Day 78-81 South Bend to Ann Arbor, Michigan

 

Day 78-81 South Bend to Ann Arbor, Michigan

      The ride from Valparaiso to South Bend took considerably longer than I had anticipated.  My GPS informed me that cycling these 60 miles should take about 6 hours.  It took me over 10 hours.  I have to come to terms with the fact that insofar as I am pulling a heavy trailer and I am not the greatest athlete,  I have to double the projected time if I am able to keep to any sort of schedule.  I arrived in South Bend at 10 p.m. and had to navigate 90 minutes in the dark.   I have lost my bike light along the way and I believed that I would always be in bed by the time it got dark. Navigating through a strange, poorly lit, and busy city in the dark was very stressful.

    In the morning I continued to Ann Arbor, Michigan and was grateful to re-connect with Tish Shapiro, and high school classmate of mine.  One of the upside of facebook (there are many down sides) is that it puts connects us with many people from our past.  I am very grateful for her hospitality and meeting her dog, Ava.  She was given the name because of her uncanny resemblance to the actress, Ava Gardner.

     This is the second time on my journey when I have been able to visit someone I had not seen in over 40 years.  It is a very revealing thing to compare notes on your recollection of a shared history.  I am very grateful for her kindness and hospitality.

Some Indiana Surf

 

Day 76-77 Chicago to Valparaiso, Indiana

 

Day 76-77 Chicago to Valparaiso, Indiana

     Although hot, it was a beautiful bike ride from Chicago to Valparaiso.  I decided to break the trip into two days and spend the night in Lansing, Illinois.  It was my intention to camp, but when I rested a half hour before the campsite, the oppressive heat combined with the cloud of mosquitoes attracted to me inspired me to get a hotel room.

     The extreme humidity caused my room door to swell and it did not close properly when I went to bed.  At approximately 2 a.m. someone walked into the room stating “There you are!”  I jumped out of bed and shouted “This is not your room.  You must leave now!”  He did not leave but approached me which made me extremely anxious.  “Don’t freak out” he said, “It’s me.”  I repeated my demand that he leave the room, but he came even closer and touched my arm.  “You must leave the room now!!!”  He asked me “Why do you keep saying that?”  This is an epistemological question for which I was not prepared.   I was pondering if I was socially required to answer the question when his cell phone rang.  He picked up, listened to the voice on the other end, hung up and left.  In the hour it took me to get back to sleep I was pondering if I should have thrown in my lot with the heat and mosquitoes. 

    Although much of the urban development along the southern shore of Lake Michigan has experienced the collapse of industry and subsequent depression, Valparaiso is a surprisingly lovely town.  I am grateful that Minna Harlan, a former parishioner from Switzerland was willing to host me for what turned out to be two nights.

     Minna had recently retired from JP Morgan Bank (the company for which she also worked in Geneva) and is extremely active in her retirement.  I am very grateful for her kind hospitality and her willingness to listen.  It appears that she, also, had a strange man wander into her apartment the very same night as my nocturnal interchange.  He had fallen asleep on her couch and woke her up when she heard him sneeze.  I have since been checking out the corners of rooms to see what other surprises are lurking there.

     She has two parallel lives; one with her German speaking parents and siblings in Hamburg and the other with her English speaking descendants in Indiana.   She seems to navigate these two environments with ease and takes joy in the occasional moments when they intersect.  There had been some more changes with my planned route, so she graciously allowed me to spend a second night there while I planned my next two weeks.

     While there, we spent an afternoon visiting Indiana Dunes National Park as well as the State park adjacent to it.  It was a beautiful place to for a hike on the sandy trails and to climb hills larger than I thought possible in Indiana.  I had lived in Central Indiana for two years as a child and never realized that there were beaches in the state which warned of dangerous undertow.  It is place of great natural beauty of a type that surprised and delighted me.  In cycling from Valparaiso to South Bend I was struck by some of the beautiful architecture of farm houses I passed.  These were miles apart from each other and most contained huge porches offering a view across their farms.  The weather was cooler, the bike paths were welcoming, and I was able to cover 60 miles that day (which is a big deal for me). 

Day 70-75 Chicago

 Berths in the U-boat with a Torpedo in the center.

Bike Trail leaving Chicago.  It is so lovely that one could overlook the fact that it was 90 degrees.

Day 70-75 Chicago

    It was a delight to meet up with my son, Jeremy, and to enjoy the hospitality of Tom Crittenden, who is now the interim priest at Grace Church Hinsdale.  It was also a relief to get off of my bicycle for a few days.

     The transition from rural to urban on a bicycle is striking.  Cycling through South Dakota and Nebraska one observes people valiantly and adjusting the environment.  In the west, it is necessary to demonstrate strength, creativity, loyalty, generosity, and humility to survive in an often hostile place.  In an urban setting you find that our large brains have made it possible to stop adjusting the environment and to force the environment to adjust to us.  In the city, transportation is more accommodating of vehicles.  They are well paved and offer few obstacles to wheeled transport.   They are also very crowded.  One can live out one’s days in a climate controlled environment oblivious to weather.  In the city, you experience the outside world only on sidewalk cafes and manicured parks.  In the city, we try to conquer those natural forces which cause anxiety and discomfort.  In the process, we have convinced ourselves that we are in control of the world and our lives.

     Kurt Vonnegut in his brilliant and disturbing novel “Galapagos” writes about the danger of our “big brains” which can so manipulate the external world that we begin to think of it as our servant rather than our creator.  This is can be seen in the city.

      I was, however, grateful for our ability to live in a climate controlled environment at that particular time because the heat wave which has been bouncing around the country had just settled into Chicago.  The triple digit temperatures caused me to conclude that this would be a good time to visit museums.  Jeremy and I visited the wonderful Museum of Natural History (which I had last visited when I was 14) as well as the Museum of Science and Industry.

     What was of particular interest in this second museum was the actual German U Boat which had been brought to Chicago.  There was a fascinating video of how it was towed from storage of the coast of New England down the St. Lawrence Seaway and to Chicago.  It was hauled across the highway from Lake Michigan to the plot of land adjacent to Museum.  The highway was closed for 24 hours to make this possible and I was particularly impressed with a sign donated by a local sign maker “Caution, Submarine Crossing”.  A building was constructed around the submarine to protect it from the elements and the public is invited to tour the vessel. 

     This Submarine (a U505) is the only submarine which had been captured over the course of World War II.  On the tour the guide was able to graphically describe what it was like to serve on such a ship.  There were 55 men, and 30 beds which required they all sleep in ships.  Fresh water was scarce so washing was not possible.  Only the cook and the captain were allowed to wash their hands every day.  With a little imagination, one can evoke the odor which would grow over the course of the journey.  When confronted with depth charges which threatened the vessel, the men would all squeeze into the bow of the craft and submerge quickly.  It was necessary remain absolutely silent as the terror and the stench overwhelmed you.  The lights were turned out and one could hear over the overhead speakers the sound of approaching depth charges.  When all was lost, the vessel surfaced and surrendered.  None of the crew perished and the surrender likely saved their lives.  70 per cent of all U-boat sailors did not survive the war.

     The most striking image was of the torpedoes stored between the bunks.  It evoked the line by Woody Allen’s take on the book of Isaiah “The day will come when the lion will lie down with lamb.  However, neither will get much sleep.”

    Jeremy flew back to Toronto and I continued my cycling transition from an urban back to a rural landscape.  Within an hour of cycling out of the city I encountered rolling hills, shady woods, and corn fields.  Although the temperature was in the ‘90s, the bike paths were shaded and lovely.  I left around noon and cycled to Lansing, Illino

Starved Rock State Park

 

Cycling from Davenport to Chicago

 

 Cycling from Davenport to Chicago

     There is a network of canals connecting Chicago to the Mississippi River which make it possible to take a boat from the Great Lakes to New Orleans. Though this waterway is no longer used to transport cargo, the tow paths which remain are wonderful bike trails.  The canals often widen into lovely large lakes with pleasant beaches.  There several rivers which provide wonderful kayaking and access to the diverse ecosystem found in that part of the world.

      The paths also pass through a number of state and county parks which invite cyclists and hikers to rest or to spend the night.  I was particularly impressed by Starved Rock state park which has a series of hiking trails and waterfalls.  Illinois has surprised me with the diverse natural beauty which can found there. 

     When I reached Joliet the transition between rural and urban biking became evident.  The drivers were impatient with cyclists and would blow their horns in the hopes that I might disappear.  I attended a local Church of Christ that Sunday morning and was impressed with the welcome I received.  This denomination has embraced the tradition that all singing should be acapella.  The worship leader would give us a do re mi at the beginning of the song and the entire congregation would sing robustly in harmony.  It was wonderful and I wondered where they all learned to do this.  I was reminded of the observation by Walter Brueggemann

“The passion of church singing is inversely related to the affluence of a congregation.  The rural Pentecostal churches can sing their hearts out.  Suburban Presbyterian churches sing acceptably out of a sense of duty.  Downtown Episcopal Churches pay people to sing for them.” 

   It was a strange and glorious feeling to be surrounded by this mutli-racial, intergenerational group delighting the harmonic sounds of their own voices.  In singing together in harmony I experienced that our lives are linked in ways that are sometimes mysterious and miraculous.  Perhaps we could require congress to sing before the beginning of each session.

Day 70, Davenport Iowa

 

Day 70, Davenport Iowa

     I have had long days of cycling and often fall asleep before I am able to record the day’s events.  I have some notes from which I am now reconstructing some of my observations.

     Davenport is a lovely city on the banks of the Mississippi River.  I was able to have a beer on the riverside park while I listened to a local swing band play in the pavilion.  The evening was cool and I was able to watch a paddle wheel bring tourists up the river from down south. 

      I am grateful for the hospitality of Dustin and Jodi who gave me a place to stay.  There flat was a bit crowded, but they invited me to spend the night in their sign shop along one of the commercial streets.  I found a place among the mysterious looking printing machines used for the production of signs, locked the front door, and crawled into my sleeping bag for an early bed time.

       About 30 minutes later, there was a loud knocking on the glass door to the shop.  I arose from my sleep and walked over in my pajamas to answer.  There stood there a young woman with 4 large insulated bags.  She was relieved that I was there and she asked if she could put this food inside for the reception in the morning.  In my confused state, I invited her to do so.  I re-locked the door and went back to bed.

      Sleep did not come easily as I began to worry about the food.  Dustin did not mention anything about a reception, and the space seemed small for a gathering of any size.  In my ego-centric imagination I thought perhaps the reception was for me (though Dustin is the only person in town who knows of my existence). The large printing machines looked ominous in dark.

     I arose early, packed up my things and began to cycle across the Mississippi River.   There is a wonderful network of trails on both sides of the river with a lovely bike-bridge which spans the river.  I stopped in the middle and marveled at the river traffic moving below me.  A thought came to me that I should probably tell someone about the food in the sign shop.  I phoned Dustin at a work site to inform him of the nocturnal delivery.  He was even more confused that I was.  He began to question me which only revealed the magnitude of my ignorance.  He then left the site, returned to shop, and realized that food was intended for the grand opening of a beauty salon next door.  The fifty people who had gathered there for festive opening were standing around hungry and grateful for the transfer of food.  For the rest of the day I pondered what would have happened if I had decided not give a call to Dustin.   I must remember to not spend the night in foreign sign shops.