Tales from the Trails: Reflections on Bike Packing
It’s been 3 years since I packed up my life on my bike & left to ride 1500 miles solo around Lake Michigan.
Here’s what I took away from that adventure:
Although my 5-week-long bike tour was three years ago, I still feel the huge impact it made on my life. It was 2020 & I had just graduated from college – the world was going through a major upheaval and so was my life. While the global pandemic was just beginning, it felt like uncertainty reigned supreme. My support network of college roommates and friends were now scattered across the country, and in return for 4 years of hard work and a substantial sum of money, I was presented with a virtual graduation slideshow and a dismal job market. As I brainstormed what steps to take next, I kept coming back to an outrageous thought: this seems like the perfect time to leave everything behind and hit the road. So with just me, my bike, and miles of trails ahead of me, I left my worldly possessions behind in a storage unit and set off for adventure.
Quite honestly, when I set out for this tour with not much more than my bike, a hammock & a dream, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I certainly thought I did and would tell everyone and their dog as much if they expressed any worry or incredulity about what I was about to embark on. I’d been riding my bike a bunch through the quiet streets of Chicago in the early days of the pandemic (for lack of anything better to do) and my dad let me borrow his old bike packing gear, so I was pretty much set for all I knew. I figured I’ve camped my whole life and I know how to ride a bike, so all I have to do is combine the two and I’d be fine. My mom was totally just being over-worried & overbearing about me being alone in the middle of the rural midwest with only my bike to carry me. What could go wrong?
Cut to me, soaked to the bone, alone and cowering in an outhouse, miles deep in the wilderness of the upper peninsula of Michigan, with lightning striking the trees overhead and thunder rattling all around me. This was going to be a lot harder than I imagined. But let me back up the story a little:
I wasn’t even two weeks into this trip and had only just crossed over into the U.P. that morning when I found myself riding down a stretch of dirt road to get to my campground for the night. In this part of the state, my options for camping were few and far between, so I picked a campsite that was along a remote equestrian trail. This is all to say that the area was more off the grid than I was used to. My aging, slick road tires were no match for the miles of dirt road I had to travel on. Simply put, I was not prepared.
I certainly wasn’t prepared for the storm that was about to roll in. There was thunder somewhere in the distance, but it didn’t really register as an impending threat. At that point, it merely sounded like the upstairs neighbors were moving furniture around… but I didn’t actually have any neighbors for miles in any direction. Also, I was outside. I thought about getting my camp set up, but I wasn’t overly worried because the sun was still shining. No cell reception meant no weather forecast to tell me what was actually looming.
This pen was designed for the horses to stay in while on the trail. What a perfect spot to string up my hammock! I thought.
I took my sweet time throwing my food over a branch to keep it away from the bears. I took a leisurely stroll to find the water pump and started to unpack my dinner for the night. Then I felt the first drop. That’s when I decided to get my shelter set up. Mind you, my shelter was a hammock & a rainfly. In my efforts to pack light, I decided to forgo bringing a tent altogether. Then the drops kept coming. I raced to get my sleeping bag good to go and pack up any stray electronics. Then the thunder started in earnest. That’s when I hopped into my sleeping bag to wait out the rain.
So I waited. I’m not sure if you’ve ever had to wait out the rain from a hammock, but when you have nothing but a thin tarp between you and the storm, there’s not much to do. So as the minutes passed, I started to count the seconds between the lightning & thunder. When I first took cover, the lightning was miles away and I could count pretty high before hearing the thunder. But with each strike, the time became shorter & shorter. As the lightning got closer, I could feel some of the rain starting to seep through the rainfly. In my haste to get my camp set up, my work was less than stellar. And because my sleeping bag was not waterproof, it was starting to feel damp inside what should have been my cozy cocoon. To make matters worse, I strung my hammock up inside of the horse pen, so a puddle was starting to form directly beneath me where all the horses had stamped down the dirt. It dawned on me that the pen was some of the only metal around. Metal that is, famously, a great conductor of electricity.
The thunder started to sound mere seconds after a flash of lightning.
This pen isn’t very tall, I mused. So the lightning would almost certainly hit a tall tree before it struck my hammock, right? Exactly like the trees directly above me. But, even if it didn’t fell a whole tree, how could I be certain that the lightning couldn’t knock a branch off? The puddle below me kept growing. My sleeping bag started to feel wet instead of merely damp. Like the horses meant to be trapped inside, I couldn’t have felt more penned in.
I was still trying to count the seconds between lightning and thunder, but I couldn’t keep count. Lightning would flash twice in a row before I had even finished counting from the last strike. Was that thunder? Or was that a branch falling? Whatever it was, it was LOUD so it had to be close.
I knew I had to get somewhere else. Everything I’ve ever heard about trying to keep yourself safe in a storm said to get out from under the tree cover and to stay away from anything that could attract lightning. I was failing on all fronts. But where else could I go? In my walk around the campgrounds looking for water, I saw no one else out camping (they all probably checked the weather). There wasn’t even a park office that I could seek out. There was just a bulletin board right next to the outhouses. So I weighed my options: do I stick with this sinking ship of a hammock in the middle of rising waters, or escape to a solid concrete building covering a stinky hole in the ground?
The flash of lightning came just as sudden as the thunder that boomed with it. No seconds in between to count. The lightning kept striking and shaking the forest around me. It must have only been a matter of time before it struck me directly. The thunder kept roaring, making it harder to think about anything other than how to get out of this situation I had found myself trapped in.
I chose to abandon ship and make a break for the stinky hole in the ground, not that it was much of a choice. It was a mad dash between the hammock I left behind and the only shelter I could get to. Before I even hopped out of my “shelter” I was already soaked through, but I was still desperate to keep my electronics, lighter, and journal dry. I raced through the mud and the downpour with my sleeping bag covering everything I needed to stay dry. The actual sleeping bag was a lost cause. The rain was pelting me from all directions and the wind was doing its best to topple me over, but I managed to stumble into the outhouse, safe from the deluge outside.
So that’s how I found myself standing next to a toilet, sopping wet, clutching my gear wrapped in a sleeping bag that was even wetter than me. And I was thrilled to be there. As the storm raged around this tiny outhouse, I knew I made the right choice because the thunder was only getting louder.
While waiting for the storm to pass from the (relative) safety of the outhouse, I could only laugh at the situation. I had absolutely no clue what I was getting myself into despite the hours of planning and prep and training that I did before departing. I did manage to keep myself alive with nothing more than some survival instincts and the small amount of gear that I could pack onto my bike. I was so happy to be somewhere dry that I didn’t even mind the stench that much.
Before the storm rolled through to wreck my world.
Afterward, my shelter was surrounded by a lake of a puddle and the rainfly was nothing more than a sopping wet mess. At least the sun came out.
According to my journal, three hours passed between when I was huddled in my hammock, praying that I wouldn’t die in the middle of the woods where nobody could find me and when I finally emerged from my stinky concrete oasis to sunny skies. Now three years have passed between that storm and now, yet I can only look back on that time fondly. Sure, at the time I was totally terrified while stuck in the hammock, but it gave me a huge sense of confidence when I came out on the other side totally unscathed, if a bit damp. If I could manage to survive a torrential downpour in the worst of circumstances, what else could I do?
I took this shortly after emerging from the outhouse. With all the sunshine you’d hardly know that the heavens had just cried themselves out merely moments ago. With that smile on my face, you’d hardly know I was crying too.
While riding my way around Lake Michigan I found myself in tons of situations that I had never even imagined, which kept the trip exciting and full of adventure. Walking my bike along the side of a highway because I didn’t have a spare tube; splitting a bottle of Merlot and swapping stories with a campground host in her cabin outside of the Sleeping Bear dunes; getting a call from the Illinois State Police because my mom couldn’t get a hold of me — these just some vignettes of the trip that make me smile.
When I set out on the journey, my life was so full of uncertainty. I had no idea if I’d be able to get a job or an apartment. I didn’t even know which of my friends would still be in the city when I got back. Surprisingly, the uncomfortable challenges I overcame on that tour brought with them a newfound sense of confidence that I’d be able to work through whatever I came back to. With three years in my rearview mirror, I see that I was right.