West. Day 8.

June 16, 2016

Hayward to Cumberland, Wisconsin

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TINY STORES

I took advantage of a gas station party store’s restroom to change out of my lycra shorts and into baggies. Hopefully the change, and a dollop of A & D ointment, would solve a chaffing irritation that arose after riding in yesterday’s rain.

Exiting the station, which sat on one end of a parking lot next to a compact, log-built casino, a sense of déjà vu washed over me. An American Indian woman walked by wearing a red t-shirt with an embroidered village scene on it and the word VietNam in cursive. I swear I saw this exact shirt on this exact woman before. Somewhere.

“Good morning,” I said to initiate a conversation. This already happened. “I like your shirt. Have you ever been to Vietnam?”

“Yes, I adopted my son from there.”

“My husband served there during the war. He said it was a beautiful country.”

“Well, if you ignore that they litter stuff everywhere,” she said, and turned, her long black hair erasing the conversation.

Ah, well.

Midday, after a peanut butter sandwich on a faded green picnic table in the town’s park, I ventured into the decrepit Edgewater Store. The wooden screen door squeaked. My cycling shoes clomped against rough-hewn floor boards. Five-for-a-dollar postcards were a steal, even if they looked like they had been on the shelf since the place was built.

A woman, who turned out to be the owner, sat behind a crowded counter counting grubs into blue plastic containers. “I’ll ring it up as grocery so you don’t have to carry change,” she said and returned my second dollar bill.

“Can you point me to a mailbox?” I held up a letter for Andy.

She turned her attention back to the grubs and said, “Just put it into my store’s mailbox across the street, the mailman hasn’t come yet.”

Twenty-two miles later, I met Jim sitting on a folding chair behind the cash machine at the Village Grocery in Haugen. Another owner tending to his store. I guessed my baggy shorts led him to ask, “Are you hiking?”

“No, I’m riding my bicycle to Missoula, Montana.”

“We were just out in Montanta,” he said. “But we flew. Tomorrow we leave for Houghton, Michigan. My thirteen-year-old grandson is an ace baseball player. A coach from Michigan Tech is watching him. It takes us five hours and seventeen minutes to drive there.”

My first reaction? No way could he drive there that fast! A few moments later I realized: Oh, right. Houghton is in the UP. He didn’t mean Houghton Lake, about an hour’s drive from our home in Lupton.

Tiny store respites—a welcomed distraction from the day’s brutal hills.

POSTCARD FROM THE ROAD 6/16/16

County Road (CR) F, heading south out of Edgewater, Wisconsin (pop 605), finally smoothed out, like how my Swiss Army knife spreads chunky peanut butter on the wheat bread smushed from days in my pannier.

My lead-legs finally started to loosen up on this rolling road – maybe the next 35 miles wouldn’t be the drudge I feared.

Seven miles later the map directions said, “Turn right onto CR DD.”

Turn right off of this beautiful road onto that…that steep hill on a sharp curve, with bumpy old pavement? I pulled over to consult the map and consider an alternative.

An SUV pulled out from a dirt road that also intersected with my turn and stopped. A bare-foot younger woman got out from the driver’s side and asked, “Do you need help?”

I replied, “No, I just don’t want to go up that hill,” gesturing to CR DD.

“I don’t blame you,” she said. “Are you going to Birchwood?”

I answered yes, although the Adventure Cycling map says it is just off route.

“Stay on F,” she said. “In one mile, turn right on 48. It will take you right into Birchwood. It’s three miles either way and you won’t have all those nasty hills.”

I thanked her. I might have even said, “Thank you DEARY!” Her hill by-pass was a dream.

Peaceful Eagle Point Campground in Cumberland.