Lost in Kronenwetter: Boring bicycle adventures in Northcentral Wisconsin
It was about an hour and 15 minutes into the ride when you realize you don’t know exactly where you are. Scratch that: You know exactly where you are, at the intersection of Wood Road and Marathon County X. But this particular place is nowhere near where you meant to be when you set out.
It was a mistake to mentally map out a route in your head simply by checking the Maps app on your phone, and memorizing a kind of rough outline before setting out. Your destination was meant to the Kronenwetter Forest Unit, about 12 miles from home. You’ve gone further than 12 miles, and there is no forestland to be seen. Just farms, small pockets of woods and scattered rural homes, most ill maintained with lifted pickups sitting out front. (Oh, there’s where all those guys live.)
You fish your phone out of the back pocket of your cycling jersey and pull up Maps and try to figure out where you went wrong. The Kronenwetter Forest Unit is 5,200 acres, for God’s sake. How do you miss that?
Oh. You see now. You went straight south on Pleasant Road, then took a left onto Wood Road. You should have taken a left onto Pine Road, then a right onto Pyke Road. Sure. Now, you see that if you backtrack a mile or so, then turn right onto Martin Road, it’s only like a mile to the forest.
You think for the 1,051st time that maybe you should get one of those bike computers which can give you blow by blow directions to you destination.
Nah.
You clip into the Bianchi Volpe and do a U-turn.
***
As you are riding back, you realize that one of the problems with the Maps app is that it can be difficult to judge distances with it, because they change depending on how wide of a perspective you take with the map. So what seemed like only a mile or two really is three or four miles IRL. Dammit, you think, you’re gonna bring a real map next time.
You are riding into the wind, and you begin to realize that just about every decision you made about this ride as you planned it in your head was wrong. The Bianchi turned out to be a poor choice, what with its heavy frame and wide tires. You thought you’d be needing them when attempting to ride on some of the logging roads in the forest, but now that idea has been blown out of your head by the blasted headwind out of the east.
Now it just feels like you are cycling in six inches of water, and you can feel the energy slowly seeping out of your thighs with each pedal stroke.
Oh, there’s the Kronewetter Forest parking lot, and that logging road/snowmobile trail looks completely rideable. Maybe next time, if you don’t ride five miles out of your way.
You’re getting hungry now. You know you’ve got a vanilla gel in your bag, but you really dislike gels, and this is about five years old. Can gels go bad? Hope not.
You check Maps again. Hey, if you keep heading east on Martin Road about a mile, turn north onto Marathon County J, there’s that cool convenience store at J and State Highway 29. Two, three miles.
***
Except it’s not. When will you learn how to properly use Maps? Probably never. You’re tired and quite hungry after riding the four or five miles to the Wagner convenience store, and you’re thinking that now might be a great time to test out your “cheese curds could make a great endurance food” theory. You feel in your back pockets for your wallet. Hmm. It doesn’t seem to be there. It will be later that you’ll find it on the table by the door.
OK. Vanilla gel it is. You squeeze the sticky gunk in your mouth and think, well, it’s not that bad and wash it down with a bunch of water. At least you brought enough of that.
Then you slowly pedal to the County J crossing of the Mountain-Bay Trail and turn onto the crushed limestone path. And you notice that the handlebars have seemed to have shifted forward, and you now realize that you failed to tighten the stem bolt properly when you changed the stem a few days ago.
Oh jeez. You probably shouldn’t be allowed to do any kind of mechanical maintenance on your bikes. Or anything else in your life, for that matter.
***
About six miles later, you are slowly and wobbly rolling into your driveway. The loose handlebars were damned annoying, but they held and you made it.
You put your foot down, stop your Garmin, which doesn’t have maps. It’s just for mileage and heart rate and stuff.
And you think to yourself, “What a great ride!”
