the other side of daylight

we made it back to the us yesterday. mid-90’s and little wind. scorching, naked sun.

got to customs and cyclists are treated like vehicles…get in line and wait for one of the customs rub-a-dubs to wave you forward.

or maybe it was the finger.

we had to stand in the heat for about 40 minutes…creeping slowly forward like the dehydrated beasts we have become.

i claimed my turkey kielbasa and it was not sieved by the rotund agent.

good times.

another hot one…headed towards the whitefish divide and the area where montana fish and game releases the “bad grizzlies”.

then 

in 1981, after a week of too much alcohol and too many relatives, i left a family reunion in los angeles and headed back to minnesota on my bicycle. my departure brought no fanfare. i said good-bye to my parents and aunt and uncle and stuffed a couple of gifted avocados into my handlebar bag and headed as far west as land would allow.  

it was july 7 and while the pacific ocean breezes were cool and affirming, i was infected with bad mojo about my journey. my bike was overladen with too much “stuff” and i was about embark on a 2,500 mile solo trek into the physical and mental unknown.  

to prepare for my adventure, i rode a couple of thousand spring and early summer miles in the rolling hills of the twin cities and did as much research as possible, prior to the internet ruining everyone’s lives and oh…making current, 2023 research a breeze.  

navigation then was all about foldable and fragile paper maps, tucked into a thick plastic handlebar pouch. there was no “ultralight gear”, no gps or i-tunes for distraction. my route home was effectively the non-freeway travel corridors of the modern world, from the soothing pacific breezes to my dirty apartment in st. paul.   

despite festering doubt and malaise, i set off from torrance and began my adventure of learning to bikepack while bikepacking. the first hills encountered along the ocean were short but steep and traffic was socal thick, but i managed to make it to san clemente my first day, a 60-mile hop to the south, past surfers and vagabonds.  i pitched my tent, fired up my svea, and ate a filling noodle meal. sleep, however, came fitfully in my -10° down mummy bag and the 80% ocean humidity.  first bikepacking lesson learned: don’t bring a winter bag on a summer journey.  

off bright and early the next morning, i took a left at oceanside and headed inland, through everlasting avocado orchards and up a meandering valley that gradually turned from green to brown. the temperature jumped into the low 90’s, and that was nothing.  by the time i descended past henshaw lake and into the desert, it was in the 100’s. 

second lesson learned: i was a dumb fuck. 

now 

the great divide mountain bike route courses down the spine of the rocky mountains from banff, alberta, to antelope wells, new mexico. it is 2,700 miles long and entails 160,000 feet of “up”. it moves along gravel roads, highways, and single track trails through some of the most spectacular geology in the world. 

riders have a couple of options. the first is for crazy riders and that effectively turns you into a time trialist, filling up on empty calories and sleeping a couple hours every 24-hours. the “tour” starts the second friday of june from banff. the record time is just under 14 days. like i said…crazy fuckers. the other option is for those with a more measured approach to life, which is “enjoy the ride.”

i have courted the “divide” for nearly a decade. first, upon hearing of it as a bad-ass mountain bike adventure (speaking to my “crazy”) and second, upon seeing it as the focus of an entire recreational industry. but for every toe-dip into its waters and a couple of weeks of winter-time excitement, anticipation and distraction, i was safe and comfortable within my familiar walls. breaking away, to use the cinematic metaphor, wasn’t going to happen. 

then again, i recognized i was sliding towards 70-years old, and that clock, the one that ticks louder as you age, is beating like a kettle drum.  

turn that fucking thing off! 

the plus? other than two titanium and plastic knees and a prostate gland that lays like an old leather coin purse against my bladder wall, i am healthy and have typically done well with challenges. the minus?  it seems like a big commitment and there are all the things to get done…the bike prep, the riding, the planning and stuff… 

 but overall, yeah. physically, i think i can ride 2,700 miles and climb 150,000 feet because it is a journey and makes perfect sense.  

mentally too…oh…ahh…forgot what i was going to say.  

so that was the established pattern: think about it, get excited about it, then forget about it until next winter, but 2023 was different. the winter stirrings of a great adventure didn’t go away and some three weeks after toying with the idea, i moved towards riding the divide as a life event.  

okay, maybe. i don’t know.  

that’s the thing. as you age, complacency becomes your life partner, your bitch. its presence is subtle at first, but then begins leaving its footprint everywhere you go. you fall into habits that are annoying, yet comfortable. you start online shopping for relax a loungers, while (fill in the blank) seems like too much work. you binge-watch “intervention” and “snapped”, hoping for new ideas.  

it’s easy to see the allure of that, right? 

but as the ultimate proof that this winter was different, i ordered a set of divide maps and a narrative of riding the divide. then, to ensure there was no backing out, i made plane and hotel reservations to bring me to the start of my journey.  

in july of 2023, i am riding the great divide mountain bike route, never mind the apex predators or the me that may get in the way. 

her name is odelia, and she is one of nine children who spent their formative years in a bare walled homestead in the glacial flats near onamia. she was the third youngest child of henry and marie, emigrants who felt onamia represented greater hope than the logging towns of wisconsin, causing a westward drift that ended when their moral compass said “this is the place”. they set up shop and raised chickens and cows and obviously, children. the family lived as close to the earth as the 20’s and 30’s demanded. henry sold milk and cream to the chippewa and transient europeans. marie made sure her children were fed and clean and most importantly, did not lag behind on their chores. 

from holland to onamia. 

go figure. 

i call her aunt diel, but she insists it’s just “diel”. no formal names; no familial names. just diel.

 diel is my mom’s sister.

 on tuesday, i interrupted an infectious round of public service training to take my mom’s sister on a dinner date. she will turn 95 in october and the last time i saw her was at her surprise 90^th birthday celebration; a party that filled every table in the gymnasium of st. peter’s catholic church with family and friends. even diel’s baby sister made the trek from california. ninetieth birthdays don’t come along very often, and when they do, there really is no valid reason not to attend.

 diel was waiting for me. she has slowed a bit physically but still gets about and mentally, is as sharp as a tack. she lives in the same house she and her husband marcellus (always known as uncle sally) built in the 50’s. her garden is planted. her tomatoes and beans and potatoes will be off-the-charts good.

 driving through the maze of parallel roads and confused stop lights that define modern-day st. cloud, we talked about her family. even though some of that family are my cousins, i have had a hard time keeping track because those 9 homestead children beget over 45 cousins. to live life and not experience loss only means you haven’t lived much of a life. uncle sally is gone, as are her daughters jane and connie and grandsons joey and chad. 

her appetite is good. we put away the applebees spinach artichoke dip and lime fiesta chicken without much deliberation. i listened.

 she talked about the farm.

 diel said she has been thinking more and more about the farm. how could she not? it was a formative, daunting location during a time when luxury was a full belly or darned socks. it was all about hardship and illnesses and chores and reflexive cohesiveness a family finds when distractions are lacking. she said they were always cold in the winter and always swatting bugs in the summer; that they were always in dirt and mud and yet, when you look at pictures of that family, all of the clothes were clean and pressed and if any dirty skin was present, grandma had yet to locate it. “i don’t know how ma did it,” she said.

 when her mother got sick, diel was enlisted by brothers and sisters to provide care for the family matriarch. when her mother returned from the hospital – a survivor in every sense of the word – she returned to her husband and 9 kids without missing a beat. years later, she had had enough and announced that it was time to leave their winter-time slice of uninsulated heaven and move to california.

 back at her home, we looked at pictures. a decade ago, there was a gathering at the farm and some of the remaining nine got together to reminisce; some for the last time. diel pointed to a picture of the house and to a window in particular. she said that was the room my mom and dad would stay when they visited after their marriage and before the war and before – for them at least – life took a different direction.

 not too long after that sentimental reunion, a bulldozer removed the tiny house that sheltered 11 degroods from every curveball life and nature could throw at them.

 my mother’s sister is unafraid of what life has to offer now. she talks of her blessings and health and really, isn’t that the best perspective? she will continue to garden and keep busy with grandkids and great grandkids and hopefully, will accompany me to dinner again, the next time i am in st. cloud.

 until then, i’m pretty sure she’ll keep thinking about that farm in onamia.

i will too.

let me get this straight…the right knee is connected to the left hip????? wtf????!!!!!!!! 

all those classes and all those labs and here i was, convinced that the body’s symmetry was pre-ordained and irrefutable. some 6 weeks after my knee surgery, however, i am finding out that the symmetry has nothing to do with fluid motion and now, fluid motion has nothing to do with me. 

it was april 21, 2014 when dr. samuel harms made two small incisions on each side of my right patella and somehow, managed to remove an ice cream scoop’s-worth of meniscus from between the tibia and femur, or as we like to say in cook county “the lower part and the upper lower part of your foot”. recovery has been slow and at times painful, but just when the pain gets bad, i remind myself that this was elective surgery and when that fails, i have pills. 

i have been on my bike, both indoors and outdoors and have even upped the efforts outdoors, which is fine and pain free and damn…it feels good to be in my summertime lycra…as opposed to my wintertime lycra…which is wool…but the problems come when i am off my bike and trying to move like a lithesome, nearly 60-year old gladiator. stairways remain out of the question and so, i have become an elevator jockey, riding between the first floor and the basement of the courthouse where i am either taking my two allotted work breaks or using the woman’s bathroom because it reminds me of a mountain meadow under spring bloom, rather than the men’s, which is like taking a virtual tour through a rendering plant. 

between my limping and gimping, i have begun to notice that somehow, the right knee pain has been transferred to my left hip. under an introspective look at my medical history, this much i know: i have borne no children and heretofore, have never had any ambulatory hip issues. 

until now. 

at times it is a sharp pain but most of the time, it’s just a dull ache. the kind of dull ache my ex-wife described she suffered from whenever i came home from work…or was anywhere around her. 

fortunately, i have an appointment with the good doctor this week and i will be able to at least, convey my maladies to someone who has medical acumen. evidently, my cats don’t care if i am having hip problems. 

i’ll be fine and really, my knee is getting better and as it improves, i would imagine my hip will as well. at least that’s what i’m telling myself. if not, i hope i don’t have to go up a set of stairs to get at my pill bottles. 

as i type this, the mount borah epic is underway in cable, wi. and i am sitting at a table in tofte wishing i were somewhere in the line of 500 riders, twisting and turning along 34 miles of single track trails; each of them striving for the finish line and the beer and brats that are there. good luck to tim “ancient” kennedy, adam “pitbull” harju, and john “norma’s son-in-law” twiest.

i am going slap-me-silly stir crazy. i have been in owatonna for 4 ½ days, bouncing between my hotel room and the lion’s den adult boutique…i mean my hotel room and cabelas…where nearly a week of immersive septic training has taken place. the class was an intense cerebral whirlwind that knocked the cobwebs off of synapses that haven’t been awakened since sometime during my halcyon days of grad school. it ends with a 3-hour test that wasn’t as hard as i feared and wasn’t as demanding as expected. relief is tangible.

another student, who also happens to be a “public servant” has the same intent as i…and we both end up in our “public servant” vehicles in the nearest subway; each of us hoping to extra pepper jack cheese the last 4 days from our memories.

 “what’d you think?”

 “it wasn’t as bad as i thought”, he says.

 “hey…mccloed county…is it legal for you to drink and drive in your county vehicles? because it is in cook county.”

 “really?”

 “well no, but it will be for the ride home today.”

 the drive means traveling up the north to south vertebrae of the twin cities; doing so on the edge of the memorial day weekend and doing so just as the end of the work day announces its presence with choked roads and people who believe stop and go traffic is a pilates workout.

 i desperately want to be home; away from concrete and halogen and traffic and throngs and fast food and open and hidden agendas and everything that has led me to the north shore… a journey that for me, began at birth.

 i meander through the cities and stop at my brother and sister-in-law’s to offload the empty beer bottles; doing so (conveniently) just as the brats are being turned on the grill. it is 5:30 and considering where they live, i know that not being able to hear traffic on the freeway means the traffic on the freeway isn’t moving.

 after eating, my brother and sister-in-law sense my antsiness…they have seen it dozens of times.

 on a good day, travel to lutsen from this point is a 3 ½ hour affair, including several stops to do what aging men on solo journeys do…look for adult boutiques.

 against better judgment (story of my life) i enter the stream of slowly moving vehicles headed towards polaris and exhibit all the public servant constraints i can…i let people merge…i do not tail gate. most importantly, i do not make eye contact.

 it takes an hour to travel 25 miles to forest lake. on the way, i begin to identify those motorcyclists who will not survive the summer…i also identify the distracted and impaired drivers…because i am one of them.

 i do not stop at hinckley. i do not pass go. i pee in a cup. i accelerate. my shoulders relax. everything in the rear view mirror is but a poorly digested aftertaste.

 the oaks and plowed fields give way to pines and spruce and fir. the sun casts long golden-hued shadows. the head of the lake still supports nomadic chunks of ice. the four lane highway turns into a meandering slice through rock and deep forests.

 every trip north reminds me of why i love living where i do and why, whenever i am away, i can’t wait to return home.

i arrive before the store is open; before the imagined throngs of sportsmen and sportswomen come-a-calling to make their camo and survival gear purchases or perhaps, invest in a new eviscerating implement. a doddering gray-haired woman lets me in. i ask “where is the septic training?” and she points to the back of the store “back up there, up the stairs and take a right at the mountain.” “you mean the mountain with all the dead animals on it?”

“exactly”, she replies. 

with that, i have entered a cabelas for the first time in my life. to me it represents all that is bad and over-processed…just another conglomerate superstore that has silenced the pulse of small town businesses from many small towns across the country.

i don’t go to wal-mart either, but that’s because i am deathly afraid that someone will take my picture and post it on “peopleofwalmart.com”.  

owatonna and cabelas and septic training seems an odd triumvirate, but upon my drive to the hotel, realized it could have been owatonna and the lions den and septic training. the lions den is an adult “themed” store conveniently located off of i-35. the random thought of me going to its front door at 8 in the morning stating “i’m here for septic training” is unpleasant at best; even more so when i think i could have ended up in a seedy booth with a roll of quarters and none-the-wiser about the science of septic treatment. 

we are tucked away in one of cabelas hidden rooms, behind camo facades and walls thick with pictures of ancient hunters and fishermen and whiskey-soaked grins that beam at their gathered quarries. somewhere, i imagine, someone in the store is skinning all types furred and feathered critters so they can add to their dead animal collection. 

even inside the store though, it smells like farming. if yesterday was the smell of arbys, today it was the sheen of manure that has been spread overnight by the manure fairies. 

in a rare upbeat moment, i feel as though i could be in heaven…if heaven was a shit-soaked, darkened alley in the seedy section of willyville. 

cabelas and the lions den and land-applied manure seems the perfect accompaniment to this septic training. it’s no different than smelling patchouli and thinking I should be shopping at the cook county co-op.

concerned with the likelihood of nest failure at their world-famous webcam eagle nest in st. paul, minnesota, the minnesota dnr today announced plans to place a field biologist in the nest to help the struggling parents feed the two surviving eaglets. nongame dnr head carroll henderson said “we’ve already lost one chick and with the chickadee check-off funds running low this year, we can’t afford to send another baby eagle to the raptor center.”

questioned about the decision to place a camera on a nest where defecating and viscera and death were real possibilities, henderson said “well…we put a caution note for viewers and they should know when something bad is going to happen…i mean, most people watch the discovery channel, right?…and right now, this has nothing to do with nature, it’s all about the ratings.”  further pressed to reveal the name of the surrogate biologist/parent, henderson turned evasive and said “she doesn’t know yet, so we’re trying to keep it quiet, but she is in for a real surprise.” referrring to the loss of the first-hatched eaglet, henderson said “it was unfortunate we didn’t have a biologist up there sooner, because our (agency) biologists could raise a nest full of eaglets better than the most seasoned pair of adults. afterall…many of them have four-year college degrees.”

when asked if the placement of a human in an eagle nest was interfering with nature, henderson said “no more than people slowing their car down when a deer crosses the road or when people put on deet during the steamy nights of july to fend off bloodsucking insects.”

pressed for details on when the biologist would be in position and what her tasks would be, henderson said “she’ll probably go up the next time the camera has “technical difficulties”…she’ll feed them regularly, shoo away the adults with flailing arms and when she thinks they are ready to fly, she’ll just toss them over the edge of the nest. it’s kind of what the dnr does.”

last year’s eagle pair laid eggs in january and the eggs never hatched despite the adults spending 49 days trying to hatch two eggs that would have normally hatched in 34 days. henderson said “obviously, that was a loser pair of adults and there was a point where we almost went in and we were like…give up…but instead, we just drove around in our dnr liquid propane-fueled priuses and mocked the adults.”

when reminded the same pair of adults was responsible for successful egg laying this year, henderson said, “yeah right…like what…do you work for the dnr?”