“You will be high on DALMAC.”
This was a comment of my friend Kristen, as we were discussing our plans for the next couple of weeks of late August. With her husband Nathan, the 3 of us were sitting at a restaurant in Kokomo, Indiana, eating lunch in the middle of a day of riding. Their tandem, loaded with camping gear, was leaned against a rail next to my day-trip road bike. This was their first day of a week-long ride to a tandem rally in central Iowa. In a few days I would be driving north to Michigan for the 5-day DALMAC bicycle tour. I was riding along on my own bike to get in a long training ride and would have 100 miles in by the time I finished that afternoon. We would be going our separate ways after lunch, as they headed to their first overnight stop, and I returned home.
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| Ready to start DALMAC 1974 |
Their trip would be 8 days of riding covering almost 500 miles, carrying their gear for a mix of camping, hotels, and guest homes. A simple rule of thumb is that an hour on the interstate is a day by bike; a day by bike is 7 to 8 hours of riding to cover 70 to 80 miles. My upcoming DALMAC ride was similar, 5 days of riding on an organized tour covering 350 miles, headed north through Michigan from Lansing. However, my camping gear would be carried in a truck each day to the next day’s campsite. Another difference was that I would be riding with over 400 other bicyclists, while they would be riding by themselves.
My friend’s comment was based on what she knew about my history. 2024 marked 50 years since my first DALMAC bicycle tour in 1974. Then I had been a 17-year-old high school senior and was facing a year of uncertainty about my future beyond high school. I had just been riding for a couple of years, and just about everything on that trip was new to me; traveling on my own, the camping, the group meals, even the 6-hour bus ride back from St. Ignace. This was also my first trip in northern Michigan, riding through towns like Gaylord, Petoskey, and St. Ignace (and others), places that I had only known from the TV news, lessons in school, or friends who went “Up North”. It was even my first time to cross the incredible Mackinac Bridge, all the more so in that I did it on a bicycle.
Along with the memories, the most important thing I brought back from that trip (though I didn’t realize it at the time) was bicycling as an anchor and center for my life. My hours on a bike helped me through my challenges during that senior year of high school and the years that followed. It was in part an escape, as I dealt with the frustrations and disappointments, but it was also a positive focus, as I planned for the next ride, the next bike, or the next tour. Through bicycling, I made many new friends and eventually met my best friend, my wife, Linda. It was not a direct path, but it was not a destructive one, and I was fortunate to have found bicycling so early.
After 50 years of bicycling thousands of miles from homes in Indiana, Washington State, and Iowa, and tours in the US and Canada, I still look forward to each return to ride DALMAC, the ride that inspired those miles. One of the amazing things about repeating a route or event on a bike is that it is never a rerun. Every trip is made unique by the weather, riders you fall in with, and the waxing and waning fortunes of the towns you pass through.
And when you ride through something familiar or unchanged, whether it is a perfect stretch of road, finishing a still challenging climb, or pausing at the perfect view high above Lake Michigan, it does feel good to be carried back to that very first time you did it.
That high is the best of all.
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| My DALMAC 2024 finish photo with "Big Mac" |
