Infinite sand, for just a couple of hours

To see a world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wild flower
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour. 
  -  William Blake

Right. So my recently-clarified, adjusted Ride Across Minnesota plan is to do more than 5, at least 60-mile rides and to ride at least 600 miles in July, and to do a chunk of those rides while in NE Wisconsin for the week that I normally would be riding 300 miles in Minnesota. I also committed to making the rides challenging with some good stories. I set that goal in mid-July without closely examining how that might work out, timeframe-wise, but I'm actually making decent progress. (See my Facebook post about getting my second chain of 2020 on my road bike late last week.)

I am wondering, though, if today's ride of just shy of 30 miles on my fat tire bike in the rain, sand, gravel, and some very deep (pedals under the water) lengthy puddles can count as a 60-miler. Hear me out. There are two bases for this justification, which I will explore in more detail:

1. It was at least twice as fun as any ride I've been on lately.

All spring and summer, I've been biking on pretty much the same routes by myself - adding a little new twist here or there. Today's route in a wilderness area in NE WI only had a couple of miles in common with what I've ridden before. Thankfully, even though I have no phone/text service, my map functionality worked so I could see that I'd gotten off the planned course a couple of times. I was also able to find a detour when it turned out that one of the "roads" on Google and Map My Ride was actually a private road with very explicit "no trespassing" signs. The road I took as a detour was one of my favorite parts. It was narrow and isolated.

Since it was a rainy day, the woods were dark and green and pretty. I found some good views over valleys I didn't know existed, an old firetower spot, a snowshoe trailhead; saw tons of wildflowers, a few lakes, streams, and rivers; and got bit in the behind by deer flies (and almost wiped out in a wet mud puddle while riding one handed because I was trying to get one off my posterior). I saw a couple of deer and a fox. There were rolling hills - nothing major - but some of the puddles and wet sand leading up to and away from them were challenging, and I had to go through some squishy ruts and slide-y bits. I was laughing a lot, by myself, in the middle of nowhere. I saw two cars on the dirt roads. On one little stretch of isolated pavement by Kentuck Lake, I saw a few cars entering and exiting a resort, but I don't count them because... well, because pavement was such a fleeting aspect of the ride.

This is the ride I thought I'd do. I got a little off
track in the SE part and had to find new roads in the
NE part. I got to add some miles. I could have
ridden more, if I had packed more water and a snack.

  

Clockwise from top left: About 1/3 of the way in;
realizing I'd need to take a detour; a post-ride #BikeMS
brewski in my customary #BikeMS coozy; if
one were to zoom in she'd see legs and a bike
caked with wet, clingy sand.

I hope the video comes through - my Internet connection in the Northwoods is not perfect. As one would hope. 

2. I was on a fat tire bike, in wet sand.

Did I mention these facts? It rained pretty steadily for half the ride, drizzled for another quarter, and was dryish for the remainder. It was a little... hmmm... sticky.. in my rain coat since it was 71 when I headed out, but it actually was pretty comfortable. I forgot to bring my easily detachable/attachable fender so my butt was wet in roughly 45 seconds, but it would have been wet from the rain anyhow. My hair was soaked and had about 1/4 cup of sand lodged in it. My helmet was covered in sand. 

Clockwise, from top left: Self-explanatory; these wet
ruts were at the beginning of the ride, before the
puddles got very impressive; a nice stretch of gravel;
a pit stop to check the map (again).

I averaged 9.38 mph on the ride. Granted, I was not trying to break any land records and was looking at all of the scenery. Besides some of the usual discomforts (I have been suffering from a sore bruised butt bone, and was very soggy and abrasive - exfoliating, I suppose - from the waist down), riding a fat tire bike is more work than riding a road bike.

The tires are wide and friction-y.

My 45N Dillinger tires are over 4 inches wide. My
road bike tires are 1 inch wide. 

The bike is heavier.

I'm not sure how heavy my bikes are and I was too
lazy to get a bathroom scale, take it to the garage, and
step on and off it with and without my bikes. The
magical Internet tells me that my road bike (when not
loaded down with all my crap) is probably
around 15-18 pounds and the fat bike is about 31.

I think it is safe to say that it is twice as hard to ride a bike that is twice as heavy and has knobby tires that are over four times the width of slick roadbike tires. Right? I mean, math isn't my strong suit, and I'm sure there's some physics related to gears and wheel circumference. Or is it calculus? Or both? I think physics - - because it is an object in motion and there's some gravity. All I remember from calculus is that it is handy for making a bridge or figuring out the area of a donut (Who cares about the area of a donut? Just eat it.).


ANYWAY, when I got back, it was still raining a little bit so I jumped in the lake and swam around for the first time in 2020. It helped me rinse off all the sand. After a shower and some lunch, things cleared up and my parents took me out for a pontoon boat ride.

I had a prettier photo of the lake, but thought
I should offer proof of being on a boat.

So, I'll let you be the judges, I guess, but I know one thing: it was a great bike ride.

https://mssociety.donordrive.com/participant/GoMaggieGo
(p.s. The MS Society switched websites last week; a couple of your donations are still making it over to this website, but I've been assured that they're in the fundraising totals they have in their spreadsheets. Thanks for your support!)