bike.brew.america

The Fourth

November 1, 2011 · Comments Off

“I hate the Fourth of July. The early middle age of summer. Everything is alive and kicking for now, but the eventual decline into fall has already set itself in motion. Some of the lesser shrubs and bushes, seared by the heat, are starting to resemble a bad peroxide job. The heat reaches a blazing peak, but summer is lying to itself, burning out like some alcoholic genius.”

-Gary Shteyngart, Super Sad True Love Story

Every road-trip I’ve taken has, at least tangentially, been about America, about trying to somehow, simultaneously, absorb it and transcend it and get lost in it. But in a car, the terrain flies past; you can make it from Chicago to Denver in one long day.  On a bicycle, you can see individual clods of dirt lining the roadside, can see and react to every crack in the road which unwinds before you like an endless spool of black yarn.  There’s a level of attention to the present and to the physical that can’t be achieved in a car. There’s a tactile connection to America, so that riding vast stretches of plains in Eastern Colorado, antelopes occasionally jutting across the horizon, I felt the vastness of country, eyes filled with wonder—and yet I felt like I was somehow a part of that vastness, a blessed traveler. This was America. And we were being absorbed into it. Which sounds like some Jack -Kerouac-grade bullshit, but it’s true.

We had wanted to make it to Denver by the fourth of July, but there’s 500 miles between Wichita and Denver, and as we left Wichita on the second of July, it became clear we weren’t going to make it. In fact, the morning of the Fourth we were rolling out of Lakin, Kansas, making our way to the Colorado border. Fifteen miles outside of Colorado, in Syracuse, we pulled into a combination Love’s Gas Station and Subway Restaurant.1I went in to fill up my Camelbak with water. Their soda machine didn’t have a water tap, so I had to use Subway’s dishwashing sink. The sink was in a closet that was all of 20 square feet. There were two employees in there as I filled my water. I hadn’t showered in three days and was aware that I was probably suffocating the employees. The manager was standing just outside the closet at the sandwich counter, almost blocking the doorway. The manager, an old, tough-looking woman asked me where I was from.

“We’re coming from New York.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

And there it was: the straight-talking, we-don’t-give-a-damn-about-your-nuance that I would have expected in the South but not in the Great Plains. “I’m from Rockford, Illinois, ma’am.”

“Hmm. Illinois. You’re a long way from home.”

“Got a long way to go, too. Headed to San Francisco.”

“Well, well. Good luck with that.”

Meh....

 

Finally....

Eastern Colorado is by no means paradise, but there’s a noticeable change when crossing over the Colorado border. Everything seems slightly greener. There’s more irrigation. The towns aren’t as shabby. There are far more prairie dogs.2And there was the hope that came from knowing we’d reach Denver soon. Denver, which promised the hospitality of several friends as well as a feast of microbreweries.

 

We stopped for lunch in Holly, a pleasant town that advertises being the home of a former Colorado governor. After I’d managed to spill water all over the floor at another combination Subway and gas station while trying to fill my Camelbak, we headed to the town’s grocery store to grab some lunch.  It was a small old storefront, a tiny grocery store with no more than three aisles.

Outside, a girl around twenty was leaning against the building smoking contemptuously. It’s the same in all these small towns in the West. Girls who don’t leave town and end up working at the grocery store, the diner, or the dollar store. Their boredom is palpable. Their high school youthfulness gone. It has been replaced by a beat-down look, accentuated by cheap highlights, gaudy tattoos, and occasionally the hollowed-out look of a junkie. Inside, a young couple was saying goodbye to the cashier. They were moving to Texas to find work. Texas is all heat and brush-fires this year. When we were in Stuart, Iowa, waiting out the storm at the Super 8, I met a woman and her daughter who were huddled under the overhang where we parked our bikes, smoking. They were from Texas and said they hadn’t had rain in something like one hundred and fifty days.

But maybe this couple was headed to Dallas. By this point in the trip, I’d noticed that my bank account was lower than I’d expected. We’d eaten too much fast-food back East, and we’d spent too much money taking out the people who hosted us. Chip, whose account wasn’t low but who exercises Yankee thrift and calculation in everything except for ice-cream purchases,  was sick of eating fast food and agreed that we could start eating at grocery stores instead.  We’d take turns guarding the bikes as one of us would walk into a grocery store and try to get as many calories as possible, and some fruit, for $6 or less. When Barclay was training with pros in Arizona, he was also broke.

“What’d you do for calories?” I asked him as we were driving around Wichita.

“Tollhouse Cookie Dough. 2,000 calories for two bucks. It’s great.”

We grabbed a pack of cookie dough (sugar cookies), a few bananas, and a huge pack of generic sandwich cookies to snack on while riding. The cashier, a pleasant looking woman in her mid forties with a cross necklace, looked confused. Or perhaps she smelled us.

“Cookie dough?”

“Yeah. We’re trying to get as many calories as possible for as cheap as possible. So yeah. Cookie dough. For lunch.”

“Wouldn’t it be better to get something else? Something more nutritious?”

“Nah, this is great.”

She gave us a disapproving look as she handed me my change. We went across the street and sat on a bench in the sun and devoured the cookie dough and the bananas.

In Lamar, we hung out at a McDonalds for a couple of hours to get out of the heat for a couple of hours and send some emails. Gross fact: flies seem to prefer three days worth of dried sweat  and sun-tan lotion to hamburgers. It’s unclear whether this is a commentary on the tastiness of McDonald’s hamburgers or on the quality of our sweat. I happen to think the McDouble is pretty tasty. I think writing is hard enough without constantly swatting flies, so after two hours I was on the verge of an anneurism and shot off an angry email to McDonald’s customer service. They later sent me a very thorough follow-up with the course of action they would take, but I didn’t really care. I wanted a coupon for a free burger.

An hour or so before dusk, we pulled into Eads.  At 747 people, it is the largest town in Kiowa county.  We hit the gas station, but it was small and had nothing that looked appetizing, so we decided we’d splurge and grab something at the diner we’d passed. But when we went back, it had just closed. Then we saw a guy riding towards us on a bicycle with panniers.

We’d been on the road over a month and hadn’t talked to any touring cyclists. In Kansas, we’d seen a group of twenty-or-so headed the opposite way, a sag wagon hauling all their gear. He rolled up with a big grin on his face, “Hey guys.” We were like two dogs circling each other, sniffing each other out.3He was riding an old Trek outfitted with a full set of waterproof Ortlieb panniers. His helmet was white and flecked with star stickers. On the back of it, he’d written “Brooklyn” and “San Francisco” in black Sharpie.

“We were just going to eat at the restaurant, but it’s closed, I guess.”

“Yeah, I just ate there,” he said.

“Was it good?” I asked.

“Yeah man. I had a big steak burger.” I was sorry I’d asked.

Erik

We rode back to the gas station, where Chip bought a microwavable burrito for $3.50, and I opted for a quart of chocolate milk and some over-priced Pop-Tarts.  Chip and I sat down on the curb of the gas station and started in on our dinner as we swapped stories with Erik.

He was a student of poetry and dance, and at the moment he worked at a catering company and danced in a modern dance company.  He had a break in his dancing this summer, so he hit the road. He had to be back at the beginning of August to fly to Korea for a dance tour.

“Why’d you decide to do the trip?” I’d asked him.

“I mean, I had to. It wasn’t really a question. I got it in my head somehow and then I decided to do it.”

Before the trip, Chip did a fair amount of reading about cross-country cycling. I don’t think I read one blog post. In fact, if Chip hadn’t sent me a list of things to acquire, I probably would have shown up with a couple of pairs of cut-off jeans and a dry-fit tee. Erik had been following Adventure Cylcing Map’s XYZ Route. He’d stayed at bike hostels and met a lot of cross-country cyclists, and had picked up some of their touring tricks. So he told us about the wonders of Dollar General, where you could by Gatorade powder and cheap peanut butter. He also told us about Chamois Butter,4 and about Warm Showers, a website where touring cyclists can find lodging. We told him about cookie-dough.

When we’d finished our dinner, Chip and Erik decided they’d like some beer. I decided I shouldn’t have drank so much chocolate milk.

The bar across the street was closed, but there was a liquor store a block down the street. We rode over, though the cashier at the gas station told us it’d be closed. It was. Next to the store, there was a group of people sitting around a grill and a picnic table. There were a few campers parked behind them. I was mulling over the idea of asking if they’d sell us some of their beer when a middle-aged woman walked up to us.

“You boys need something?”

“We were trying to find somewhere to buy beer.”

“I can open the store real quick if you want something.”

She disappeared behind the back of the building and the lights came on and she was unlocking the front door.   It was a shabby liquor store. A room with cases of buld light stacked in piles forming haphazard displays. On each wall there were coolers with every kind of Budweiser and Coors product. She had some Miller, too, though no High Life or PBR.

And because Chip hates Miller Light and because I was intimidated by this kid from Brooklyn and wanted to seem like I knew something about something, we  sat there for ten minutes trying to decide what to get before finally settling on a six-pack of Amber Bock. The woman, getting slightly annoyed at our indecision, informed us that she only took cash, so Chip tore off for the gass station to withdraw some money.

There was a picnic area just off the main road running through town, a little place for travelers to stop alongside the railroad, but we thought camping there might invite curiosity, so we set up our tent under the trees in a park that was on the otherside of the the tracks. This was our first experience drinking in public, but Erik assured us he’d been doing it his whole trip and that it wasn’t a big deal, so long as you kept it hidden from cops. The next morning we realized we’d camped directly across the street from the police station.

As we packed the last of our gear into our tents, the fireworks started to explode across town. We walked a few blocks to get a good view, and then sat down in the middle of a street and opened up the rest of our beer. The grain silo towered behind us, and we saw lights on top of the office where people had gone to watch the show.     We sat there, drinking our beer and talking about poetry and biking as the colors smeared the blue and purple bruised sky. And then it was over and our beer was gone and we retreated to our tents.   In the morning, we went back to the gas station for breakfast and coffee and then went our separate ways. He rode on to Pueblo and we kept riding towards Denver.  We were sad to see him go.

 

 

 

 

 

 

1. Subway has way more small-town stores than McDonald’s, which probably helps explain why they surpassed them as the World’s largest restaurant chain.

2. Though, I suspect them of some anti-semetic tendencies. Chip would ride by, and they’d stand there, quietly peering out of their burrows, perhaps saluting the American flag he was flying from his trailer. As I would ride by, they’d start barking up a storm. Chip, who apparently developed a bond with the praire dogs at the Madison Zoo and felt the need to defend their Colorado counterparts, noted that they were probably patriotic and were just doing their Homeland Security duty, reporting a guy who “looked decidedly like a terrorist wearing spandex. I mean, look at that Persian tan you’ve got going on. And where’s your American flag? Huh? I’ve got one. Huh, GUY?”

3. Obviously a flawed analogy since there are three of us here. But I’m thinking of Chip and I as a collective dog,  a unified front, which is flawed again, because Chip would clearly be a Golden Retriever or a Jack Russell Terrier, whereas I’d be something like an old beagle, a real mopey dog that sleeps most of the day. Or a cat. But every analogy breaks down somewhere, so I’m told.

4. I had no idea why it was called Chamois Butter. When I hear the word Chamois, I think about a coth you use to clean your car. Or I think about the character of “The Jesus” in the Big Lebowski, polishing his bowling ball between his legs. The latter is not terribly far off. It turns out that the cloth padding in bike shorts is called a chamois. But I didn’t realize this until we were in Napa, California. We ended up opting for a product called “Az Master.” It has cartoon of a (presumably) sore, red butt on on the label. We would recommend it.

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West Kansas

August 24, 2011 · Comments Off

At Barclay and Emily’s wedding in Wichita, Chip asked Emily’s father  what we should expect heading to Colorado.

He grinned: “Not much. Boredom. Heat. Cattle.”

Chip, always the optimist, replied, “Really? I mean, what is there in the way of cities? We’re trying to figure out where we should stop.”

Mr. Tjaden kept chuckling. “Well, there’s Dodge City. And west of that there’s really nothing. Garden City, I guess.”

He was right. Here’s a map of Kansas, to give you an idea.

The day after the wedding Chip and I slept in. By the time we’d installed my new saddle1 , packed up our stuff, and said goodbye to the Tjaden family, it was already noon. But the roads in Kansas are flat and forgiving, and despite the 105 degree heat, we gutted out 100 miles on highway 400 by nightfall. (Ok, so it’s not completely flat. There’s 2,000 feet of elevation climb between Wichita and border town of Holly, CO. But the roads seem flat, and the difficulty of climbing hills is largely psychological.)

It was the second of July, and as we approached Greensburg , a town that was decimated in 2007 by a tornado and had recently been rebuilt, we could see the town’s fireworks from miles away. We found a rest stop pavilion east of town, and I put my sleeping bag down on a picnic table only to discover cockroaches scurrying around the table’s base. We strung up hammocks from the rafters that night.

There is almost nothing in West Kansas in July besides fireworks stands and cattle. The cattle stand listlessly, chewing dead grass and slowly panning their heads to follow us. There is something deeply unnerving about a herd of cattle staring you down, silently, like the herd is passing judgment.  We  found ourselves repeatedly yelling at the herds and giving them the finger, which I’d like to blame on heat and dehydration.

The nothingness of West Kansas is what makes the  graveyard of metal sculptures, glorified lawn-ornaments, outside of Mullinsville so pronounced. These sculptures, the work of M.T. Liggett, are apparently part of the Kansas’s 8 Wonders of Art2 and are impossible to miss if you’re driving down 400. He’s got a whole field of them.

This is Americana, and I love the idea, perhaps because it confirms my stereotypes of the sort of roadside attractions I’d expected to find west of the Mississippi. But the art is mostly confusing, angry, and occasionally just plain offensive:

I'm no Republican apologist, but it's unclear to me why Laura Bush has a swastika on her shoulder.

Here’s a video, replete with a lot of explosion sounds and Star Wars blaster sound effects, of Liggett explaining his art: “And if I pissed you off, Boom! I got done what I was started to do.”

This lead me down a rabbit trail of thinking about Camus's Myth of Sisyphus, a philosophical investigation on suicide, which is a depressing book in general and straight-up despair-inducing when biking through West Kansas.

Within a hundred meters, the spectacle is over and there is nothing until Dodge City.

Dodge City has miles and miles of stockyards and monstrous meat-packing plants.  The Western half of the state has this deadened feel to it; that animals should be slaughtered by thousands seems almost natural. On the way into Dodge, there were a couple of guys hacking away at the carcass of a cow. It was strung up with some rope from their lean-to garage.  One of them was using a hammer and a chisel to break joints.

In Dodge, there’s something of a museum/amusement park called Boot Hill. We’d seen billboards for this for two hundred miles, telling us to “Get the hell out of into Dodge” [sic]—a reference to the television and radio show Gunsmoke, which took place in Dodge. I would have eaten up Boot Hill as a child3,but in my mid twenties, it seems depressing. The myriad fast-food restaurants surrounding it are a reminder that it’s all a tourist trap. An advertisement outside the museum invites us to “WALK WHERE THEY WALKED!” referring to Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday. Instead, we load up on calories and water at McDonald’s, which has a stagecoach in the middle of the dining room, and keep riding.

Disintegrating grain silos somewhere in West Kansas.

It was again 105 degrees, and the roads were riddled with construction. At one point, we had to stop, roll our bikes off the highway onto a dirt path and sit under bush to keep from overheating. That lasted about 3 minutes until the mosquitos and gnats found us.

We made it to Garden City in late afternoon. We decided to hunker down at McDonald’s, which has wireless, to do some blogging and emailing. There were a lot of men wearing denim and flannel tucked in and belted down with suspenders. Their wives wore conservative dresses and head coverings.  At first I assume that they’re conservative mennonites. But I can’t understand what they’re saying, despite the fact that it sounds strangely similar to English.

 

Wait, what? A feedlot outside Garden City.

We pushed west in the evening, riding past Deerfield (population 884), their fireworks going off as we approached the town. There wasn’t any suitable place to stealth camp, so we pushed on in the dusk to Lakin putting our mileage on the day at 125. We stopped at a gas station to buy food, and these two blond teenage guys rolled up on their mountain bikes.

“Where you guys coming from?” asked the older of the two.

“Uhh…New York.”

“Oh wow! And you made it this far in a couple of days?” There was no irony in his voice. In fact, he was almost pitiably earnest, if that’s possible.

Chip chuckled. “No…we’ve been at it for about a month.” They seemed almost disappointed.

Chip and I bought some chocolate milk and sundry pastries, and the kids were waiting for us outside. I was intent on savoring my pint of chocolate milk and honey bun pastry, and I’m also a bit of a curmudgeonly bastard after riding all day in the heat. But Chip’s far more kind and energetic than I am and started to ply them with questions about their lives, which they were more than happy to answer. In fact, they had that quality of fourth grade boys who don’t shut up and don’t punctuate their sentences with pauses but let the sentences flow together, only pausing to take breathes before holding forth again.  Only these kids had this weird, almost choppy accent.

“Nice bikes, guys. I like the disc brakes.”

“We got these bikes from Garden. At the Walmart. Dad bought me this first and then we went back and got him one later,” he said, gesturing to his little brother. “We were really luck to find them at a cheap price.”

His little brother: “We’ve been up to thirty miles an hour on them!”

Chip, between slurps of his slushie, remarked lazily, “Oh yes. We just came from Garden City. A nice town. Do you know how big it is?”

“Gaaarden is huge. Probably the second biggest town in the state,” remarked the older of the two. (It’s not actually in the top ten cities in Kansas, population-wse.)”It’s like it goes on forever.”

“So you guys go there to buy things?”

“Sometimes we ride to Garden. I’m in cross country at the college in Garden, so I use it as a workout. Ride there and back in one day.”

“Oh, cool. Is that the community college in town?”

“Yep. I’m going to be a sophomore this year. I run cross country there and track. I was the second best runner this year.”

“And where do you want to go after that?”

“Anywhere that will let me run.”

His little brother chimed in that he would like to go to Colorado, which I remembered is one of the best distance running programs in the country.

And then they talked about how their father was a dairy farmer and worked for a big dairy farm, the owner of which was probably the richest man in town and had “tons and tons of cows.” And then the older one mentioned something about going to Holland.

“We’re from Holland. Dad didn’t like it there. So we moved to Texas and then to here when he got a job here.”

And then I realized that the conservative families in the Garden City McDonald’s were all Dutch. The Dutch are apparently dairy farmers extraordinaire, and they’ve come over to the U.S. en masse to start or work on dairy factory farms. (You can read about it in Animal Factory, though it’s not a very good book and is about 300 pages too long.)

The older of the two decided to show us that he could speak Dutch, and then his younger brother was telling us that they had different mothers and that he was mad at his mother and didn’t want her to come visit him in Kansas.

They were incredibly kind, and escorted us to a park where there’s a pavilion. But the whole exchange was bizarre. They were so naive in some ways, and we couldn’t tell if they were just dumb or if it was a product of growing up in the middle of nowhere. But they’d traveled to Europe.”There are some people that probably shouldn’t go to college,” Chip remarked.

“If the greatest sin in the past was obscenity or shock,” remarked David Foster Wallace, “the greatest sin now is appearing naive or old-fashioned, so that somebody can give you a sort of a very cool arched smile, and devastate you with one extraordinarily crafted line, that puts kind of a hole in your pretentious balloon.” Only these kids didn’t have pretentious balloons. Just wide eyes and boundless energy.

We laid out our sleeping bags on the picnic tables, and they rode off to do whatever one does in Lakin, Kansas at 10pm.

 

1. In Iowa, limping around with a sore butt and numb groin, I finally gave in and ordered a new Brooks saddle, which I had shipped to Kansas. Brooks Saddles are legendary. Their flagship model, the B17, hasn’t changed for the last 100 years. Chip had been riding one since New York, but I had sticker shock when I bought my bike and opted for the stock saddle that came with the bike. The problem is that Brooks Saddles, which are handmade leather, take a while to break in.  Even still, the change was immediate and miraculous, though it led to it’s own set of awkward problems, which I can’t elaborate upon here, dear reader.

2. As chosen by the Kansas Sampler Foundation, whose mission is to “help preserve and sustain rural culture,” and help Kansans see Kansas “with new eyes.” I dunno. It seems like if you get to this point in classifying stuff, not to mention the hackneyed play on the Wonders of the World, you’re trying a bit too hard. Though I guess Kansas is a state where you could do something like this. (If you want to induce a migraine, try to name the 8 Wonders of Art in New York City.)

3. I created massive cowboy dioramas out of Playmobil, and I had a really nice Swedish cap pistol (it took a ring of 8 caps instead of the standard 6, which meant I was usually the last-man-standing in cap-gun battles, until my friend got a cap gun shotgun.)

 

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Wichita: We’re Eloping

August 9, 2011 · Comments Off

As the Huffington Post recently noted, the college I attended does not allow students to drink—during the school year. A few days after I finished my sophomore year, I flew out to Boston to help my best friend, Matt, drive his car home. When I was out there, we went to a beach on the North Shore to drink a few beers with his friends, which to me sounded very exciting and transgressive. That evening, however, I got my grades from the last semester and found out I had narrowly missed the requisite GPA to keep a couple of outside scholarships (the money from which I had been squandering at used book stores and on season tickets to the opera). Perhaps I was disappointed with my performance or perhaps I sensed an end to the opera—Tosca!—but in any case, after I finished a 40 of Miller Lite, I started to take shots of Jim Beam there on the beach. Many shots.

At this point in my life, my consumption of liquor was limited to that time when I was fourteen and my Swedish uncle left Aquavit in my mom’s fridge and I, having heard the Snoop Dog song, decided that it might be gin and that I should mix it with juice. I took one sip and poured it down the drain.

So, shots of Beam=bad idea.

But the point is that night on Singing Beach, I met Barclay, my best friend’s roommate in college. Barclay had opted for a cherry slushi instead of alcohol, and when I started drunkenly tackling people in the sand, he kindly escorted me to his father’s car.

In the car, there was a kid named Jefferson, whom I started to call Constantine—”Shut up Constantine. You don’t know anything about anything.” And then I started railing against the theological heresy of Constantinianism, as one periodically does.

At some point they pulled over to look at a house they were going to rent the next year. When I got out of the car and wandered away into a subdivision unaware and momentarily lost, he found me and put me back in the car.

I ended up becoming close friends with Barclay, who is a gentleman if I’ve ever met one.

Which brings me to why we went down to Wichita. Barclay worked at a bicycle shop for several years and spent some time training with pros down in Arizona. So, Chip and I have spent a fair amount of time on the phone with Barclay asking for help. (A couple of weeks ago I disabled two-thirds of my gears while trying to tune the derailleurs and only realized my mistake before an enormous hill on I80 outside Salt Lake City. We called Barclay and he walked us through the tune-up, which we did right there on the side of the highway.)

Barclay and his fiance had decided to elope, and when Chip and I were in Rockford and I called him for some biking advice, he told me the  wedding would in two weeks outside Wichita and that he’d like us to be there, if we could.  Though Chip had never met Barclay, he agreed to tag along for another wedding. So, from Lincoln, NE we headed south.

The wedding was a beautiful affair at the farm of Barclay’s in-laws. A small group of family and friends congregated on the edge of a field where Barclay and Emily were married.

An added highlight was seeing my best friend Matt, who was on leave from Afghanistan and who flew in for the wedding.

Matt telling us a mind-boggling story about Pastun culture, which unfortunately isn't fit for print. Mind-boggling.

We also gained back several pounds that weekend. Here are some things that Barclay fed us over 2.5 days:

1) Homemade vegetable stirfry

2) Cheesecake

3) Homemade huevos rancheros

4) Phở

5) Vietnamese Pork sandwiches

6) Vietnamese Iced coffee

7) Intelligentsia coffee

8 ) More Cheesecake

9) Pizza (from Big John’s Pizza, which claims to have the largest indoor mural of John Wayne)

Slightly dissapointing for something that bears the modifier "World's Largest"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

10) Glenlivet Single Malt (16 year)

11) Donuts

12) Chips and homemade bean dip

13) Homemade buttermilk ice cream

14) Homemade coffee ice cream

15) Homemade vanilla ice cream

16) BBQ beans

17) BBQ ribs

18) Pulled Pork

19) Burnt rib ends

20) Slaw

21) Broccoli Salad

22) Sangria

23) Ginger Beer and Bourbon infused with peppers

24) Cherry limeade

25) Homemade red velvet wedding cake

Why, you stuck up, half-witted, scruffy-looking Nerf herder.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chip in a food-induced catatonic state

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We would need the calories for West Kansas, which proved to be a gritty few days.

 

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Omaha (+ Nebraska)

August 6, 2011 · 3 Comments

Where were we?

Ah, yes. Omaha.

Omaha is a totally underrated city. It has a strong economy, it’s clean, and it’s confident.  Omaha calls itself the Gateway of the West, and it’s the nation’s 42nd largest city. It’s the host of the College World Series. Warren Buffet lives there in a surpisingly normal house. It’s all right here in Wikipedia.  Not the confidence bit. That’s my opinion.

7:15pm
After riding 120 miles through Iowa, most of them hills, and repeatedly pushing back our brewery tour, we arrive in Omaha. We  find a coffee shop in the Old Market district. Chip, who cannot abide coffee, orders a tea and sits down and prepares to Skype with a friend who was dealing with some heavy stuff. I use the bathroom, take what Chip affectionately refers to as a “whore’s shower,” and change clothes before heading over to Upstream.

7:30
Upstream is located in a swanky brick building and caters to an upper middle-class clientele. We’re talking at least one to two notches above the Apple Bees crowd, like Weber Grill/PF Chang’s/Maggiano’s. Though if you love Apple Bees like I did when I was 15—remember Boboli bread? It wasn’t actually that good—you won’t feel out of place. There are a few TV’s placed around the bar area, and the bar has a vaguely sports bar-ish feel. The College World Series was on all the TVs. And that’s about all we’re gonna do in the way of descriptions, because I don’t remember any more salient details, which I’m going to blame on the 120 miles of riding and not the rest of the evening.

I meet Joel, a lead brewer, and Mike, the head brewer. What I don’t realize about Mike is that he used to work for Oskar Blues Brewery and is the man behind Ten Fidy Imperial Stout*. Which makes him something of a brewing god.

They ask me if I want dinner.

7:50
Waitress brings me a pork sandwich. Slightly sub-par and dried out, it’s one of those breaded cutlet numbers when I was expecting more of a pulled-pork style.

7:52
I have eaten the sandwich. The fries last another two minutes.

7:54
Interview commences. I’m using a digital voice-recorder *and* my camera with a big shotgun mike on the top. I’d like to think this makes me intimidating.

8:15
I am nervous interviewing alone. I call Chip and ask him if he’s going to join us. Chip says, “Carry on my wayward son,” then hangs up. I assume this means no, shrug to the brewers, and then hide behind my camera.

8:20
Joel tells me about how he decided against law school in order to become a brewer. I recall when I decided against medical school in order to pursue vague literary/professorial ambitions. This thought necessitates ordering another beer.

9:00
Coffee shop kicks Chip out.

9:10
Chip joins me at the brewery, curtly calls me outside for a pow-wow.

9:11
Chip reminds me that the house we are supposed to be staying at—the house of a friend of a friend of a friend—is 15 miles out of town. I have had two beers and am having a great time. Chip is emotionally and physically exhausted. Mildly contentious debate ensues. I dropkick Chip to the curb and tell him I wear the pants in this duo. I call my friend Melissa, whom I used to do AIDS advocacy with in college and who hails from Omaha but who now lives in Chicago. She tells me she’ll find us lodging. I tell the whole street that I am putting the team on my back.

9:12
Drunk man tells Chip, “Nice looking stuff. Might have to steal it.”  I recall a scene in Mission Impossible and ask Chip if we should break bottles around our bikes so that we will hear people crunching on the glass when they try to steal our stuff. We settle for taking our trailer bags into the brewery.

9:15
Chip finds out Mike made Ten Fidy, which gets him very, very excited. The analogy that comes to mind is a small dog, maybe a jack russell terrier.

9:30
Melissa texts me the address of the backyard we are to camp in.

9:45
The brewers open up a bottle of their barrel aged Ebenezer, which is amazing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

10:30
We tour the brewing facility. It seems likely that we had another beer at this point.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

11:15
After thanking the guys effusively for their time and the beer, we take our leave. Since lunch, Chip has had some sort of cherry-turnover and a cup of tea.

11:30
Chip waits in line ten minutes at a taqueria, of sorts. The staff does not even acknowledge his presence. They do not have public restrooms.

11:32
Why is there nothing open with a public bathroom?

11:34
It is possible to relieve oneself on a busy street with no one noticing you if you look like a bum.

11:35
It is unclear whether urea cleans cobblestone.

11:50
Conversation about death on the curb of Burger King drive-through while eating rodeo burgers.

12:10
Arrive at Melissa’s friends’ house. Being normal people, they have to work in the morning and are asleep. We never meet them. We set up our camp in the backyard, drink lots of water, go to bed.

9:00(am next day)
Rodeo-burger induced mad-dash to gas station.

9:15
Mad dash back to gas station to retrieve sun-glasses from men’s room.

10:00
Breakfast at a different Burger King. Dump footage from camera to laptop. Charge phone and camera.

12:00
Arrive at Lucky Bucket Brewery/Sólas Distillery.

 

 

 

 

 

12:30
Sample one year-old  single-malt whiskey

1:45
Begin slow crawl to Lincoln. Nebraska’s skyscrapers are grain silos. The landscape is pleasantly flat.

6:00
Arrive in Lincoln, which has a real skyscraper. Brief debate over whether the skyscraper is art-deco. We both have no idea what we’re talking about.

6:30
While sitting on a curb outside of a grocery store eating a dinner of donuts, peanut butter, and yogurt, Chip finds out he will be the best man at his friend Julio’s wedding. The sight of a bearded man in spandex jumping for joy while holding a yogurt in one hand in positively horrifying.

8:30
Roll into a small town south of Lincoln. Google directs us to a park with camping. The camping no longer exists. The baseball fields are lit up and there’s a team of teens from Lincoln playing a team of guys from the surrounding farm towns. No idea where we will camp. It is dark.

8:35
Deus ex machina. I ask the man at the concession stand where to camp. I order a root-beer float. He finds out where we’re coming from, and says it’s on the house. Chip orders a root-beer float. The man, who is working with his teenage daughter, runs the concession stand with his family to give his kids  summer jobs and to save up for family vacations. We end up talking about our trip, about his daughter’s mission trip to Brazil. He tells us to camp at the edge of one of the unlit baseball diamonds and asks us if we want any more food.  Chip orders several candy bars. We camp, then ride to Wichita.

 

*If you have not had Ten Fidy—I had not at this point—it’s amazing. Beer Advocate gave it an “A” grade.

→ 3 CommentsCategories: Beer · Biking · Review

On the road again

August 6, 2011 · Comments Off

We’re still alive. I swear.

Chip had a terrific time in Nashville hanging out with his girlfriend and going to a wedding with her. He flew back a day ahead of me and spent a day at the Salt Lake City Library filling out secondary med school applications and smuggling candy into the dollar theater where he saw X Men: First Class.

Much of my weekend was spent dealing with drunk people. I spent a couple of days in Rockford, where I broke up an epic fight between two drunk middle age women at the Irish Rose after they hit my friend’s car. In Chicago, where I went for a wedding, I played designated driver for my friends for two nights. The Moth Grand Slam went well enough. I took second. The winner told a story about hitch-hiking and being picked up and threatened by John Wayne Gacey…which is epic and tough to beat.

We hit the road on Wednesday and have been averaging 100 miles a day. The first night we camped out under the stars in the Salt Flats:

We’re in Nevada at the moment, a town called Loveluck. Tomorrow we head to Reno.

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Always a bridesmaid, never a bride

July 28, 2011 · 1 Comment

Or rather, Always a reader, never a groom.

I’m headed back to Chicago for the weekend. One of my good friends, Paul, is getting married, and I’m reading in his wedding. Then on Tuesday, I’m competing in the Moth Grand Slam, a sort of tournament of champions story-telling competition in Chicago.

Don’t worry about Chip being marooned in Salt Lake City and being recruited by the Mormon Temple.  Chip is headed to Nashville for a wedding with his girlfriend, though something tells me he won’t be able to sleep without the steady purr of my snoring.

So, after this weird little hiatus, we’ll meet up and take on the salt flats and ride on Reno, NV.

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A Tale of Two Iowas: Good Country People

July 25, 2011 · 2 Comments

Unlike the last literature reference, I’ve actually read this post’s eponymous work. It’s about a girl with a wooden leg, right?

So, while the roads and the police of Iowa were what might be called evil, the people of Iowa were, collectively, the friendliest of any state that we’ve passed through. And as I write this, we’ve been through fourteen.

After the leg from the Mississippi River through the quad cities (Davenport smells like hotdogs, which I feel like is an important detail to note) and on to Iowa City, which, as I said in the last post, was the worst leg of our trip thus far, we spent the night in North Liberty with Emily and Anne, who were friends of one of Chip’s friends in Madison. They were great, and took us out for a much needed beer, and then set us up with couches and air mattresses, despite the fact that we’d never met them and don’t look very reputable.

The next morning we hung out in a coffee shop, at which point I was probably still blogging about Pennsylvania and Chip was finishing off his med school applications. We hit the road for the Amana Colonies in order to go to Millstream, which is one of the country’s oldest microbreweries and has won quite a few awards for their beer.

 The folks at Millstream were great, and we had a private tour and sampled all their beers. We ended up cutting our stay slightly short when an older couple sat down next to us and talked our ears off about their retirement life as RV Campsite hosts. I guess when you spend all your time with one other person in an RV, you relish talking to other people. Or in this case, talking at other people.

After  Millstream, we were headed to Grinnell. A friend of Chip’s had gone to Grinnell College, and we were supposed to stay with one of her friends. We were about 25 miles out, and his friend still hadn’t returned our calls. As we were biking along highway 6, I saw a sign outside a bank that said “Cold Beer, Fine Wines.” Because I’d never seen a bank that served beer and because this is the sort of thing you’re supposed to investigate on road trips, I pulled over.

The Ladora Bank is actually a Bistro. The bar is located inside the teller windows, which they’ve preserved. So we saddled up to have a half pint. On my left was a guy, Jim, who had done Ragbrai, the ride across Iowa, a few times and who paid for our beers. On my right was an eighty-year-old farmer drinking Merlot and making jokes about not coming in for the wine but to see what Colleen, the bartender and co-proprietor, was wearing. “Look at her,” he said with a grin, “she looks like a lady of the evening.”

Colleen and Brad, her spouse, asked us where we were staying that night.

“It’s unclear. We’re headed to Grinnell, but our friend hasn’t called us back. So, you know, maybe a park or something.”

“Well, you can stay at our house if you don’t mind sleeping on the porch. Here’s the address.”

“Really? Awesome.”

“Yeah, it’s no problem.”

“We’re Chip and David, by the way,” Chip said, realizing we should probably introduce ourselves if we were going to sleep on their porch.

“Chip and Dale?” asked Brad “You guys are supposed to be riding in nothing but bow-ties and thongs.”

“Close. One letter off. But no, we’ve got too many weird tan lines. And chest hair. We’re trying not to piss of the trucks, here.”

It turns out that Brad and Colleen, who own the bistro, had quit their corporate jobs, cleaned up the bank building which had been empty for something like twenty-years, and started a bistro there. We learned all this, and also about the meth-heads lurking in the fields siphoning anhydrous ammonia from fertilizer tanks, over breakfast the next morning, which was apple-smoked Iowa bacon and french toast and for me, four cups of coffee. (N.B. Do not eat loads of bacon before riding long distances unless you have a Wisconsin-grade cast iron stomach. I do not.) Brad and Colleen in the hospitality business, sure, but we were blown away by their kindness and generosity…and also by the bistro, which is worth visiting if you’re passing through or—gasp!—live in Iowa1.

From Grinnell, we were headed to Ankeny, which is a suburb of Des Moines. Emily’s parents, Don and Mary, had graciously offered to put us up in their house, despite the fact that they had relatives visiting. So, not only were we able to casually super-glue my shoes back together and shower, a luxury these days, we also had a cook-out. Which is to say, we felt like real people again. (The consumption of encased meats is apparently what makes me feel human.)

The Browns have an amazing vintage tandem. This is the only time on the trip thus far that I’d been in the lead.

 

Saturday night, Des Moines. And you, dear reader, are entitled to a fair bit of snark here. “Saturday night in Des Moines. Weeeeeee.” I, too, shared that erroneous judgement. I once played in the U.S. national championships of this lawn sport called Kubb and was absolutely decimated by a team from Des Moines. I lied to myself ameliorated my embarrassment by telling myself that these people probably practiced endlessly because they lived in Des Moines, which must be a black hole of boredom. And like, maybe they needed to win more than I did because I had other things going for me. (Another lie. I lived in Rockford at the time.)

To be clear, Des Moines is a bit too bro-ey for my tastes. And I wasn’t really sure what to make of the guy in the parking lot who said, “Yea, if I was gay, I’d f— you.” But Des Moines is a surprisingly cool town, and Emily, who came back to her parents house to hang out with us, was kind enough to show us around with her friend Tiffany. Here’s a little photographic rundown of some things we did, which will be a lot more compelling than my hacking out some descriptions of How Much Fun You’ll Have in Des Moines.

We started the evening at El Bait Shop, a bicycle friendly beer bar with one hundred something beers on tap.

Jimmy Carter signed a law legalizing Home Brewing, so El Bait Shop hosts the Jimmy Carter Happy Hour, where the bar takes a local homebrewer's beer and puts it on draft.

El Bait Shop has a giant touch screen computer that tells you all about the brewing process, different kinds of beer, and which will even make beer recommendatings for you.

There's a working shower inside the bar, if you're so inclined. Chip was.

El Bait Shop's Patron Saint

Shortly after taking this picture, Chip wouldn't stop asking me if I knew what the Rock was cooking.

The guardian of the men's restroom.

El Bait Shop is connected to The High Life Lounge, which is decorated to look like your dad's basement and was a bit like walking into one of Erol Morris's High Life commercials.

 

We also toured Court Street Brewery, which is a standard, but solid brewpub with a great mug club.

Here, imagine a picture of a great beer bar called “The Red Monk,” which had some tasty Belgians.

We ended our evening at Fong's Pizza, a Chinese restaurant converted into a pizza parlor. Amazing food. And a bunch of those cat statues that wave endlessly, which are clearly made in China but are they really Chinese?

The next morning, after we’d had an enormous breakfast and Chip and Don had spent some time jamming on his guitar, we stopped at Ankeny’s LBS2 , Bike Country. I’d had two flats in ten minutes the previous day, so I needed to buy an extra tube and a new patch kit. My back brake was also out of commission, so I needed to replace the pads. Chip’s back tire was peeling, and he was buying a new tire.

While I was waiting for the work to be done, a guy in his early forties came up and started to chat with me about our trip. Will’s a regular at the shop, and he’s something a cycling beast; the day before he’d gone about 220 miles on his Trek Madone 6. We ended up talking about Wichita, the Des Moines music scene, and his Trek District. Will and his wife wished us the best and then took off. Two minutes later, he’d walked back into the shop and had put our $60 worth of purchases on his tab. “You don’t have to do that,” I said.”I know. But I want to. Not sure how you young guys are financing the trip, but I think it’s a great idea and wanted to support you.”

That evening, we were unsure of where we were going to stay. We hadn’t made it as far as we’d have liked, and we wanted to get as much distance in as possible despite our late start.

We’d just past through Stuart, when we heard rumbling. Looking across the fields, we spotted a racetrack. Generally, by the early evening, we’re in panic mode about where we’re going to stay. This Sunday,  we had no idea where we were going to stay the night, and there was talk of a storm rolling in. And yet we didn’t hesitate to turn around and head to the racetrack. The admission was nine bucks, but when the woman at the gate saw us hesitating at the cost, all decked out in spandex, our trailers flying American flags, she told us we could “Come on in if you want to see what it’s all about.

There were a few hundred people, almost all wearing Nascar shirts. There were old-timers in the stands who were too old to race but still wore their racing shoes and women watching anxiously as their husbands and sons flew suicidally around the dirt track. The pit crews crowded the entrance to the track, ready to jump to their drivers’ assistance. Everyone was drinking Miller and Bud tallboys. I ordered a “Beef Burger,” which turned out not to be a burger but a Sloppy Joe minus the sauce, and a tallboy and settled in.

We watched one race, and then ten laps into the 150 lap enduro, the race suddenly stopped and people started running to their cars. “You guys better scram. There’s a tornado coming in.”

We raced back into town to a a pavilion in the park and started to set up our camp. Then Chip looked at the weather report on his phone. “If the winds are actually 70 to 80 mph, there’s no way this pavilion is going to help us. We need to go. Right now.”  We set off3 to the Super 8 motel, a mile away. By the time we got there and had just tied down our stuff to the smoker’s bench, when the rains and winds started to lash Stuart. We found Shelter from the Storm—sorry, couldn’t resist—in the motel lobby, where we watched the local weather forecast.

The weather map showed Stuart covered in a clot of red. The rest of the United States was clear. Forty-five minutes later, the winds and rains subsided, and we peddled back to the pavilion. The trash cans had blown over, and the whole inside of the pavilion was wet and covered with trash. We strung up hammocks, put on our rain gear, and tried to get some sleep before setting out to Omaha the next day, which would prove to be a terrible day’s ride.

Over the course of the trip, people ask me what’s been the most memorable aspect. “Bet you guys have done a lot of boozing!” (Which we haven’t actually. You can only drink so much craft beer, particularly if you’re on a bike.) What I tell them is that I’ve been overwhelmed with the hospitality of people. And then I tell them about Will and the Bank and the Browns.

 

 

 

1. Just kidding friendly Iowans. I’m strongly considering applying to a graduate program in your fine state, and in the unlikely to very unlikely case that I’m admitted, I will count myself among The Blessed. And then invest in a Britta filter. Y’all have a lot of agricultural run-off.

2. Local Bike Shop. If you spend enough time searching for used bikes on Craig’s List, as I did in an attempt to find a bike for this trip, you’ll learn to hate this acronym, which is invoked as an attempt at bicycling cred. “Tires replaced by LBS,” as if that somehow is a certification of quality.

3. I’m in dire need of new words for biking fast since you can only use tore-ass so many times.

→ 2 CommentsCategories: America · Beer · Biking

A Tale of Two Iowas: The first Iowa, destroyer of legs

July 24, 2011 · 3 Comments

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of… Ok, sorry. That was annoying. I haven’t even read the book, anyway, which is an embarrassing admission from a guy doing a master’s degree in literature.

The cornfields east of Rockford were endearing and beautiful, but as we continued west, my perspective on them changed. It was a cloudy day when we left Rockford, a steel gray sky overhead that occasionally turned black and drenched us with rain.

If you want to know loneliness, bike through the cornfields of western Illinois, the monotony broken only by the occasional dog chasing you. The land undulates slightly, enough to get your hopes up that a town is on the other side of the hill. It isn’t.

We spent that night at a baseball diamond in Thompson, Illinois, a mile or two off the Mississippi. We coated ourselves in bug spray and laid out our sleeping bags on picnic tables under a pavilion.

The next morning, we rolled out at 5:30am, en route to Iowa City. We biked 120 miles into driving headwinds and rain. It took us 15 hours. It was the worst day of the trip so far. It was also a portent to the rest of our riding in Iowa.

Part of the problem stemmed from our using the bicycling feature on Google Maps. The people at Google apparently assume that everyone is riding mountain bicycles. Or they’ve got a real schadenfreude streak.

In Pennsylvania, Google wanted to send us over this incline.

In Iowa, we often found ourselves routed onto gravel country roads that went on for miles. At this point in the trip, I was using a stock Specialized saddle. If you are a male and would like to know discomfort or become involuntarily celibate, ride an aluminum bike with that saddle across miles of gravel roads. You will also have many flat tires.

Another time, Google sent us down a road that said “Use at Your Own Risk.” It was two miles of mud with six inch deep ruts. Which wasn’t as bad as this bike path, which had been washed out by a flood a year or two ago.

Where the Sidewalk Ends

 

After we disassembled our trailers and carried them over the gulley, we were met with another gulley with a creek and a ten foot mud incline.

I’m not going to lie to you. Chip had to manhandle my trailer up the mud.

This experience might have been one of those “Aw yeah! We can handle anything” braggadocio moments of male bonding1 , but the gulleys were filled with poison ivy. As a kid, growing up in Roscoe, Illinois, I spent my summers playing in the woods, building forts, shooting sling-shots and once building a raft that sunk under my weight before I could Huck Finn it out of Illinois. Every summer, I’d get poison ivy. There were countless oatmeal baths, and I  smelled perpetually of Calamine lotion.

I stopped playing in the woods at maybe 10 years of age, and avoided poison ivy until I was 18. This time, I had boils bubbling several centimeters out of my skin.I first noticed the boils  when I was walking around Chicago and wondered why my pant legs were wet. The boils, big purple bubbles, were weeping. They got so bad I had to be put on steroids before they subsided.

So, as Chip was puffing out his chest saying that it wouldn’t be a problem to get over the gulleys, I was putting on my rain pants and cursing my luck. After we got up the other side, I took off the pants and wiped my legs off with our last baby wipes. Two days later, I had boils.

But the real devil of Iowa was the hills. When we were dying on the hills of Pennsylvania, our primary battle cry was a series of expletives. But our secondary battle cry, erm, battle groan, was “Well, just wait till we get to Iowa.” Iowa was this sort of promised land of flatness. (Weirdly, this isn’t the first time Iowa has been called the promised land. I shit you not, someone wrote a book called Iowa: A Journey in the Promised Land.)

This gets old after hundreds of miles

Despite the fact that there’s only something like 300 feet of elevation climb from Iowa City to Council Bluffs,  Iowa’s highway six is actually almost nothing but hills. Rolling hills. With a shoulder “smaller than Calista Flockhart’s shoulder,” as Chip said, the grain trucks plowing by at 60 mph, it’s not only frustrating, it’s a bit intimidating.

Our final day of riding in Iowa, we had to do 115 miles to Omaha. We were so sick of Iowa roads that we hopped on I-80. After one mile there was an exit, and Chip turned around and asked if I was cool with riding on the highway. “Sure,” I said. There was a six foot shoulder with a rumble strip between the shoulder and the road. So we kept riding.

One minute later, we heard a siren behind us.

“What are you doing?”

“Riding to Omaha.”

“Are you stupid?”

“Sir?”

“Do you want to die?”

“No sir.”

“What made you think you could ride on the highway?”

“There was no sign prohibiting bicycles. Sir.”

“There’s a minimum of 45 miles per hour. Are you doing 45?”

“No sir. But we thought this was actually safer than highway six.”

“Where are you from?”

“New York, sir.”

“Are you allowed to ride in highways in New York?”

I had no idea, not actually being from New York, so I stammered, “No sir.”

“Have you been through any states where you can ride on the highway?”

“No sir.”

“Get off the highway right now.”

“How would you like us to do that, sir?”

“I don’t care.”

“Do we ride to the next exit?”

“No! Go up this ramp right here.”

“You want us to go up the wrong way on the on ramp?”

“Do it.”

“…”

“If I have to deal with you again today, you’re going to jail.”

“Sorry, sir.”

570th street, nowhere. Eat your heart out, NYC.

We were only sorry in that we had to do 80 miles of hills that day, the only highlight of which was a small monument marking the site of the first Jesse James train robbery. With the exception of college baseball teams who make it to the College World Series, never has anyone been so glad to arrive in Nebraska.

 

1. Except that we’d actually high-five and say, “When our powers combine….!”, a reference to the Super Twins characters, one of whom is a girl, in the League of Justice TV Series. They were by far the stupidest characters in the series, worthless except for comic relief, and they weren’t even funny. If we would have been on our A-Game, we would have made Dynamic Duo references. Iowa had by this point crushed our A-Game.

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“The Most Prosperous Community in The Nation”

July 23, 2011 · 4 Comments

No surprise, I packed too much stuff on the trip. A pair of chinos, a pair of biking tights, an extra windbreaker, a backpack, and two cotton-t-shirts too many. Also a tripod1 . I discovered that I had too much after three days into the trip; at which point I started to look forward stopping in Rockford, in part to drop off stuff and in part to load up on free food from the bomb-shelter sized pantry that my mom keeps2. This is one of the only times in memory I’ve longed to go to Rockford.

Generally, I take I-90 in and out of Rockford, a boring stretch of highway that rivals I80 in Indiana. Riding from the western suburbs brought us through areas outside Rockford that I’d seen, despite their proximity. We ended up on long stretches of country-roads,  rolling hills through countless farms. As we rode, I had the the first paragraph of David Foster Wallace’s book The Pale King bouncing around in my head. The book is set in central Illinois, but it provides a much better description of that day’s ride than I am capable of:

Past the flannel plains and blacktop graphs and skylines of canted rust, and past the tobacco-​brown river overhung with weeping trees and coins of sunlight through them on the water downriver, to the place beyond the windbreak, where untilled fields simmer shrilly in the a.m. heat: shattercane, lamb’s‑quarter, cutgrass, sawbrier, nutgrass, jimsonweed, wild mint, dandelion, foxtail, muscadine, spinecabbage, goldenrod, creeping charlie, butter-​print, nightshade, ragweed, wild oat, vetch, butcher grass, invaginate volunteer beans, all heads gently nodding in a morning breeze like a mother’s soft hand on your cheek. An arrow of starlings fired from the windbreak’s thatch. The glitter of dew that stays where it is and steams all day. A sunflower, four more, one bowed, and horses in the distance standing rigid and still as toys. All nodding. Electric sounds of insects at their business. Ale-colored sunshine and pale sky and whorls of cirrus so high they cast no shadow. Insects all business all the time. Quartz and chert and schist and chrondrite iron scabs in granite. Very old land. Look around you. The horizon trembling, shapeless. We are all of us brothers.

Right after WWI, Roger Babson, a business theorist, called my hometown of Rockford, IL. the most prosperous community in the nation.  A few days before we started our trip, one website ranked Rockford as the 9th most dangerous city in the United States:

Rockford has unusually high violent crime rates for a city of its size. Most notably, the city has the fourth highest rate of aggravated assault in the country, with 10.5 cases for every 1,000 citizens in 2010.

Perhaps the crime shouldn’t be surprising. The city’s unemployment rate is currently something like 13%. I spent the bulk of the recession there, working at a staffing agency, and I think unemployment peaked at something like 16%. It is a town that once rested too heavily on its laurels. It bet too heavily on manufacturing, did not try hard enough to recruit any major universities, suffered from white flight, and then exacerbated the problem by making its downtown region—too large for a city of its size—into a collection of public housing. It is, I fear, a rust-belt city that is still trying to figure out where it went wrong.

I really disliked living in Rockford those two years after moving home from Long Island. But if God were about to destroy Rockford in an Old Testament style judgement of wrath, I think I’d plead with him to spare it, even if my family didn’t live there.

I would say, God, if you can find a pub as amazing as The Irish Rose, then you should destroy Rockford. And lo, Rockford would be saved.

Photo by JM Harper, Assistant 3rd Grip extraordinaire.

I’m not sure if there’s anything that special about the Irish Rose. The service is middling, and the crowd is this strange blend of baby-boomers, younger dirt-baggers, and a few people from the east side who want to venture beyond the main drag of chain restaurants. It’s in downtown Rockford and is one of the few places that has stayed open over the years. But it has some beautiful woodwork, the floor is made out of old bowling alley planks, and the walls are lined with the portraits of Irish Authors. It’s also insanely cheap. $2 for a bourbon and coke. And it’s just very relaxed and generally unpretentious.

I  started going to The Rose at fifteen. I’d get a glass of lemonade and my old teacher/mentor/the-guy-who-introduced-me-to-the-poetry-of-W.H.Auden—a 23 year-old fresh out of college—would get a glass of Pinot Noir. From lemonade, I graduated to coffee and from coffee to Miller High Life. When I moved back to Rockford, I eventually gave up trying to find new places and got sick of the pseudo-intellectuals pontificating at the Border’s coffee shop so I just went to The Rose. When they stopped carrying High Life, my best friend Matt, who had just moved home from Boston3, introduced me to bourbon, and we  started drinking bourbon and coke. My friend Jason graduated Princeton and ended up back in Rockford for a summer, and the three of us ended up there almost every night. It was, despite our failure to find new jobs and our failed relationships, one of the better summers of my life.

When we arrived at my mom’s house, the first thing she said to me was, “Wow. You look worse than I thought.” Then she cooked us a feast, and we got cleaned up before our friend Evan picked us up and took us to the Rose, where Chip experienced the wonder of $2 bourbon and cokes. And also, the wonder that is Rockford.

Our first night at the Rose, sitting on the patio, we witnessed a dog fight.

The second night, two guys walk up with a (most likely stolen) Magna mountain bike:

“Hey Guys, you looking to buy a bike bike—we’ll give it to you real cheap.”

“”We’re good, thanks man.”

“I’m not gonna lie to you man. We’re trying to get a room, some booze, and some girls. In that order.”

“…”

“You sure? It’s a $200 bike.”

Because we’re on a brewery tour, on the third night we skipped the Irish Rose and went to Carlysle Brewing Company.  When I was living in Rockford, I’d rarely go there, in part because I’m not a fan of the mega-church crowd the place attracts. But Chip and I had actually done a tasting there about a year ago, and they had a delicious vanilla ale, which we were excited to taste again. So I called them and asked to speak with the brewer. “He’s just about to leave, and we generally just communicate through messages. So I’ll write him a note.” We called again the next day. “He’s here, yes, but I can see the note on his counter, so he definitely got it.”

I don’t care that much about the crime in Rockford. Every city has crime, and I’ve never felt threatened. What irks me is the sense of mediocrity that characterizes Rockford. It’s not as though Carlyle missed a huge opportunity by not contacting us to film the brewing operation, but it was indicative of the weird sense of apathy that haunts the town.

As we left the city, we biked past the new juvenile courts center. There was a family outside their car, and someone started yelling. A stocky man started running into the building, presumably for help, but turned around halfway and ran at the other man, yelling and swinging. The kids were huddled by the car watching the fight as the policemen eventually ran out to intercede.

I’m writing this from Evanston, Wyoming. A couple of days ago, we passed some serious construction on I80  . We stopped and talked to one of the construction workers, and when he found out I was from Rockford he said, “I used to work in Illinois. Rockford’s a pretty town.”

Thus far, Rockford is the shabbiest mid-size city that we’ve ridden through, with the notable exception of Toledo, Ohio.

“Yeah, it’s um, yeah, it’s kinda nice….are you sure you’re not thinking about Rock Island?”

 

 

1. Though, I probably should have kept that. There’s a reason why you’ve never seen a documentary shot by someone with serious hand tremors.

2. She lives alone, so most of the food just sits there. Occasionally you can find some real gems, like six year-old jars of mayo. She was, as always, incredibly generous and gave us loads of trailmix and cooked for us and did our laundry.

3. As absurd as this move sounds, there were semi-valid reasons, I assure you.

→ 4 CommentsCategories: America · Beer · Biking

Can Colorado be too Brewtiful? Part II

July 22, 2011 · Comments Off

Part 1 of our Tour Du Colorado is coming soon. Sorry for doing this backwards. Here’s what we did after Denver and Boulder:

Longmont:

Oskar Blues–The original craft canners, Oskar Blues has been putting their beer in aluminum since 2002, which is old by American craft beer standards.

The huge brewery in Longmont (soon to churn out 60,000 barrels a year) hosts a small taproom and gameroom that gives drinkers a window in the process. You can sip on Dale’s Pale Ale while playing skee ball in the shadow of conical fermenters. Small, intimate; it’s a great place to bring a few friends after a hard day’s work.

As Chad began the tour, we were handed cans of Old Chub [scottish ale] right off the bottling line. After the tour, I had the oaked version while David busied himself with their flawless imperial stout, Ten Fidy. I’m not sure if there’s anything to dislike about Oskar Blues; I’ve seen them at four beer festivals, and I haven’t heard a single negative review of their beers.

Left Hand–a native of Longmont (Oskar Blues began in Lyons), Left Hand has put out interesting crafts over the years. Their name is synonymous with Milk Stout, for example, which is a style they’ve helped to promote in America (it seems Irish Drys, Oatmeals, and Russian Imperials have typically dominated the market).

The personable and savvy bartender, Josh, was quick to ply us with libations. I had a version of their Black Jack porter that was deliciously infused with 5 different chili peppers. Wheat beers are more commonly used as the basis for chili beers, but the unconventional move worked out fabulously. We also tried their imperial stout, Wake Up Dead, which was as solid as it was inebriating.

Left Hand is growing well, filling its insides and outsides with fermentation vats, and it’s keeping pace with the industry with oak barrel fermentation. Nothing bad to say here. It’s certainly worth a visit.

Fort Collins:

New Belgium–In an age of showmanship and exploitation, a demonstrable emphasis on sustainability and culture should be lauded, and New Belgium deserves every single one of its accolades.

In the old days, New Belgium budgeted a considerable amount (up to 10%) for untested technology. That technology often had a 50% fail rate. The result? They drove the industry further in terms of eco-friendly brewing technology.

They began canning their beers because it makes sense in some circumstances (portability, for example). But wise New Belgium has remained cautious. They understand that the oft-touted environmental benefits of cans aren’t the complete story (no, I will not recap; you should read this article).

Vehicles with better gas mileage get better parking spots. Materials are recycled for use in the building, often in art installations. They have a committee for sustainability. Employees receive a bike after completing their first year as a part of their induction into ownership. Yes, New Belgium is employee-owned.

New Belgium, and spokesman Bryan Simpson (who reminded me, physically, of an older Legolas), won our hearts not just for their eco-concious ways, but their care and generosity. Bryan led us around the brewery, gave us a taste of everything, tossed us some cycling jerseys, and introduced us at the after-work beach volleyball game. Here, we bonded over some Fat Tires and a bit of bump & spike in the sand. It felt more like a neighborhood picnic than an employee gathering.

This is why we have an incredible respect for New Belgium. It might not brew the best beer, but (in my opinion at least), it’s the best brewery in the industry. It’s got culture, class, and a will to do good.

Funkwerks–A monogamous brewery, Funkwerks has dedicated itself to solely brewing Saisons. Saisons are a type of Belgian farmhouse ale, traditionally brewed for farm workers as part of compensation. They’re typically dry, mid-high hopped, and lacking in malty flavors.

We met up with Brad, one of two Siebel-trained owners, who gave us a tour of the facility. Brad and co-owner Gordon adhere to the philosophy that you brew what you love to drink, and they love this style. It just made sense to be an all-Saison brewery.

The brewery is small but impressive, and its fan base is growing. Funkwerks bottles its beer only in large bombers (22 oz glass bottles), which is one factor that could hinder growth. Brad isn’t concerned, however, because he doesn’t want to become the next New Belgium. He just wants to champion a pet beer style in a town that’s accustomed to drinking craft beer and therefore more receptive to a rarer style.

Brad gave us a taste of their Maori King, a bright and fruity brew that was probably really delicious. However, since both Dave and I were in dire need of a break from craft beer by this point, we can’t trust our judgement. But the niche is there, and Funkwerks is carving it out. We’re big fans of the style, and we’ll be happy to see what happens.

Crooked Stave–Sharing space and equipment with Funkwerks is a distinct, unaffiliated brewery manned by one guy, Chad. A wine-snob-turned-beer-geek, Chad possesses a sweeping knowledge of viticulture, brewing, and microbiology. He’s even developed a few yeast strains.

Chad has parlayed his research on the yeast strain Brettanomyces, a known wine contaminant, into a full-blown “artistic project” called Crooked Stave. Brettanomyces, or Brett, can impart certain flavors that some would find offensive (like band-aid or horse blanket), but it can also be used judiciously to produce a complex palate.

The mysterious biochemical interactions between Brettanomyces, beer, and wood (like oak barrels or foudres) adds an entirely new, artistic dimension to the brewing process. Chad exploits this, and the beer we had (infused with rose hips and hibiscus, no less) really impressed us. His aesthetic isn’t for everyone, but we’re delighted with his contribution to the industry.

Equinox–We emailed them too late to secure a private tour or intimate interview (our bad), but our hosts were kind enough to bring us to this downtown watering hole. Despite the encouraging chatter (from other brewers, no less!), Equinox neither sank nor swim, but bobbed helplessly in a sea of bland. Too mean? Ok, they get an “O.K.”

I sampled a few beers, none of which brought satisfaction, before inadvertently settling on the Darth Vernal Dunkelweizen  (well, the bartender gave me a pint instead of the sample I had asked for). It had a bit of a sour quality and really went light on the banana character, unfortunately. What I really wanted was their S’morter, or a porter with the flavors of a s’more.  I’ll give them credit for this one, as it soared above its sister brews as a well-done, albeit wild, brew. I took a small bit of comfort when Blake, one of our hosts, nabbed a pint of it, though jealousy seared my eyes as I sipped my dull Dunkel in silence. 

Maybe Equinox had a bad season, but I think I get a lot of backing for this quick, unpleasant review. BeerAdvocate reviews of the brewery highlight the great selection [agreed!] but notice glaring off-flavors. A Fort Collins native working at the Evanston, WY beer festival fruther confirmed that Equinox has fallen from its former glory. We hope Equinox can pull out of its funk.

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So that’s it for part II; stay tuned!

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