Last weekend, my brother-in-law Ben took a leisurely bike ride through the beautiful Michigan countryside with a couple of friends. Okay, so the ride might have been a 4 day, 330 mile death march, the countryside might have stretched from Lansing to Mackinaw City, and the “couple of friends” might have been a couple hundred of his closest buddies, but that’s DALMAC for you.

We were along as a private “SAG” vehicle, an acronym which apparently means many things to many people, but the most logical definition I’ve seen is “Support And Gear”. It also may refer to the fact that support people like myself tend to have a little more sag around the gut than all of the super-athletic riders around us.

That was probably the weirdest part. In the morning, we would get up late, take showers, slowly take down the tents, and generally lounge around while all these people took off for brutal amounts of exercise. It made me feel like a super-slacker, especially around the tandems with 6 year old kids on the back!

“What are you up to today?”
“Oh, I thought I’d ride 90 miles on my bike, you?”
“Eh, I’ll probably go ride around in the car in a couple of hours or so, if I feel up to it.”

The “race” (it’s not so much a race as an endurance trial) started on Thursday. We had planned to come up on Saturday, but we decided to meet up late Friday night instead. This proved interesting, because it meant setting up our new tent for the first time in the middle of the night. It is vastly more complicated than our old tent!

Saturday morning brought rain and bad luck for Ben in the form of 3 blown tires, including one that popped going around a corner that caused him to lay out the bike. It turns out there was a stone poked through the tire which was repeatedly popping the tubes.

Still, he only had a little road rash on his knee and only missed a few miles, and the rest of the day went better.

Evie was most excited about seeing, “The Wall”. The wall is about 2 miles of uphill road, followed by about 500 feet of SUPER uphill road, all of this at the end of a 90 mile day. Lots of the cyclists find alternate routes to avoid the Wall, but some intrepid cyclists go for it.

It was fun standing in the group at the top of the hill cheering wildly for any rider who managed to make it to the top. We had a sign for Ben and Evie busted out her “Go Ben Go!” cheer, which morphed into her “Go Bikers Go!” chant, that became her trademark for the rest of the trip. I think she made a lot of bikers happy, and who knows? Maybe even gave them the encouragement to finish.

After this, we chanted for bikers at all the stops. Even Oliver got in on the act, chanting, “Go go go!” whenever he saw a biker (and since then, whenever he sees anybody on a bike, or even a picture of someone riding a bike).

We spent our nights in the middle of a tent city set up on the lawns of various high schools, and our days getting lost in the Northern Michigan hinterlands. It was beautiful driving on back roads through rural areas and small towns. Camping in the tent city was fun too, although sharing bathrooms and locker room/open-style showers with a hundred other guys left a little to be desired!

One of the best parts of the trip was something that happened by accident. We had missed a turn at some point, and then realized we were on the same route as the bikers. We didn’t want to create a dangerous situation, so we turned off at the next road. It was fine for about a mile or so, and then it abruptly ended into a little dirt trail with a sign saying it was a “seasonal road” which was not maintained in the winter. Calling this goat path a road was extremely optimistic; it was basically two sandy tracks winding through the back woods. There were a couple of times when we thought for sure we were going to get stuck in the sand and nobody would ever hear from us gain. It was awesome. (And strangely, I had my best cell phone reception of the day!) The funniest part was when we got to a sharp bend in the path and there was a regular street sign, as if we were really at the corner of two streets, and not the only people for miles!

Finally we made our way to the finish line in Mackinaw City.

It really was a fun trip. Even though we weren’t participating in the race per say, we still felt like we were a part of something larger. It was neat to see all the different people all participating in this fun, community atmosphere. And even the camping was fun, since we normally just stay at one site for the entire time rather than tearing down and setting up every day. This sounds like a pain, but it really wasn’t bad since we didn’t have much to do during the day, and we couldn’t have a fire, so we planned really simple meals or ate out. It rained two nights, but we didn’t get very wet (although Anna did have to dry some sheets under the hand dryer in the bathroom for us one morning!)

The race ended on Sunday, so we stayed at a regular campsite that night and drove all the way back on Monday. Monday was a pretty rough day, since it was pretty cold overnight and when we were packing up in the morning, and then we had a series of traffic and construction delays, as well as some long breaks from the car. Rather than getting home in time for supper, we ended up getting home around 10 p.m., which made it a 12 hour day. In fact, I’m kind of surprised the kids weren’t in a worse mood! Maybe all those long breaks really were the way to go.

So that’s it! Congratulations Ben (and Phil)! No matter what happens to you in life, nobody can take away the time you rode your bike across the state of Michigan. And I already heard some talk about next year…