The southern part of the state is mostly dairy farms and other farms. The dairy farms are diminishing and instead of corn and soy beans dominating the field crops, veggies are the big money crops. We saw virtually every kind of vegetable crop from asparagus to zucchinis. The most unusual crop we saw was ginseng which grows under a black cloth which cuts 50% of the suns rays because it likes shade. The northern part of the state was mostly woods, lakes and streams.

All 1,100 of us got to the start in Eagle River and took our luggage from the bus and found a spot on the Northland Pines HS grounds. We set up our tent in front of the school near the flagpole with several other couples who rode with us on the Michigan tour last year. For the rest of the week we all tried to camp together and usually camped in a similar location at each school. We couldn't get our tandem from the trucks, because they wouldn't arrive until 5:30 am the next day. This was a great idea as it kept them secure for the night and the school grounds were less cluttered all night.

The Route
I'm not going to give you a day-by-day or mile-by-mile recount of our trip as that would be repetitious and boring. The agenda for the ride was:
 

As you can see the mileage's were long, at least for us, and there isn't a layover day.

The people who do this ride do it over and over again. Repeat riders account for 60% of the riders with thirty-one (31) riders who had ridden GRABAAWR ten or more times. Three had done all 14 rides. Riders came from all over, but about 500 came from Wisconsin. Only 5 came from Maryland. The longest distance was a man from Japan, but he was born in Wisconsin. There weren't a lot of children and the average age seemed to be high - 45 years old.

Instructions
The administration of the ride was very good. There was an assumption that everyone knew what to do because there were so many repeat riders. It felt more like riding with a strange club on their home turf. Lots of people knew each other and knew all about the roads, towns and sights. The instructions were very good for keeping on course, but they didn't point out anything special that might be just off the course like a great bakery or ice cream parlor. You had to find it on your own or ask a local rider. The route was also marked with arrows on trees, signs, building, etc., but not painted on the road. On the tandem I'm Captain and follow the arrows and Dottie is the Rear Admiral and navigates with the instructions. It works very well because she keeps track of what's coming up and watches her computer to see when we should turn. I missed some arrows so the double check worked very well and we never went off course unintentionally. The instructions also included a great maps, so some intentional off course jaunts (shortcuts) were easy.

SAG/Rest Stops/Repairs
SAG support was excellent. SAG drivers did not carry food, but did have some water. They used cell phones to keep in touch and handled emergencies well. They did have to sag in a lot of people, but didn't seem to mind. There were no ride sponsored rest stops. There were enough towns, but up north it sometimes was a stretch between them so two water bottles were a must. Unlike Cycle Across Maryland or many other state rides, there were no state police along with the ride, but at one accident where a car ran into a bike, the police and ambulance were there very quickly. Bike repair trucks were also on the route and at night there were always bike repair concessions for any problems.

Food
Eating was the best part of this ride. Instead of having a catering group with the ride, each breakfast or dinner was done by a local group in the town. This made for more fresh made food. For example, in Portage the local St. Mary's Catholic church prepared and served dinner in the public high school. This included many homemade pies and cakes. Along the route there were very well organized food stops at various churches, Kiwanis, Lions, 4H, American Legion clubs. Food expenses were not part of registration, so you could choose to eat at the HS or take the shuttle into town. Oh, the shuttle! Unlike every other ride I've done, GRABAAWR provides a couple of busses that made loops through town stopping at all the food and motels. They ran until 10 pm so it was easy to go to town. Heading to the local pub with a bunch of local bicyclists was a great experience. The local pubs rolled out the carpet for us. They even placed sawhorses in car parking spaces so it was easier for us on bikes. One night we stayed out late with our friends and found the busses had stopped for the night. No problem - three local police took us all back to the school in their cruisers! Talk about local hospitality.

Ride
This is what we came for. From the start at Eagle River we rode north to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and the source of the Wisconsin River. From there we rode generally southwest for the rest of the trip. The roads we took had virtually no car traffic. They mostly exist and are in great condition so that the milk from the dairy farms can be picked up each day. Other than a few hunters or fisherman, the roads aren't used much. The first two days were rolling hills along the river, by beautiful lakes and through thick woods made up of white birch and pines. The hills were just right for tandems where momentum down a hill was exactly enough to get up the next hill. It was so much fun that we pushed harder than usual by pedaling down the hill and cresting the next one at 20 mph to do it over and over again. The single bikes were not able to do this so they had a lot of short climbs each hill.

On the third day we mostly broke out of the hills and rode past some of the most beautiful farms in the US. The roads were flat and straight. There still were a lot of lakes that would be completely surrounded by houses here, but many didn't even have a single house there. Most of the side roads were dirt, probably going back to another good fishing lake. Most roads had a wide clearing down one side of the road for snowmobile in the winter. Many of the cross country snowmobile trails are bike trails during the rest of the year. Wisconsin has more bike trails than any other state. This ride didn't use any of them and I wonder why they all exist, because the roads were so easy to ride on.

The end of the ride found more development, but not much between towns. The land rolled more and south of where the glaciers once extended they were rather steep. In fact there were several where walking the bike up the hill was the norm. The last day featured the biggest hill of the week. It was about 3-4 mile long. It started with a slight upgrade. The top seemed close, but once there the road turned and got steeper. This happened over and over until a very steep peak was reached. On the tandem the downhills were very fast with tandem speeds over 50 mph likely. I'm glad to have a disc brake in the rear because several of the downhills were very curvy and one road was under construction exactly at the bottom of the hill after a turn. A triple bike passed us on one down hill and afterward they said they hit 60 mph. burrr...

Tenting is always fun, but several nights of rain even put a damper on the fun. We had to set up our tent one night in a heavy downpour which continued all night, but it ended in the morning when we were getting ready to ride. Our tent didn't leak a drop. We found out later that most of our friends had gone inside to sleep in the gym. They thought we had gotten a motel. Not us! The schools in Wisconsin are awesome. Some even put our great ones to shame. One school had an Olympic size pool - inside. The gym had those dry clay like funny shaped things stuck to the wall all the way to the ceiling for rock climbing practice - wow. There were 6 full size basketball courts in the gym. It felt like Madison Square Garden. Tennis courts were actually being used at all the schools. Most school grounds were much bigger than we have here and included lots of trees as well as the usual grass.

Return
We headed south after the ride until we got to Davenport, Iowa, and then headed east. It was 90 miles farther, but it didn't take as long and we avoided the toll on the turnpikes. We had a good time, even with several rain days and some hot days, but that is normal for almost any cross state ride. I've now finished crossing twenty-five states, so I'm halfway done my goal of riding across every state. Next month Dottie and I are going to re-ride the west side of Michigan northward along Lake Michigan. I did it last year on a single bike with my grandson, James, and this year Dottie and I will do it on the tandem.

- Art Lundquist
 

Other Links about GRABAAWR

• Bike Wisconsin GRABAAWR Page
• Bob's Bike Page has links to his pages for GRABAAWR
• Ted's '98 GRABAAWR Photo Gallery