Sometime during the summer of 1973, on a visit to my favorite bike shop, I picked a flyer for a bike ride. It described a four-day ride from Lansing to Mackinac City, Michigan over Labor Day weekend. The ride was called Dick Allen Lansing to Mackinac, or simply DALMAC. It explained there would be maps, a century ride, meals, overnight campsites, baggage trucks, a ride across the Mackinac Bridge, and a bus ride back to Lansing. The total cost would be something like $200, almost twice what I had paid for my new bike in January of that same year. That ride brochure went on my bulletin board at home. I didn’t know how I would manage the dollars and logistics, but I decided I was going to do that ride the next year.
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| Dick Allen at the Michigan Capitol, DALMAC 74 |
That was my first summer for real cycling. With Christmas money I had purchased my first drop-bar and derailleur “speed bike” after 3 summers on a 26” wheeled “English” 3-speed. My longest ride to that point was an 80-mile charity ride, and though my bike was new, I was already planning for my next bike, one with alloy wheels and quick release hubs. I was working a hodge-podge of jobs, including a paper route, sweeping a small drapery shop on Saturday mornings, mowing lawns and a few weeks of putting up hay on a local farm. By mid-summer I was washing dishes at a local bar & grill 3 nights a week, a job that might last through the winter.
But somehow, it all came together. Over my junior year of high school, I earned enough money for the new bike, and for DALMAC '74, and was signed up before school was out. I would share a tent with a high school friend also on DALMAC, but I did buy my first sleeping bag. I started to acquire cycling clothing, as I quickly learned that jeans or gym shorts weren’t very good for rides of 20 miles or more, along with my first cycling shoes and jerseys. I bought a set of panniers for my baggage, since you were supposed to be able to carry your gear on your bike. I was very popular at the bike shop in Jackson, and I never seemed to have a lot of savings!
Finally in late August, my bike and gear were loaded in the family pickup, and my Mom was up with me at 5 in the morning to drive me the 60 miles to the start in East Lansing. I unloaded my bike, hugged my Mom good-bye, with a promise to call home every night, and checked in at registration. For the first time, I carried my tagged bags to the ramp of a U-Haul van, and then fell in with the hundreds of riders for the first leg, the ride from East Landing to the steps of the Michigan Capitol building. From the start, my 35mm camera (I forgot mention I saved up for that too!) was out and I started taking color slides. As we gathered at the Capitol, walking among the riders was Michigan’s Governor Milliken, in a suit and tie, talking with Dick Allen, who was wearing a polo shirt and cotton hiking shorts. Most 17-old kids don’t expect to be standing next to their governor, but there I was.
Those next 4 days of bicycling were a blur of new experiences, as I rode north with almost 600 other riders in every type of gear imaginable: t-shirts and cuts-off, hiking shorts, gym shorts and the few of us in black cycling shorts and real bike jerseys. There was every type of bike: old 3-speeds, steel Schwinns, and the elite bikes with names like Holdsworth, Bob Jackson, Motobecane and Peugeot. Regardless of the walk of life, on the road we were all just bicyclists, all riding to Mackinac, all because of a guy named Dick Allen.
Every mile of every day was new to me, each town my first time there, and I had done it all on my own power. By the second day, I was already in tune with the touring rhythm of RIDE-EAT-SLEEP-REPEAT. As I pedaled my way north, the changing landscape drew me in even more, until the last day of riding along Little Traverse Bay, Lake Michigan, through M-119’s Tunnel of Trees, and finally the Straights of Mackinac. I had ridden to the Mackinac Bridge, seeing it the first time and then crossing it by bike. We arrived in St. Ignace, and made our way to the high school for the last night of camping before our bus ride back to East Lansing,
On that bus ride back I already knew I would be back. I thought about all I had seen and learned, and the people I had met. I was already planning what what I would need for the the next trip, what I had to upgrade, and how to prepare. But there were things I didn’t know would come out following Dick Allen’s ride to Mackinac.
I didn’t now that bicycling those 4 days would become the anchor in my life through some challenging months ahead. Rather than more destructive escapes, I would come to rely on a bike ride to get me through the day.
I didn’t know my next DALMAC, the following year, would part of an 11-day adventure of bicycle touring, and the miles of adventures that would follow that trip over the years ahead.
I didn’t know it would kick start my urge to volunteer for bike clubs and events, and the hundreds of hours I would invest in them almost every year since.
I didn’t know that I would pick Lansing as my first town when I left home, all because of it’s great bike club, the TriCounty Bicycling Association, and the lifelong friends I would make while there.
I didn’t now I would meet my wife to be on one of those TCBA rides. We would soon begin our own bicycle adventures, riding our tandem for thousands of miles of touring, adventures that continued with boys Tyler and Justin. And I also shared a DALMAC with Justin when he was just 14.
I didn’t know that life, family and work would result in a 30-year gap between my DALMACs, but coming back in 2008, 2009 and 2017, I was able to say hello again to Dick Allen, and chat with him in camp or on the road, just like in the `70’s. I can't say I was a personal friend, but everyone who rode DALMAC was a friend to Dick.
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| With Dick Allen at check-in DALMAC 2017 |
I know that Dick Allen alone is not responsible for DALMAC, and know most of the people that worked with him in those early years, and the many that still make it possible today. But he is the guy that they all coalesced around. It was not a memorial ride, he would joke many times on those latter rides.
If there hadn’t been a DALMAC, it is possible that another event might have had the same impact on my life and my bicycling. Maybe. But I am forever grateful there was a Dick Allen and a DALMAC, and that I picked up that flier. And every time I crest that first hill out of Harbor Springs on M-119, I am once again, and always will be, that same 17-year old kid riding it for the first time.
Thank you Dick Allen, and I wish you smooth roads and tailwinds.
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