Earlier this season I joined Anja Notanja Sieger for her show Anja Asks Anybody on WXRW.
I read a few poems and we talked poetry, art approaches, other general goofiness. Give a listen here.
Guest Appearance on Anja Asks Anybody
Riding Bicycles Between Milwaukee and Madison: A Two-Wheeled ‘Choose Your Own’ Adventure
The route between Milwaukee and Madison is an excellent bicycle ride for anyone looking to indulge a little bike camping over a four-day period, or can be a one night stand staying in either city and riding back the following day. Depending on your time, interest and physical conditioning this Midwestern choose-your-own adventure bike trip offers a few options.
This scenic ride is an excellent quick getaway while traveling through a number of lovely Midwestern areas of rustic Wisconsin. In fact, I was surprised to notice that it becomes so rural you’ll see people commuting on UTVs. Below I explore my reasons for taking the ride and a few approaches you can take in planning your trip.
Most of the route, and I’d assert the most scenic portions, are along the Glacial Drumlin State Trail. This is a 52-mile rails-to-trails section that is 80% crushed limestone and the remainder on (mostly) rural roads. Rails-to-trails are good in that railroads generally placed their tracks in the most efficient way to make straight lines and avoid (or cut through) hills and declines. This can also mean that these straight, flat routes can be a little bland. Fortunately for this route, you ride through and over many wetland habitats, farms and country landscapes, rivers and lakes, forests and many other scenic vistas to keep your pedaling interesting. Birdwatching along the way is worthwhile as I spotted many flitting songbirds and soaring or perched raptors along the way.
As far as directions go, knowing I’d be along the Glacial Drumlin trail, I just opened Google Maps on my phone, input my destination, selected the bicycle option and used it to check in whenever the path strayed from gravel to roads (and road directions once the trail ended).
Why did I take this ride?
A handful of years ago I was working as the doorman at a neighborhood bar. A few friends arrived and introduced a friend, explaining that he’d spent the day riding his bicycle to Milwaukee from Madison. I surveyed him with some amazement. The drive between the middling sibling cities can take two hours. He didn’t look like a unique specimen, wasn’t wearing any tactical athletic clothing, if anything he appeared a little delicate. “Hi,” the guy grin-waved.
I admired his trip and decided someday I wanted to make the ride between Milwaukee and Madison on a bicycle. But more than that, over the years I concluded that I wanted to foster a lifestyle and physical conditioning in which I could make such a trip on a whim, without “training” for a one-and-done experience. I wanted to maintain my shape so that when a few days presented for an excursion I could partake without much thought. This August, a few days after my birthday, I had a few open days and welcoming friends to visit in Madison. With a dry forecast I bought a couple of spare tubes and made my plan.
Option 1: Two Days | There and Back in One Night
This is an option if you’re short for time and in terrific shape. The ride between Milwaukee and Madison is about 80 miles, depending on your start and finish. In my case I stayed with friends, but you can likely find a suitable hotel room, Air BNB host or use something like WarmShowers.Org, which is specific to bicycle touring and hosts offer free-to-stay locations for riders.
Option 2: Four Days Three Nights | Bikepacking Camping Between Madison and Milwaukee
This is a quick and relatively easy bikepacking camping trip between two Wisconsin cities. It’s also a good beginner trip to assess your setup as you’re always near a town where you could stop and get necessities at a grocery store, restaurant, gas station or other location.
A few camping options are in-between the two cities, the most likely I’d suggest would be staying at one of the 15 tent-only, walk-in (or bike) sites at Sandhill Station State Campground in Lake Mills. Of course you could also seek non-camping options for overnights as well. Camping equipment adds both weight and time to one’s bike ride but if you’ve got the time then why worry about the weight and enjoy sleeping within the sounds of crickets.
Option 3: Park somewhere between and enjoy the most scenic areas
This was my chosen route. Being from Milwaukee, I feel like I’ve done plenty of riding on the Hank Aaron and Oak Leaf trails and wanted to focus my riding time on the locations I haven’t spent much time observing. For this reason I parked in Dousman in a public lot along the Glacial Drumlin and right across the street from the Bicycle Doctor Nordic Ski Shop (in case you need any last-minute items.
This route provided about a 50-mile ride by the time I arrived to my friends’ house in Madison. Long enough to know I’d had a day of physical activity but not so long that when I arrived I was a zombie who went straight to sleep. Had I done the entire 80-mile route by the time I arrived to the crushed limestone portions I’d likely be somewhat zonked already to notice interesting birds or scenic landscapes to stop and admire and photograph. Am I “not that tough” for not doing the whole thing? Maybe, I guess. Do I care? Nope, I had a great time.
Functional Details
IMPORTANT: You need a Wisconsin State Trail Pass to ride the Glacial Drumlin Trail if you’re over the age of 16. Plenty of towns are dotted every five or ten miles in-between if you need to refill water or grab a bite. Lake Mills has a restroom with water and a listing of restrooms can be found here.
Thoughts on Equipment
You really don’t need much to make the trip. I’d suggest one’s tires be wider than 700×23 race bike size but you don’t likely need a gravel-specific tire. I rode 700×38 road tires on my Salsa Casseroll (what might be described as a “credit card touring” steel frame bike) and was plenty comfortable while feeling quick and stable.
You’ll likely want to wear padded gloves as gravel means vibration. Other than that, have a tire patch kit just in case and whatever you need for camping, clothes for the forecast and to change into after a bath. Much of the trail is lined by trees or other foliage to provide decent protection from sun and wind. After riding 40 miles of crushed limestone you’ll likely be plenty dusty. I tell everyone this – I always wear some manner of eye protection for mostly bugs but a pebble flung into your eye will quickly ruin a trip. If you’re riding with other people, fenders could be a good consideration for everyone.
Conclusions From the Milwaukee<>Madison ride
It might have taken me 20 years to make this idea come to fruition and I’m pleased that I finally made it happen. In the spirit of bikepacking, I’d wanted to make this trip solo and I’m glad I did. I wanted to find myself out there in the middle of nowhere, maybe becoming a little bored and discovering what thoughts, ideas and conclusions developed while on my lonesome. You can still do those things you’ve had in mind for years – it just might take awhile and a little patient perseverance.
Other bike-related posts
Autumn Kaleidoscope and Howling Wolves: A first Chequamegon Bikepacking Experience on a Fat Bike
Why I went Fat Bike instead of a Mountain Bike
Not Our Father’s Sons: A Meditation On Activity in Adulthood
Review: Riding a Trek Farley Fat Bike with the RockShox Bluto Fork
The Axiom Fatliner Rack fits on the first generation Trek Farley Fat Bike
New Poem Published by Great Lakes Review
Great Lakes Review published my poem Just Deserts and also made this kindly promotional graphic for Instagram. To read the whole poem (it’s short) visit here.
Two News Articles Follow Kletzsch Park Press Release
I’m delighted that two news articles covered the opening of the new Kletzsch Park mountain bike trail addition.
I collaborated with Milwaukee Metro Mountain Bikers on a press release about their newly built trail section and our efforts resulted in an estimated 200 people attending the opening event.
Read/watch here:
Mountain bikers can take on a new challenge with trails opening at Kletzsch Park
New multi-use trail opens at Glendale’s Kletzsch Park for mountain bikers and hikers
Published in Motorcycle Classics: “Reconciling the imagined and actual Gold Wings of glittering memory”
I had this essay published in Motorcycle Classics magazine, click here to read.
Enjoying the ride with CBS 58 Hometowns
I’ve worked in news since the beginning of the year with WDJT CBS 58 and one of the questions I’m often asked is, “What does a producer do?”
A Producer is one of the most flexible titles in news or media; a person can be in the act of producing, or creating, just about anything.
As a Field Producer for the #58Hometowns series I’ve worked behind the scenes planning and scheduling our twice-weekly deep dives into communities in our viewing area. Then, day-of, I join the crew in the field to promote our newscasts throughout the day by taking photographs and videos to post on #socialmedia.
We select neighborhoods or towns in our viewing area at random. Depending on the day and location I might have between 8 hours and 4 days to research, make connections, schedule out an entire day of locations, interviews, bivouac editing space, as well as contingency plans. It’s a maelstrom of planning and foreseeing potential challenges to our shooting schedule.
In Slinger, this past Tuesday morning, our crew explored Slinger Super Speedway, Kettle Moraine Playhouse and Little Switzerland Ski Hill. Scheduling is a jazz ensemble unique to each location; this week featuring race cars (can you arrange a race car and driver onsite, can we mount a camera on or in the car, can Nicole Koglin rev the engine, are there time restrictions on conditional use of race cars due to sound…?) – an example of a few of the logistics to consider at just one location.
I’ve appreciated the opportunity to work alongside and learn from Nicole Koglin, Jerry Imig, and Aaron Frye throughout the 58 Hometowns series and I particularly enjoyed this slice of Slinger. Thank you to the WDJT CBS 58 crew for the opportunity and to the communities that welcome us to immerse within and celebrate their stories!
Exciting News!
I’m thrilled to share the news that in February 2022, I started working at CBS 58 as an Assignment Desk/Web Editor. This means I’m behind the scenes researching and writing stories that will post online and/or will air during news broadcasts.
As you might imagine, after earning my journalism degree at University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, my plan has been to transition into news. I’m pleased to report that moment has arrived. I appreciate this opportunity to work alongside, collaborate with and learn from everyone at CBS 58!
Not Our Father’s Sons: A Meditation On Activity in Adulthood
Growing up, I had an excellent time playing in the forests of Brown Deer Park, and after softball games playing volleyball and horseshoes at Rollie & Carolines. This was Wisconsin, after all, the land of “Sure, let’s play athletics – but first figure out the beer.” My dad’s softball team was a part of a bar league and afterward we adjourned to the bar and the adults did more weeknight drinking and us kids played and played. We even had a set of Jarts I recall enjoying as a kid.
I never questioned that my dad played softball with his friends – it just was. He had the gang of guys who’d gone to high school together that comprised the team. They’d settled ino their various suburban homes and gathered throughout summer to play at baseball with a beer mug in-hand, manual pump keg between the bleachers. It was the arbitrarily selected home team’s turn to bring the barrel.
In my 41st year I think about this now, my father and his friends’ understanding of leisure activities and my own exploits. Yesterday morning, I got up at 5am to go mountain biking before work. When I was a kid, mountain biking was some lofty activity held sacred by those Western mountain states. For me it offers a daily sense of adventure. I’m not opposed to softball, but it’s a whole lot of waiting around (and I loved baseball passionately up until the second season of the 94-95 strike). I can ride a bike pretty much anytime, whereas baseball requires a team.
I reference father’s sons because I happen to be a son. My mother never seemed to have a particularly athletic drive. She often references her clumsiness, though she’s always been tough. In elementary school a kid was once picking on her older brother. She got in the kid’s face, who announced he’d, “Never hit a girl with glasses.” My astigmatism-eyed mother removed her spectacles, replied, “What about now?” and knocked the wind out of the kid with a gut shot. At 67 today, mixed martial arts came along too late for my mother.
Part of what makes my friends different from our fathers, I think, is that we regularly, throughout every season, with intention, spend time being active. Whether it’s road bikes or canoe camping in summertime, cross country skiing in winter, hiking or indoor climbing when the weather is uglier than for either of the former – we move around on a regular basis.
An important detail is that we check in on one another’s activities. If anyone isn’t able to join for what seems like a protracted amount of time – we reach out to check if they’re ok. Often, we’re all just busy with work and family life. But even then, we still reach out and ask how things are going and if there’s anything we can do to help. Often, that little tap is enough of a reminder that we all need to keep an eye on our physical and mental health.
This bears underscoring: We don’t do this because we are exceptional athletes. We do these activities because we like them and they make us feel good. We’re not racers nor have some delusion of athletic mastery. There are no rankings or track times or statistics to live up to. We’re doing stuff because it’s there to be done and it’s fun and we’re not dead yet. So we do.
My dad’s friends gradually filtered away from the softball team. A common thing was they’d pull a hamstring running to first and while limping back to the dugout swat at the air, saying, “I’m too old for this shit.” And that would be it for them, they’d amble off into the shrugging sunset. At 41, I might now be several years past when my dad played softball. And when I think of them “getting old” and quitting, my first thoughts are:
- You didn’t even stretch – of course you pulled a muscle!
- You’re been standing there with a beer in your hand until your time to bat!
- You haven’t been active all winter and now you expect this jersey to fit over your belly and your body to suddenly sprint? Come on, man! Go for a run from time to time!
Inactivity leads to a self fulfilling prophecy of “being old.”
My father was from a different time and without fail every generation thinks:
- They invented sex.
- They are wiser than the generation before them.
It may sound like I’m swinging heavily into that second option and that really isn’t my intention. My father’s generation concluded they would work hard and then retire to a life of leisure and that would lead to happy healthiness. This might have been a fine idea at the time, but it won’t likely ever fit my restless nature. I can’t speak to their lifestyles because my dad is long gone and I haven’t seen most of his friends since the funeral. But my mother keeps me abreast of the surgeries and heart attacks and diabetes the gout and obits. It sounds like their bodies have been collapsing slowly for a long time. Maybe it’s age. Maybe it’s lifestyle. I’d wager a combination of the two and leisure proves harder on a body than steady activity.
In talking about this with one of my friends, he suggested that they were probably tired from doing more manual labor types of work, and that may be true. In our current working culture we talk about work/life balance and all sorts of theoretical health benefits, but this much is definitely true: We sit in front of computers while our parents generation moved around a lot more at work. Work life, for many of us in this time in history, has become a lifelong extension of sitting in a desk in a classroom, we’ve just traded a computer for a textbook. And so for leisure we desperately raise our heart rates.
I’m not an ideal paragon of health. I’m from Wisconsin and I act like it. Cheese, sausage, beer, an extra half barrel of weight more or less evenly distributed throughout my body – those jabbing jokes exist for a reason. But I plan on maintaining my general activity level long before and long after retirement (whatever that abstract means for an artist/writer/poet). And I’m fortunate to have friends who seem committed to a similar pursuit. And we move around often, usually stretching first, and most often waiting until afterward to revel in the beer.
And, who knows, maybe I just mountain bike because it’s a little dangerous I can’t find a decent set of lawn darts to throw around.
Nighttime Snapshot of the Riverwest 24 Bike Race
This picture I took during the Riverwest 24 Bike Race caught the eye of CBS 58 in Milwaukee so they shared it. Such a fun annual community experience.
* technicality – it’s the Riverwest 24 not a 34-hour bike race (not my typo)
Great Blue Heron photographed at Riveredge
I’ve worked at Riveredge Nature Center for nearly three years and I got my first usable pictures of a Great Blue Heron today.
Unfortunate about the northern wildfire haze in the background, but I’m nonetheless glad to have pictured this gangly specimen.
These birds are native to the area and I’ve seen them plenty of times, but they always managed to spot me first and I’ve watched them fly away along the Milwaukee River.
In this instance I saw this one land at a nearby pond while I was eating lunch and hustled to grab the work camera while the salad waited. See more pictures here on the Riveredge Instagram account.
Ed Makowski | Storytelling, Public Relations, Content Creation 