Trail Talk

Editor’s Note: It’s been too hot to hike so Jim DuFresne has been hanging around his cottage in Elk Rapids the past week, trying to stay cool, and filed this blog for MichiganTrailMaps.com. For more on the Ride Around Torch see the Cherry Capital Cycling club web site.

On Sunday there will be hundreds of bicycles in and around Elk Rapids along with spandex shorts, colorful riding jerseys, Camelbacks and aerodynamic helmets, not to mention a lot of serious cyclists.

Jim DuFresne

The reason for the two-wheel festival is because this small town in southwest Antrim County is the start and end of the Ride Around Torch, a 63-mile ride that encircles Torch Lake. Staged by the Cherry Capital Cycling Club, this event is often called the most scenic bike ride in the state, where more times than not you looking at water while pedaling.

On Monday Elk Rapids will be back to normal but bicycles will still be there. Only the 21-speeds and all-carbon bicycles will be gone and the fat tire, clunkers will be back.

Elk Rapids; the retro bike capital of Michigan.

In the late 1800s Elk Rapids was challenging Traverse City as the economic powerhouse of the region, today it’s a sleepy village that has become a haven for retro bicycles, cruisers, beach bikes, urban bikes or, in my case, a bicycle that was actually built in the 1960s.

I ride around town in a single-speed Schwinn that still has the registration sticker Grosse Isle Township made me purchase and display in 1965 as if kids on bicycles were part of a communist plot to take over the world.

When you want to slow or stop on my Schwinn, you pedal backwards. How cool is that? 

Retro bikes at the Elk Rapids Lower Marina during a sunset on Lake Michigan.

Retro bikes dominate this town with locals and visitors a like because clunkers are much more practical. This is a place that demands you to ride slowly and stop often, making clip-in pedals a hassle to say the least.

Elk Rapids is incredibly scenic as it is literarily surrounded on three sides by water. Elk Lake nudges into it and from there Elk River splits the town in half before emptying into Lake Michigan. Oh, and on the northside of town is Bass Lake.

There is a spot downtown where you can look to your left at the East Arm of Grand Traverse Bay and see the skyline of Traverse City. To the right you can see the coastline wind north to Little Traverse Bay and due west is the end of Mission Peninsula and the blue, endless horizon of Lake Michigan.

Stunning.

This is also a small town, population 3,000, so you need to stop at the bakery before they run out of hand-cut donuts or the library to pick up a novel for the beach or to catch up to Joe so you can ask him what the movie is next week at his single-screen theater.

The marinas also contribute to the town’s retro craze. Blessed with a watery location, the village has two of them; the Lower Marina overlooks Lake Michigan and its slips are filled with large sailboats and cruisers. The Upper Marina is on Elk River and the pontoons and speed boats docked there have access to the Antrim County Chain of Lakes that includes Torch Lake, Bellaire Lake and Clam Lake.

The marinas maintain an army of bikes – retro bikes of course – that any boater can borrow to ride around town. If you arrive without one, you can rent a retro bike at the new Right Tree Adventure Rentals Shop  just off Main Street.

Add it all up and this up-and-coming trendy town with great restaurants and wide beaches is like a Mackinac Island with vehicles in the summer. Cars replace the horses-and-carriages and everybody drives, pedals and walks cautiously and courteously with drivers always waving through two-wheelers and pedestrians.

Let’s face it, if you’re driving through this trendy beach community, marveling at the beautiful scenery or the historical buildings on Main Street, the last thing you want to do is cause an eco-friendly cyclist to have a header on an old clunker like mine. Would not be cool.

 So on Sunday a lot of us will enjoy the beginning and end of the Ride Around Torch and a small town overwhelmed by top-of-the-line road bikes.

On Monday we’ll be back on our clunkers.

Jim DuFresne

It was a Sunday when the new MichiganTrailMaps.com e-shop was launched and then those of us who had worked tirelessly for three months to build it … waited. Patiently.

What else could we do? The first order is always the hardest and as Sunday rolled into Monday and Monday rolled into Tuesday there were moments when I wondered if it would ever come.

I’ve waited painfully for other things of my life; for the birth of my first child (we named her Jessica), for an answer from the stunned girl I had just asked to Homecoming in 11^th grade (she said no), for the results of an exam in college I was pretty sure I bombed (I did).

But this time it was almost maddening. I’d be online, checking email every few minutes, looking for that Pay Pal notification. Any sign that the shop, with all its coding and links, was out there working.

As it turns out it was. On Wednesday at 2 p.m., the 15^th time I was checking the account that day, there it was, in the subject line: Notification of Payment Received.

Our first sale!

It was from woman named Lois and she ordered two books, requesting that the author (me) autograph them. On that particular day I was also the warehouse and shipping department so I packaged the books and then hand wrote her address on it because our tech person forgot to inform me I could print out the mailing label through Pay Pal.

Then I stepped outside to head to the post office. In all the excitement I didn’t realize that the clouds had cleared, the sun was out and in the middle of February it was in upper 40s. It’s been that kind of winter. I’ve yet to ski close to home but I’ve been cycling continuously since November.

The cycling has been amazing. A near snowless winter means the shoulders of roads, bike paths and sidewalks are clear. The temperatures have been ideal. I wear a light pair of wool gloves and a thin wool cap under my helmet and once I’m on my bike I never get cold or overheat.

Perfect equilibrium on two wheels.

I tucked Lois’ package in my bike bag and headed out on the seven-mile ride to downtown Clarkston. From my home I followed the bike path through Independence Oaks County Park, pedaling pass four lakes. When I entered Clarkston I passed four more lakes; Park Lake, Upper Mill Pond, Mill Pond and Deer Lake, and then crossed the Clinton River.

Pulling up to the post office I realized I may have just stumbled on a new slogan for the company, one with an eco-friendly theme:

MichiganTrailMaps.com: We Don’t Burn Fossil Fuels Delivering Your Book To the Post Office!

Match that Amazon!

When I returned home I did something else I doubt Jeff Bezos, founder of the giant online bookseller, had ever done; I wrote a personal email to Lois. I told her the books were on the way and thank her for the order. I even mentioned how agonizing it was waiting for that first one and thanks to her the wait was over.

The next day she wrote back to me:

I always looked forward to reading your Saturday article in the Ann Arbor News.  My kids were young then, and we followed many of your family trip plans.  All four kids are grown now but still enjoy outdoor adventures.  You have touched many lives.

Sometimes being small is better.