)
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