The Where of It All

I've never created a journal for a short (one week) ride, so this is an experiment. I'm leaving tomorrow to drive north to ride the  50th anniversary Tour of Minnesota (TOM).  I rode the TOM in 2019 (Grand Rapids to Ely and back, about 313 miles) and 2021 (up and down and around  the Mississippi River south of Minneapolis, about 377 miles). This year will be more or less a counterclockwise loop starting in Cannon Falls looping west and north then back east through Minneapolis to Stillwater and back to Cannon Falls, about 310 miles. Six riding days plus an off day in Waconia.  That little loop at the northwest of the route is to take me to the nearest laundromat in St. Bonifacius and back to Waconia. 

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Each of the overnight stops will be in a town with a brewery! The breweries were few and far between on our tour this spring, so this is a welcome development. There's nothing more enjoyable (well, maybe there is) than drinking a cold beer at the end of a long bike ride. Yes, you can usually find a cold beer at a convenience store or a liquor store, but the selections are poor and most often they don't sell singles. A brewery gives you a comfortable place to sit (cool when it's hot outside, and vice versa), a better selection of beer, people to talk to, and sometimes good food.

It's not a very long ride, but I have some ulterior motives for riding it this year. One of my primary motives is to hopefully meet some bikers who have ridden in the far north of Minnesota. My brother Ed and I toured from Pensacola, Florida to Moline, Illinois this spring, and next year we plan to tour between Moline and the Canadian border. We will probably start our ride in Minnesota in the late summer and end  at Moline. The rough plan right now is to start at Bemidji (there's a regional airport there with an Enterprise car rental office), run down to Lake Itasca State Park and the headwaters of the Mississippi river, then north to International Falls on the Canadian border, down to Minneapolis via Duluth, then follow the Mississippi to Moline. The sketchy part of the plan is from Bemidji to International Falls to Duluth. I haven't found much information about resources for road bikers up in that neck of the woods. Hence my desire to pick the brains of some locals.

If any of you are unfamiliar with a ride like TOM, here are a few things you should know that differentiate it from self-contained touring:

• The organizers choose the route. None of that pesky planning on your own.  They are locals and know the area.
• Local law enforcement knows you're coming and to some extent keep an eye out for you. On a ride years ago we were accompanied by a squad of pistol-packing park rangers who "plowed the road" for us in a sense by traveling the route ahead of us looking for loose dogs and asking the owners to pen them up. On that ride I heard one ranger tell another that he had stopped a semi for failing to give the cyclists sufficient clearance as he passed them.  The trucker told the ranger, "You can't do nothin' to me. You're not the law.  You're not the man." The ranger told the trucker, "You're right. I'm not the man.  But I can have the man here in five minutes.  Would you like to talk to him?"
• You don't have to carry your own gear; you pack your stuff in a couple of duffles, and they haul it in a truck from place to place.  No need to carry 50 or 60 pounds of gear in panniers or strapped to your bike. You can afford to take a few "luxuries", like a camp chair instead of a foam sit pad, or a bigger tent.
• You don't have to carry your own food, or cook in camp. There's always food available at the overnight stop, most often in the form of local eateries. If it's a really big ride (thousands of riders) there will be food vendors on site. If the overnight stops are far from town (like Bike Ride Across Tennessee that overnights in state parks) meals will be catered at the campsite.  If the ride overnights in a tiny town (take for example Arthur, Nebraska, population a bit over 100), the community may put on a big feed for the bikers.  Even in larger towns churches sometimes have potluck dinners for the bikers for nominal cost). This year TOM  is providing 6 breakfasts, 3 lunches and 4 dinners for the riders.
• The tour provides rest stops every 15-20 miles along the way with water, other drinks and snacks. No need to constantly look for C-stores. No need to carry extra water for those long dry stretches.
• The tour arranges for each night's camping spot, be it a park, a school, a fairground. Sometimes you can camp indoors in a gymnasium, hallway or classroom (mighty handy if it's storming outside or it's oppressively hot). No need to look ahead and worry about where to spend the night, and whether there's room for you, or for that matter, whether you're allowed to camp. Some RV parks don't allow tent camping, for instance.
• There's always a place to take a shower at the end of the day. If the park, school, fairground or what have you doesn't have showers, there will be a shower truck. One time in Oklahoma the "shower" was a perforated PVC pipe dripping cold water into a livestock stall in a barn. In 100+ degree weather, that worked.
• The organizers provide charging stations so you can keep your electronics alive for the week. Headlight, tail light, GPS, cell phone, iPad, headlamp...
• There's almost always a bike shop with a trailer or a van providing support along the way.  Knowing there's a knowledgeable bike mechanic available who can diagnose problems and make repairs means you're not worried about how many miles (sometimes tents or hundreds) to the nearest bike shop. A lot less worry about carrying along some of those spare bits and pieces for back road bike maintenance: bolts, spokes, cables, brake pads, master links... 
• SAG (Support and Gear) vehicles roaming the route each day to support riders who have mechanical problems or who need attention for minor injuries. I don't need help changing a flat, but it's nice to know if my derailleur snaps off that I can get a ride to the next overnight stop or to the bike shop van.

Bike Rehab

I'm taking my Masi carbon fiber road bike to Minnesota since I don't have to haul my own gear. I'm getting older and being spoiled by some of the features of my Surly Long Haul Trucker touring bike, so leading up to the trip to Minnesota I've made some changes to the Masi. Unless you're a biker who thinks or cares about these things, you might want to skip to the end.

I traded out the original 11-28 cassette for an 11-34 cassette.  The larger cog on the new cassette gives me about a 20% advantage over the original in terms of lower gears for hill climbing. I'll still be about 20% short of the Surly in term of lowest gear ratio, but given that the Masi weighs 10-15 pounds less than the Surly, and I won't be carrying 50+ pounds of gear on the Masi, I have a weight advantage of 25-30% on the Masi compared to the Surly.  I'll call it a draw.

Because the 11-34 cassette is too large for the original short-cage rear derailleur, I had to replace it with a medium cage derailleur. While I was at it I replaced the front derailleur as well.

Of course the larger cassette meant I needed a longer chain, but I consider that routine maintenance.

The bike shop told me that I would have to replace the original Shimano 105 shifters with Shimano Tiagra shifters to be compatible with the new rear derailleur.  Even though I wasn't quite sure why, I did it anyway. The bike shop said they were hard to find, and it would probably be July before they could get their hands on them. I found them from an eBay seller specializing in bike parts. I was a bit uneasy about buying the shifters from China, but the seller had tens of thousands of transactions under their belt and many good reviews, so I chanced it. It took two weeks for the shipping from China, but I received them in time to get them installed before TOM, and they were the real deal and new, at about 60% of the cost of buying them from the bike shop.

I've always ridden on 25mm wide tires on my road bikes. I decided to go to 28mm wide tires so I can run at a lower tire pressure for a more comfortable ride. I used to inflate the rear tire to 110 psi and front to 100 psi.  Now both tires are inflated to 80 psi. There's a noticeable difference in the ride. I'm not worried about the incremental weight.  If the weight difference were that important I'd just skip a meal or two.

It's been two years since I rode the Masi any long distances, and I noticed that my neck and shoulders were getting sore more easily than they used to.  I replaced the original 100mm 10-degree stem with a 90mm 35-degree stem. The effect was to raise my handlebar about 1.5 inches and move it back about 0.7 inches.  After a couple longer rides I can say that my slightly more upright posture is noticeably more comfortable. Not only does it take a bit of weight off my hands (therefore putting less stress on my shoulders), but rotating my upper body back a bit I don't have to bend my head and neck as far to keep my eyes on the road.  Win-Win. The true test, however, will be riding 30-70 miles every day for a week.

The final comfort adjustment I made was to double wrap the handlebars and add gel pads underneath.  I had already done this on the Surly and was happy with the result.  A wider and more forgiving bar to grip helps with hand fatigue and biker's palsy (an overuse injury caused by nerve compression during long periods of leaning on the handlebars, which manifests itself as numbness and tingling of the  fingers and hands).

I really liked being able to see behind me on the Surly last summer on my transcontinental tour, so I added a bar-end mirror to the left side of the handlebar on the Masi when I returned. Even though I did it last year I'll count it as an upgrade for this trip.

I don't know how many people have commented on the eye-catching tail light on the Surly; some folks actually thanked my for making myself more noticeable on the road. Two years ago at the end of a miserable rainy day on our tour around northern Lake Michigan we met an RV driver at the campground who told us he could see us a mile before he passed us earlier in the day. I decided to mount the same model light on the left seat stay of the Masi. Visibility is a cyclist's friend.

On tours the last several years on the Surly I got used to being able to open the handlebar bag to grab my phone for a picture or to make a note for the evening's journal posting. The Masi has a Topeak DynaPack that mounts on the seat post, meaning if I carry my phone and notepad in there I have to stop and dismount to access them, which would be a pain and certainly not very quick.  There no easy way to mount a handlebar bag on the Masi, so I risk missing the shot of the wolverine right before it eats my front tire. My solution was a small top tube bag that mounts right behind the stem, just big enough for my phone, a small notepad and pen, and my wallet. Case solved.

Better Get Crackin' (or Packin')

It's 2:00 pm. If I'm going to hit the road to Minnesota at 7:00 am tomorrow, I'd better finish packing.  More from the road.