Well, another Night Shift has come and gone. The route this
year was found by many to be a better one, even though we had more mileage of
pavement than the previous two years. Including eleven miles of the North
Country Trail for single-track proved to be a nice bonus over the previous year’s
five miles of Hungerford Trail. Overall there was less climbing and less sand (which
meant less walking and happier riders).
Friday was a very long day for most of us, as we all
arranged to prepare camp north of Ludington at the super-nice Lake Michigan at
Manistee Campground and Rec Area (managed by the Feds). It is a REALLY nice
campground with close location on Lake Michigan with access to the beach and
lake. The kids loved riding their bikes on the paved surfaces – one evening
until 10pm. The driving there and back seemed like it took forever though. Once
we arrived back at Night Shift Headquarters, we had about 50 minutes or so to
gear up for the ride start. This was a problem for me, for I was planning on
having a few hours to waste by napping and gathering up the rest of my ride
gear. So the rushing around began….
Just 24 hours before the ride start I had contracted an
intestinal bug of sorts that would have me sitting on the crapper 8-9 times in
12 or so hours. Bad news! This made me REAL nervous. I already suffer from
dehydration during normal days and had been stocking up on fluid for the
previous one and a half weeks. I immediately began taking anti-poop medicine to
ward off the rumbling hydration-robbing demons.
Not only was I nervous because of the “brown-out situation”,
but also because I had gotten little to NO time to ride bikes this year. Life
is crazy. Life is busy. I bought a new mountain bike in the spring, so I’ve
only been riding trails in short bursts – hardly any roads. (You know how it is
with a new bike, the others no matter how fancy or expensive, get to sit and
wait their turn.)
Some stats and numbers on my "training": I was going into this 100+mile ride with only
338 miles logged for the ENTIRE YEAR! Only four times this year, did I have any
ride more than 23 miles – and three of those were all on paved surfaces to and
from work at a casual pace. In July I rode a whopping 62 miles the entire
month, and that INCLUDED a ride with the family 11 miles roudtrip to Sand Lake for
ice cream. In August, ZERO miles. So that’s twenty three training miles in the
last four weeks!
IF I completed Night Shift (if), it would account for twenty-five
percent of all my 2015 miles. All in one evening. Those thoughts already had me
virtually pooping my bib shorts, now with my intestinal “issue”, I could literally be
pooping them too.
We met up with the legendary (SAG) Crankshaws (John and
Judy) at our departure location just west of Sand Lake. Bob’s wife Dawn and
Matt’s wife Laura were also going to SAG, so we had two vehicles to greet five
men (myself, Matt R, Matt L, Bob C and Jeremy C) at our pre-planned stops. Matt R and Jeremy were riding their Fat Bikes
(the first ever Fat Bikes on NS) and myself, riding my Cyclocross bike (the
first ever also on NS). The other two guys were on their 29er mountain bikes.
So, the stage is set. Let’s begin…
Segment 1: Sand Lake
to Newaygo (19 miles)
The ride began with us being our usual jovial selves, excited
to get the trek underway – swerving all over the dirt roads, acting like 10
year olds riding BMX bikes in that local town to go play pick-up games of
baseball for the day. Matt R was seeking out beer and pop cans to crush with
his fat bike. I counted 4 crushed cans in this segment. Somehow he was managing
to have the tires pick the damn things up and shoot them through the air –
usually splattering whatever fluid had been hiding inside over whoever was
riding close to him.
Matt L and I didn’t fully recon this section of the route
back in May because I had forgot some equipment, so we fast-forwarded straight
to Newaygo figuring it would be uneventful. For the most part there were no
surprises until we came across a dreaded sand-filled Seasonal Road. Oh crap! I
thought we avoided all of those this year in the route planning. This was a
surprise. The fat bike guys didn’t even flinch at the challenge. They were gone
and out of sight almost instantly. I was all over the place on my cross bike. I
was spinning out and weaving back and forth until I’d come to a halt so I could
walk.
After coming out of the Seasonal Road south of Newaygo,
there was this “sawed off family of round red necks” that welcomed over Matt R
and Jeremy to their brush-fire they were monitoring with a garden hose. According
to Matt the conversations revolved around their Fat Bikes. "Are those
motor bikes? How much one of dem cost?" Jeremy's responses, "No, you
pedal them. They cost about two to three." (Yep, no descriptor with
that, just “two to three” – you add the zeros my friend.) My assumption is that
the other four riders couldn’t wait for me to join up with them so they could
leave that immediate area – because we left pretty quick after I stopped to
observe. Dang, I missed all the good stuff.
Shortly after this, we had to ride on about five miles of
busy M-82, which felt pretty dangerous. We rode the shoulder much of the time,
only zipping back onto pavement when no following cars were present. We didn’t
stop or slow for anything, Matt R railing over a cooler lid with his fat bike
in the process. It was like a 5 mile Time Trial – we were riding so fast and
tight, drafting off each other, in order to get off that road! We all felt
pretty dang good rolling into the first SAG stop at the Wesco gas station
(where apparently, there were some bystanders accosting our SAG women with
random comments).
Segment 2: Newaygo to
North Country Trail (23 miles)
While at Wesco, we notice there are cops everywhere. Lots of
late night hooligans in Newaygo apparently. As we ride out (with a curious cop
following us), a strike of lightning made us take notice of changing weather
conditions. Wow, did I really just see a flash? Then another. And another. BOOM!
LOUD, and close. It has not yet begun to rain, so we considered to keep riding (only until
the next lightning strike). Mother Nature answered us with a big, fat “NO!, we safely gathered and stopped under the overhang at an ice
cream store, when it started to pour. We waited out this rather severe looking
pop-up line of storms for 45 minutes. It literally came out of nowhere and
formed right above us and to the north. It agitated us to have to sit and wait
for this while our bodies cooled down and muscles stiffened. Impatient "Old Man Remus" came to visit us, who later turned into "Weather Man Remus" (reading radar maps and forecasting for us).
Once it was clear, we left – getting only wet from road
spray and mud. It was tough to get back in the saddle after that much downtime.
Since it was still really humid, we rode through lots of fog and quickly
discarded the use of our riding glasses. We did miss one turn here, but found
our way back on course with little issue. The dirt road leading to SAG #2 was
pretty soft and washed out – Jeremy threw his chain from ripping over one set
of the washout bumps. This SAG stop turned out to be a really good one – the
sky was clear with a million twinkling stars above. I did manage to see one
shooting star from the (now waning) Perseid Meteor shower. This was a New Moon
night, so it was SUPER dark out. What beauty exists out there – but only if you
deliberately take the time to look.
Segment 3: North
Country Trail start to end (11 miles)
A few of us switched out some socks, gloves and jerseys for
nice dry ones before tackling the single-track. This would be the most exciting
part of the ride. Jeremy donned his blue-tooth Bose speaker pod facing outward
off his Camelbak, hooked up with streaming Pandora radio. He would be our
leader for this segment so we can all experience the booming likes of AC/DC,
Eminem and Metallica during the contrast of beaming headlamps and total
darkness. Always bringing up the rear (“riding sweep” sounds way cooler), I got
to witness four mountain bikers lit up like daylight at 2am on night time single
track. So cool! What a good flowing trail from 6 mile north to 13 mile road.
For me, it was a real challenge for the first 3 miles on the cross bike. The
lowest gear, nearly the same as my single-speed mountain bike, wasn’t too much
trouble. However, the drop bars and road bike-style brake levers were the
toughest part to get used to. My back and hands were cramping from lack of
steering leverage and frequent braking. My right tricep kept locking up from
cramps.
We did get lost in this section, travelling to the east side
of Nichols Lake and ending up in a campground instead going toward the west
side and continuing on the trail. This segment took near 2 hours to complete.
We always seem to have one section that is a weird time-warp of continuum. No
way, that took two hours!!?! Once we got back on track and made contact with
the SAG, (the two hours confirmed) there were more clothing changes and
refueling to happen. This was supposed to be a quick stop, but ended up being
longer than planned.
Segment 4: North
Country Trail to Branch Township (15 miles)
Most of the ride away from the trail to our next stop was
paved. This section went pretty fast. Nothing unusual to note up until our next
SAG stop at the Ruby Creek Tavern. Once we arrived all we heard about from the SAG women was how
clean the port-a-john was - like brand new. Then we noticed
that there were still men inside the bar closing it down. Eventually, an old
man came out suspicious of our activities. I approached him and told him we
were just borrowing his parking lot for our ride. He says “Oh, you guys are the
bikers!” What!? You heard of us? Someone called here ahead of time? What is
going on? Turns out this old man had no idea what he was saying. He made himself to
be the mayor (or land owner?) of hick-town and spent his time bragging about how there was some Argentine olympian there at the bar that very night. Oh. My. Gawd. An Olympian? Really? Some guy he didn't even recall the name of that did the decathalon and won a silver medal and a bronze star. (yep, he said bronze star). I think Old Man got tricked. Also, he wouldn't shut up about a Veteran’s benefit
parade the next day that was going to shut down their main drag for about an
hour that morning. Demo Derby. Carnie games. Bon fires. Car Show. Beer Tent.
Wow, impressive. (Little did we know that two of our group would get to
actually witness this event.)
And then we made the mistake of answering his question of
“where y’all goin’?” Of which, Jeremy responded first with “the forest” – then
John Crankshaw unveiled the super-map he created on corrugated outlining the
entire route. (so beautiful!)
Of course, we had to listen to Old Man Jenkins
tell us which roads we should take. I guess Hawley Road (pronounced "Holly" apparently by rednecks) was the crown jewel of all roads in the area. We didn't notice anything special about it. Just another road. It started as dirt, which pissed us all off because Old Man told us it was all paved beautifully. It did change to pavement eventually, but that was funny - how mad we were.
Segment 5: Branch Twp
to Custer (21 miles)
Less than one mile down the road from the RCT, we knew we
had to take a right turn – which is apparently why we blew right past our turn
and proceeded to climb TWO giant steady hills and continue for another mile or
two. Ha! But even before these hill climbs, Matt R said to me “is that it?” I
said, “No way. Seasonal road. AVOID.” Apparently, glancing at a white sign with
black lettering without reading it means it can only be a Seasonal Road.
Upon inspection later, Matt R read it to be a sign about winter-time snowmobile
restrictions. Whoops. We had actually been heading south – which led to lots of
map reading, confusion, etc in the middle of the road. I couldn’t even read a
map at this point, so I handed over my copy to Matt R and said “here, do this
for me – I can’t.” (At least the downhill back to our mistake turn was sweet –
I’ll take credit for that at least!)
Since we had gotten lost a few times this
evening, we began cutting a few turns out of the route. The sky began to
lighten as we rode straight north to Custer on all pavement, towards our last
SAG stop – avoiding the gravel I had planned “for fun”.
Segment 6: Custer to
Lake Michigan at Maninstee Campground (23 miles)
SAG stop in Custer was good. Apparently I missed all the
hub-bub about a missing SAG vehicle. It took me about 5 minutes to catch on
which led to some chuckling. I didn't even notice a full size pick-up truck was missing!! I was pretty spaced out. It turns out that Bob and
Dawn’s truck got a flat tire at the Ruby Creek Tavern. So a few men's gear and
food was still there. Hence
why I SAG with the masterful Crankshaws – he’s never said, but I’m sure John
has a redundancy plan in place for such events. Safe! (Bob and Jeremy's reward for completing Night Shift was to then go travel 40-some miles to go tend to the broke down vehicle, repair it and talk to more locals near Ruby Creek Tavern during the parade and festivities. They eventually made it back, but they were pretty blown up and tired.)
Even though I had stomach pains and didn’t want to eat or
drink anything, I knew I had to. That’s one of the worst feelings, making
yourself consume something when nothing sounds good, nor do you feel like you
even have room for it. I managed about 1/3 of a small Diet Coke and some other
stuff I can’t even remember. I just remembered that I needed caffeine in my
system in order to finish this thing out.
There were general discussions of it “almost” being over,
except for the 20+ miles left that we knew of. Men laying flat in the parking
lot. Moaning. Groaning. You know, old man stuff. Gear scattered, bikes thrown
askew. We all began to shed the gear we wouldn’t need like lights, extra tools
and water bottles. It was time to try and make short work of these last few miles,
lighten the load was the strategy.
The route was pretty flat and boring. We
needed the flat, but not really the boring and cut a few more miles from the
route. The last dirt road on the route, Townline, was all washboard, stony and
bumpy as heck. Also, full exposure to the sun through flat corn fields. One
last punishment to the sitting area, hands, neck and shoulders. Terrible. Once
on the entrance road to our campground we were feeling pretty good about being close
to done. It went on and on for miles though, the longest 8 miles of the trip.
Just a continuous “let’s be done with this!!” attitude. Without cutting out miles
from the pre-planned route, we probably would have been close to 120 miles on
the evening. It ended up being between 112 and 113 miles on a 108 mile planned
route. Which then led to discussion of me planning future Night Shifts to be 96
miles since once we get lost we’ll end up around 100 anyways. Sometimes out of
painful desperation, comes great ideas!
In Summary:
Like Bob said, each Night Shift is unique in its own way,
never repeatable even though the route may be. However, there are a few
pre-requisites that must come about for it to be a true “Night Shift”
experience:
1)
Seasonal Roads, walking in sand and muttering
angry words to oneself - or the feeling of being totally lost all by yourself in the dark
2)
Random talks with crazy locals
3)
Broken equipment or equipment malfunctions (this
time a SAG vehicle)
4)
A time-warp section taking way longer than it
should
All of which 2015 Night Shift fulfilled. Within the last 10
miles of the ride, I rode up next to what appeared to be a suffering Bob and
said “Bob, the only reason I can figure why we do this each year is for the stories.”
I guess that’s it. Without the stories that can become embellished with friends
over time, what good is it? It’s not like we are actually doing it to meet health goals. Adventure and stories. That will keep us young, right?
I don’t know how I really rode all that length of a ride
with little to no training. I don’t want it to give me a false sense of not
having to train more in the future, but at least I know what I’m capable of. I
concentrated so hard on managing my water intake, nutrition, stretching and
rest. It proved to really work. And the thought of me bailing on my four
friends suffering in the exact same manner, was unfathomable. Sure, I was slow
and at the back of the pack – I always am – but I couldn’t give up. I get that
from my mom. That’s a story for a different time.
