Todays ride was from my sisters house in Whitewater to my brothers house in South Milwaukee. I will take the Lake Express ferry from Milwaukee to Muskegon, Michigan in the morning.

I’m a bit nervous starting out again after a two plus week hiatus, but I think I have a much better idea of what to expect when compared to June 1st.

Just outside of Whitewater I smelled the smoke from the Canadian fires for the first time. It was also extremely hazy.

The first part of the ride was on quiet country roads with no dogs. The second part was composed of the Glacial Drumlin and New Berlin rail trails, which got me to West Allis near the outskirts of Milwaukee.

On the New Berlin trail, a fellow saw my packs and flagged me down to find out where I was going.  At first I thought it would be a typical conversation among fellow bike packers.  He said he had done the Portland, Oregon to Portland, Maine trip about ten years ago.  He also said he averaged 100 miles a day, which should have been a red flag.  I averaged 60 miles a day on the first part of my adventure and lost weight, despite eating like a glutton.  I’m sure that a few people could manage 100 miles a day, but there can’t be a lot of those kind of people out there.

Anyway, at this point the conversation went in a new direction.  This fellow started picking apart my selection of equipment and cycling clothing.  

He said he has never seen a bike-packer wearing racing attire.  Then he noticed my Conti Gatorskin tires, which have minimal tread and said I should be using Schwalbe tires which an adventure magazine recommended and he had on his bike.  Oh and how come you have down tube shifters on your bike, they went out in the 70s, he said.  He also said I should not be using cleats.  I looked down and saw he had old school toe cages and straps on his bike.  He said that I had everything backwards.

At this point I asked him about his retro bike.  He responded by saying it was a new bike which he had custom made.  He showed me the Milwaukee badge on the head tube, a brand I was not acquainted with.  Then he started dumping on disc brakes and pointed out that he had his bike specially made to use rim brakes.  

The vast majority of people in the bicycling community are really nice, but there are also a few with poor social skills and this guy was high on that list. This guy wasn’t my kind of person and I found an excuse to move on.  Some of the statements this fellow made were just wrong and others were matter of opinion, most of which I didn’t agree with.

The rest of the ride was urban riding, with a mix of side streets and busier roads with and without bike lanes. Wacky cyclists aside, it was a nice day of riding and I did pretty good physically, given the hot weather and the fact I haven’t been riding much over the last couple of weeks.

It was 63 miles to my brothers house in South Milwaukee, so I’ve bumped the total to 2489 miles.