
Back in The Forest on the Far Edge of Nowhere.
Hello Dear Readers,
Greetings again from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula (I’m camping in Copper Harbor, but am writing this from a cafe 45 minutes south in Calumet, because the Internet is sufficiently faster here to justify the drive down after a few days).
This post really want to be 3 or 4 posts. They would be something like:
- How I’ve been (fine).
- Sharing photos and stories of the last few days
- Thoughts and feelings and photos. The continuing series.
- Future plans. (Gonna help my sister move from Knoxville to Colorado and then go ride from Vienna to Prague next month. Probably. I have the plane tickets.)
Anyway, I’ve been fine. More or less. I have no idea what I’m doing with my life or anything and I think that’s kinda sorta giving me some sort of anxiety because I have no idea what I want in the long term and therefore no idea what I should be working towards or anything and am just riding my bike around and eating delicious food. So yeah, more or less fine. Kierkegaard helps.
I drove up a few days ago. I split the drive into two days. It’s 10 hours from Urbana, which is certainly doable in a day, but because of a stop at REI in Chicagoland and Walmart in Green Bay I would’ve been getting in a bit late, and I didn’t want to have to hunt for a campsite at night if my first pick wasn’t available.



I camped at the Sturgeon River Campground in Ottawa Nat’l Forest on the way up. I hadn’t been there before. It was a very scenic drive in:

It’s a small free campground. It’s good.


There were a lot of bugs though. A lot. That was a bit… Annoying. Waking up to this was pretty great though. Have I mentioned I like the forest?

After that it was another few hours drive to Cu Harbor. As it happens my first pick of campsites was free. Yay! This is the same place I camped in May. It’s a free “spot” down an old dead end mining road, and is closer to the trails than the State Park Campground.

After setting up camp and spending a goof relaxing time staring off into space and relaxing, it was time to ride. :) You may have noticed that I brought two bikes with me this time. My normal FS 29er and my Ti Fatbike. First ride was on the fatbike:




It was good and nice to be out. That said, it very annoying turns out the fork has stopped working properly. It works, but has no sag when I get on. A little hard to explain, but if I’m on the bike it’ll be at 0% compression until I hit something big, at which point it’ll compress normally. However, it doesn’t compress at all for either small stuff or in corners, which results in unpredictable handling and really, really beat my wrists up. I’ve done some research and I probably need to get it rebuilt*. I took it to the shop in CH and they said they can’t do it in a short time frame (don’t have the kit in stock). I also called a couple other places in Calumet on Houghton. Neither of them have the kit either, so this will probably have to wait until I get home. Anyway, having my fork stop working 10 hrs from home would be bad, BUT! I HAVE TWO BIKES UP HERE :D :D :D So I can ride my other one.
(*It’s possible I can fix it via a valve in the bottom. I read about this, inspected it, didn’t seem to fix it, and am now reading more about it. That would be nice, but really, I don’t mind paying for a fork rebuild since I got a great deal on the bike anyway.)
Anyway, yesterday I woke up annoyingly early. Instead of going back to bed I made coffee and drove up to the CH overlook. It was good. Having done that, I can forever just go back to sleep. :)


After that I took a nap, and then went out to go ride. It was good. :) I’ve started chanting “I’m one with the bike the bike is with me” while I fly down things. It’s fun. :)

Yesterday evening I went out to a short hiking trail that’s on the small peninsula between Lake Superior and the Copper Harbor (the actually the harbor).



It was a nice little hike. This is my… 4th time up here and I had never gone out there, so I’m happy I finally did.



This morning I slept in and after breakfast, coffee, and restocking my ice, I eventually got out for a short ride (not a long ride because I wanted to get here to the cafe not too late). It was pouring rain for a bit last night, but one of the great things about here is you can’t tell that, the trails drain so fast. It’s great. I meant some other MTBers while out and it’s their first time up here. They asked my about “How gnarly [the Red Trail] is” to which I was just like “Umm, it’s fun. There are a few drops, but you can walk them.” Anyway, I neither wanted to turn them off from the trail nor not warn them, but at the bottom they seemed happy to have done it, so that’s good. :)
After my ride I had lunch. It was good:


Anyway, some thoughts and feelings. I think a lot about the ideas of “learning to be happy with what I have and tolerating the annoyances that I could spend my way out of,” versus the idea of “working towards buying my way out of my annoyances.” The best example of this is living in my camper vs buying a larger one (which would require a car with a bigger engine) or staying in motels / hotels / cabins etc. I like my camper, but it’s not perfect, mostly when it comes to bugs and wind. I have to cook outside, which inherently means that if there are bugs or wind, I have to deal with them. With a larger camper (one I could cook inside of) that wouldn’t be as much of an issue. Larger campers are expensive though (esp because I’d need a different car). If my goal is to learn to be happy with what I have then that means tolerating more bugs. Otherwise I need significantly more income, which would be a very long term project (go to school, get a degree, get a job, save up money), since there’s no possibly way I could justify a low to mid five figure outlay of savings just for the annoyance of bugs and wind.
More broadly, I feel that being ambitious and learning to be happy are basically opposites and it’s hard, if not impossible, to do both.
This has been going through my mind for a while, ever since about the time I got to Moab this past spring (you could probably go back and pinpoint it). I thought I would be happy on my road trip, but I wasn’t completely and ended up coming back to pursue the relationship I though would make me happy. It turned out that relationship, despite (or maybe because of) everything basically being right and good, didn’t make me (or her) happy, and when we broke up I barely felt sad about it. Now I have no idea what will make me happy and instead am just kind of… existing in a holding pattern around the things I like to do. I am looking forward to riding my bike around in Europe next month. After that I might move to Utah and start a new life. (Note, about my job, we have a lot more time for the current project than I thought. I’d come back for a few weeks here and there to work it.)
Anyway, the high in CH is 58F tomorrow. Urbana (currently in a heatwave) for comparison.


