Search for the Tridge Broll

Winter made an aggressive return for a couple of weeks and our thirst for bicycling adventure went into hibernation. It gave me a chance to get the rear racks installed on the bikes and to do a little tinkering with brakes. We did a chilly ride around the Lake Lansing Loop once last weekend and did some riding around the neighborhood just to keep from forgetting how to pedal.

This weekend we made the trip up to Midland, MI, to ride on the Pere Marquette Rail Trail. This is a paved trail that runs for about 30 miles between Midland and Clare, MI, and, at least the portion we rode, runs runs parallel to the Tittabawassee River. This was the smoothest rail trail we've ever ridden.

Our Search for the Tridge Broll, however, did not begin on the Pere Marqette Rail Trail. The ride we had chosen for the day, was a loop ride we found posted on the website of the Tri-City Cyclists. The name of the ride, and the name of this post, was theirs, and we thought it a good one. The Tri-City Cyclists have many rides posted on their website, with maps and cue sheets included.

And now, perhaps you're wondering, just what is a Tridge Broll, and why would we be searching for it? The Tridge is really a very interesting, perhaps unique, structure. It's a three-legged foot bridge in Midland at the confluence of the Chippewa and Tittabawassee Rivers. The Broll, one must assume, is some sort of mythical creature that lives beneath the Tridge. Maybe there's more to the story, but nobody has told us, and we're not sure whether we saw the Broll or not.

It wasn't hard to find the Tridge, though I made at least one wrong turn driving into Midland. The Tridge is located in a very nice, big public park along the river in downtown Midland. We parked, watched the locals, unloaded the bikes, made use of the flush toilets, ate a snack, checked out the Tridge, and eventually set out on our bikes. I think we started riding sometime after 10 am.

Here's the Tridge:



The ride started out by crossing the Tittabawassee on the Tridge and heading west through the Chippewa Nature Center in an interesting landscape of wetlands and vegetated sand dunes. The CNC has some very nice bike trails we were able to use for the first part of our ride.





We left the nature center and continued west, into a noticable southwest head wind. Although it was sunny and probably over 60 degrees F, Abbey and Quinn were getting cold. We'd forgotten to stuff their long-sleeved shirts into any of our bags. We simply told them to shut up and pedal harder. It wasn't really that cold, so we tried to distract them from their goosebumps.

The scenery was nice as we rode up the valley of the Chippewa River. Some of the roads were narrower and carrying a more traffic than we liked, but mostly it was pretty pleasant riding. At about eight miles, seemingly in the middle of nowhere, we stopped at a small park with a playground where Quinn and Abbey played on a big new play structure with a whole bunch of other kids. We had our second snack of some sort of granola-and-yogurt bars and water. After the stop at the park, we headed north on Nine Mile Road for about nine miles. We had the wind at our backs, mostly, and the road was in good shape, so we made good time and the kids finally warmed. The road took us through some rural residential areas of varying levels of upkeep, and lots of wetlands and birch and pine forests.

At the end of Nine Mile Road, we had reached the Pere Marquette Rail Trail, or PMRT. The PMRT looks very new, or at least very recently re-surfaced. As I wrote above, it was very smooth. It was also a nicely constucted trail; plenty wide, with good signage at intersections, and access to parks and river overlooks along the way. Once on the PMRT, we were headed mostly southeast, so the wind was coming across us, but the forest created a sufficient barrier. The sun was shining brightly, so without the wind, I suspect we would have been quite hot.

We stopped along the trail to take some photos, and Quinn got the camera.



See the smooth asphalt?





The ride description from the Tri-City Cyclists indicated that we were to stop for ice cream at Alex's Railside Restaurant, somewhere around mile 20.1. We wanted to be sure we followed the route precisely, so of course we stopped. We had a late lunch, which was really breakfast - served all day on Sundays - followed by a bowl of Super Man ice cream and a bowl of Birthday Cake ice cream. Alex's was very nice, had great food, and was quite busy. The stop took a longer than we'd planned, but I guess it didn't really matter. Although Alex's is right on the trail, and has bike racks and outdoor seating, the majority of the customers arrived in cars and ate inside. We ate lunch inside and ice cream outside.



After lunch, with full bellies and empty bladders, we had less than ten miles on the PMRT to get back to the Tridge. It was smooth, fast, and fun and we made good time. The trail became more crowded as we neared Midland, with lots of other cyclists fast and slow, and walkers mostly slow, so we had to slow down, too. The parking area at the Tridge was much more crowded than it had been when we arrived. There were people everywhere out enjoying the warm weather.

Quinn and Abbey said they like the portion of the ride on the PMRT more than that on the roads. On the trail we were able to ride side-by-side most of the time, there were no cars, and most of the trail surface was extremely smooth. The PMRT is one of the longest paved rail trails in the state of Michigan, and there aren't many near Okemos, so, nice as it was, it's not likely we'll be logging too many miles on rail trails. We will have to check out the rest of the PMRT, however.

After we put the bikes back on the car, Quinn and I sat on the rear of the van to wait for Abbey and Cindy to get back from the restroom. A stout, grizzly and grundgy sort of fellow, with a bushy grey beard walked past us. He was wearing tattered clothing. He had a green duffel he wore as a backpack, and he was carrying a bag of glass bottles and cans. As he approached, I almost expected him to ask us for some spare change. But instead he said, in a gruff voice that reminded me of Hagrid, "Been out for a ride? Beautiful day, isn't it? I'm just picking up cans and bottles." I didn't even realize it until after he'd gone, but I have to wonder if, perhaps, he was the Broll. A friendly Broll, he was, if he was.

We walked up the Tridge to take some pictures and look down at the water.





On the drive home, we thought the kids would crash and have a nice hour-long nap. No such luck! They were just as noisy and rowdy as usual. Especially Quinn. He'd been the same way on the drive up in the morning. He loves our bike rides and gets wound very tight. Abbey is a little more reserved, so it's sometimes hard to tell if she's having a good time. However, tonight, after she finished reading to me in her room and woke me up so she could go to sleep, she said in a soft, sleepy voice, "Daddy, I had fun on the bike ride today." She's so sweet. "Thanks, Abbey, I did too," I said.

Lake Lansing Loop

This weekend we painted the walls and ceiling in our garage. Over the course of the winter the garage had become smaller and smaller, and it had become increasingly difficult to find our stuff. Thus, cleaning, organizing, and painting took priority this weekend, which seemed reasonable given the rather dreary weather forecast. As predicted, Saturday was a bit chilly and rainy, but late Sunday morning the weather started looking nice enough that we ventured out of the garage for a short ride.

The Lake Lansing Loop has become sort of our standard short ride. We do it when we're short on time but feel like getting in something more than just a spin around the neighborhood. It's nice because the traffic is light for most of the ride, we get our choice of two playgrounds, and we can do it from our house without loading the bikes onto the van. The only real drawback is that it involves several miles of potholes and crumbling asphalt.



Today I tried to take some photos of the route. This is Cornell Road, in the image to the right. Once we get out of our neighborhood, we head north on Cornell for a couple of miles. It's nice. Limited traffic, nice rural scenery with wetlands and cattails. The asphalt is in really bad shape in places, though, necessitating slow speeds and careful route finding.


Cornell Road takes us up to Haslett Road, in Haslett, which has a nice bike lane that we only need to use for about two blocks, and then we're pretty much at the Lake. We turn north and cross a set of railroad tracks, very slowly and very carefully, to avoid the wheel-hungry channels in the road.





Right or Left? After crossing the tracks we always stop for a drink and discuss whether we should go right or left to loop around the lake. We always choose left, probably because we get to the playground soonest that way. Doing the loop clockwise is also advantageous in avoiding intersections on the west side of the lake. But we always stop to consider the option.



"What took you so long?" It's difficult to captain a tandem and take pictures. Many tandem teams designate the stoker as photographer since the stoker has a minimal role in steering. Quinn isn't quite ready to manipulate the camera while riding yet, perhaps because he hasn't been willing to relinquish his role in steering. Maybe if we get a leash for the camera we'll have Abbey take pictures sometime.

As we rounded Lake Lansing Marsh, a large, shiny, yellow object overhead sent down a beam that nearly transported Cindy and Abbey into space. We didn't even know it until we opened up the images on our computer. We'll have to watch out next time we ride around that curve.





The playground stop. Cindy stretched out on the monkey bars while the kids planned a mutiny. This is the smaller but more accessible of the playgrounds on the ride. If you look carefully, the lake is visible in the background.

Cindy took the camera to get a shot of Quinn and me once we started off again. See Quinn looking at his mom across the tops of his glasses? I'm always surpised, when I see the pictures, by how small he looks back there. He doesn't seem so little from my perspective as the captain on the bike.




Once we leave the park, we usually take a short section of sidewalk (not the one in the picture above) to avoid a really busy and narrow stretch of Marsh road that is so rough it's only rideable with a dual suspension mountain bike. It is in really bad condition, as are many of our local roads. However, it's just a couple of blocks until we're on Lake Drive and heading on around the lake.



Lake Drive has a bike lane on either side and wraps almost completely around the lake. It's a really nice ride. It's perhaps a little too flat, but it's hard to find hills around here. Eventually we're back to the railroad tracks and heading home. It's almost exactly 12 miles round trip, and it's almost always an enjoyable ride. Today, we timed things well. Not long after our ride, the wind and thunderstorms arrived.

Dairy Hill in Mason

On March 25, last weekend, we went for ice cream. It was the first real ride of the spring. We'd ridden around the neighborhood a few times had made the ride around Lake Lansing, about 12 miles, the day before, but we were all anxious for something a bit more adventurous.

We'd planned a ride up near Midland, MI, but morning thunderstorms made us change our plans. Instead, we picked the ride to Mason, MI, because it was the opposite direction of the nastier weather, and because we'd read good things about the ice cream shop, Dairy Hill. This ride took us primarily straight south and just a little west of Okemos. Today there was a strong south wind, so we knew it would be more difficult traveling to Mason than it would returning. We left home after lunch, around 1 pm.

Our route started off through our neighborhood and west on Bennett Rd out of Okemos into East Lansing. Not too bad with the wind pushing us a little from the east. After a few miles, we turned south on College Rd and into the wind. Our pace slowed and the traffic picked up. College has a decent shoulder and the asphalt isn't too crumbly, but the surface isn't smooth and the traffic is pretty fast and heavy. After few miles we turned east on Willoughby Rd. Willoughby is quite narrow, but smooth and carries little traffic. Turning south onto Hagadorn after a mile or so, and back into the wind, we were on a narrow road with fast traffic, although much less of it than we had on College, and lots of broken asphalt. Once again, it was really tough heading into that wind. At times we were crawling along at only 6 or 8 miles per hour. Eventually, we made it into Mason and found the yummy soft serve ice cream at Dairy Hill. We'd ridden about 14 miles at about 9 miles per hour. We were all tired. My butt hurt. I was questioning the saddle that I was currently using.

Dairy Hill was interesting; a nice, old roadside shop. The kind where you walk up to the screened window to place your order, and sit down at a picnice table in the parking lot to slurp your cream. The building has fresh green and white paint, and the outside seats and picnic tables were well worn, but one of the boys that worked at the shop was out wiping them down with a rag. It was a well kept place. We were the only cyclists there, and perhaps a bit of a spectacle with our shiny blue tandems. Most of the other customers appeared to be locals, perhaps even regulars, and did not really look much like cyclists. I would have thought, though, that they would have at least seen some before.

The next task at hand was to find a bathroom. None were available at Dairy Hill, so we tried the nice park across the street. The main restrooms were still closed for the season, so our only option was a rather unpleasant port-o-potty that lacked TP. Everyone but me passed up that opportunity, and we had the chance to explore the rest of Mason in search of a public facility that met our standards. Eventually we found a suitable potty at a gas station on the west side of town. Hot, noisy, and smokey, but it worked.

The ride home was, as we had hoped, helped considerably by the 20 mph southerly wind. We traveled easily at about 20 mph, once we'd turned north, which was most of the way home. The route home was not a repeat of the route down. We went out of Mason to the east on Columbia for a few miles and headed north on Every. These roads were much nicer in terms of traffic and road condition. The only drawback to coming home this way is it leaves us with a short stretch of narrow busy road on Jolly and Dobie once we're back in Okemos.

We made it. Finishing the ride at about 5:30, we'd traveled about 34 miles. We were all quite exhausted. The kids did really well, and seemed to have a good time. It's good that the ride back was easier than the ride out, or it probably would have been a bit rougher for the last few miles. All of us had sore butts, and Cindy was pretty tired, after having an atypically sedentary winter. We did learn that we need to have more space on the bikes to put jackets as we peel off layers. Quinn and I tied the jackets to the frame of our bike because our saddle bags couldn't hold any more. We have a couple more rear racks and will transfer them onto these bikes, but we'll need a find a second rack trunk for one of them. We could also benefit from an easily accessible map case, and someplace accesible to keep the camera. Note that there are almost no pictures from this ride because it's so hard to keep the camera accessible.

The kids collapsed and rolled around in the grass in front of the house for a few minutes when we got home, but soon were off to the back yard to play. Aren't they sweet?