TCBC Named one of LAB's 2008 Bicycle Clubs of the Year!

TCBC ANNOUNCES
ONLINE STORE
shop@biketcbc.org
TCBC has added a new feature to its
website: an online store! Visit www.
biketcbc.org/shop for convenient
purchases and all your cycling and
gift-giving needs. How about a pair of
TCBC socks for the cold-footed
cyclists in your life? Perhaps a TCBC
map clip to help keep them from
getting lost? Or a Minnesota Bike
Atlas, complete with printable maps
and turn-by-turn instructions for over
100 routes, along with a section on
trails in Minnesota and Wisconsin, to
inspire your friends to get into
cycling? The online store offers
convenient shopping with your
purchases delivered to your door.
Payment for your purchases is easy via
PayPal. Purchase price includes
shipping, handling and PayPal fees.
For more information, please contact
shop@biketcbc.org. Thanks to Phil
Doi, Mary Derks, Cindy Hanson, Steve
Scott, Tony Stifter, and Jack Uttermark
for their efforts in getting this online
store up and running. We hope to add
our new 2009 club jersey when it
becomes available next spring.
SUNDAY, MAY 24, 2009
Sponsored by Chippewa Valley Century Ride
Irvine Park - Chippewa Falls, WI
Century Ride (35, 50, 75 or 100 miles)
Registration 7:00 - 10:00 a.m.
$25 before May 15 / $30 after May 15
fee includes:
• Rest Stops with Food & Water
• Sag Wagon
• Brat Feed
• T-Shirts available for $15.00
FOR MORE INFORMATION
Write Chippewa Valley Century Ride
P.O. Box 975, Chippewa Falls, WI 54729
or our Website: www.chippewavalleyride.us
ENTRY FORMS AVAILABLE ON LINE OR AT
DISTINGUISHED BIKE SHOPS IN WI AND MN.
For the fourth
consecutive year,
the Thursdays on
the Cannon ride
will be held every
Thursday morning
from the
beginning of May
through the end of
September. This year, the ride is a little
different, however. We’ll be leaving
from Welch at 8:30 as usual, but we’ll
include the beautiful new Hay Creek
Trail (which leads south from Red Wing)
along with the Cannon River Trail.
That means this B ride will have an
initial option of 32 or 52 miles in May
and June. Starting in July, with our
TRAIL RIDING
BEAUTIFUL RIDE ALONG THE CANNON VALLEY TRAIL NEAR WELCH VILLAGE
Thursdays on the
Cannon Rides Again!
biking legs stronger, we’ll add a 72-
mile option.
As usual, the big Cannon River Ride
free picnic, complete with limemarinated
chicken, beer brats and
Texas sheet cake with strawberries, will
be held the third week of July, July 23.
If it’s pouring rain, we’ll hold it a week
later, on the 30th. No picnic fee
required, though donations would not
be beaten off with a bicycle chain.
And the annual Cannon Century, the
world’s easiest century ride, will be
held on September 17. Join us on the
Cannon every Thursday this summer
on two of Minnesota’s greatest trails.
- Don Picard
WE ALWAYS HAVE A PICNIC AFTER THE RIDE
By Bob Brown
Davenport, Iowa, is a Mississippi River
town with historical connections in
both directions going way back to the
days of the riverboat. A gateway to
the South, or to the North, depending
on your direction of travel, Davenport
is an island of Swing Jazz in the
middle of Whoopee John Country.
North of Davenport, walleye is king.
To the south, the catfish reigns. But in
Davenport, the walleye and the
catfish share a crown with proponents
for each knowing full well the
ignorance of those other guys. At
least that is how it was at the time of
this story and a bicycle trip my
brother and I took from Lake Itasca to
Memphis, Tennessee.
Before staying overnight at my
brother’s house in Rock Island,
Illinois, across the river from
Davenport, my brother, always the
professor, thought it best we should
ride to the visitor center located at
Mississippi River Lock and Dam # 15
by the Arsenal Bridge not far from his
home. He said it was a place where
some knowledge regarding the river
might be obtained. I am averse to
learning anything I might not need to
know. I fear the information might
take up space in my mind, a place
with little room to spare. At the
visitor center I was persuaded to
enter upon learning of a free movie in
there. However, the movie started
right out with a question that left me
feeling low. I could tell it was going
to be an informational movie. In a
very deep voice, the moderator
inquired, “Have you ever thought of
the Mississippi River as a highway?”
Well no, in my whole life I had not. I
recalled that my brother had once
ridden his bicycle into the Cannon
River, so I asked him if he had ever
thought of the Mississippi River as a
highway, and said, “No.” In that view I
thought there might be some safety,
even though the moderator said
otherwise. He implied that we had
missed the truck when it came to
thinking about the river. Do you
know how much grain a barge will
hold? Neither do I, but the moderator
knew the answer to that one and to
all the rest of his own questions as
well. My brother said it was
interesting, which was true, but he
has more room for the information
than I do so he was less worried
about there being too much of it.
The next morning, my brother took
charge of our routing as the area was
DAVENPORT
more familiar to him. He said the
day’s ride would be about 100 miles,
not very hilly, and that we would be
staying overnight downriver in
Muscatine, Iowa. We left his house
riding north. “Is it not south we are
riding down the Mississippi?” I
inquired. He said we must first cross
the river into Iowa by riding north, an
assertion which aroused some
suspicion in me when I saw the visitor
center coming into view again.
However, my brother went right up
onto the Arsenal Bridge. I thought we
were going to be getting away from
there, until his bicycle pump escaped
from its bracket and jumped off the
bridge. Like two cats, we were at the
railing to see where it went. My
brother saw it first because he had
looked down. Then we both saw it
lying in the water below the bridge.
It was floating in the lock actually,
which was fortunate, as the lock had
an attendant and, so far as we knew,
the Mississippi River did not.
We went down off the bridge to the
lock and told the attendant to give us
back our pump. He tried to act as if
he didn’t have it, but when we
pointed out our pump in his lock, we
had him dead to rights and he knew
it, or at least we thought he should
know it. He did finally go get a pole
with a hook on it like a metal
shepherd’s staff only much longer
with a way bigger hook. Then he
started trying to fish the pump out of
the lock. I would have to say, he
wasn’t very good at it. He was making
me think, “Who in the world hired this
guy for this job?” He seemed to have
no talent for getting bicycle pumps
out of the lock. He had picked the
wrong tool to start with, and he was
just chasing the pump around in the
water. I thought some of pushing him
in and then offering to pull him out if
he would grab our pump and not let
go, but I wasn’t sure he would know
how to do that either. I could tell that
he lacked experience. He said, “With
most people, their bicycle pumps
don’t come here,” or some such
excuse as that.
Well finally, the pump handle did
catch precariously on the end of the
hook, and he began to raise it up, but
then he dropped it back into the lock.
We were saying it would be better to
bring it up within reach so we could
grab it. We pointed out that it was
starting to ride low in the water. The
handle did catch again, and he did
follow our advice, so we were able to
snatch the pump back from him at
last. He made no apology for the time
he had taken to do his job, but we
said “thank you” anyway, having been
born and raised in Minnesota.
The very first bridge across the
Mississippi River had been built where
the Arsenal Bridge now stands, so the
Rock Island Line from Chicago could
cross the river and continue westward.
Like the railroad before us, we crossed
a bridge at that same location and
continued westward on our trip down
the Mississippi River. The direction still
didn’t seem right to me, but my
brother had led us across the Arsenal
Bridge to Davenport, so I had reason to
believe he knew what he was doing,
which did not prove too true; but if you
think I was going to look at my map
when I had not yet been dropped,
then you don’t know me.
8 MARCH TCBC NEWS www.bikeTCBC.org TWIN CITIES BICYCLING CLUB TWIN CITIES BICYCLING CLUB www.bikeTCBC.org MARCH TCBC NEWS 9