I just had to break out, bust loose, escape. I started a new job in January and my bicycling habit changed drastically. My new office was too far to commute to by bicycle and even if wasn’t I was putting in too much overtime. Then COVID19 hit. I followed government guidelines and stayed home. Working from home 5 days a week just made it easier to work more. I thought I could take a little time off during Golden Week in the beginning of May but it didn’t happen. Too busy. Then June brought an unusually long and wet rainy season that went all the way into July. August didn’t get any better but I was ready for a break. I had been working from January without taking any time off, not even for national holidays. In the immortal words of Popeye, “I can takes it no more.”

I packed up my gear and headed to the river for a bit of cycling and stealth camping. The city or maybe it was the prefectural government fenced off the river bank by Kyodo no Mori Park but I found a place upriver from where I usually camp. It was only about 8 km from home but it was far enough away to feel like a trip. Just far enough into nature to feel like I was out of the city even though it was usually just out of sight. This little trip offered a welcome respite from the cabin fever I was feeling.

During April and May we were encouraged and, in some cases, required to work from home. But from around June it was acceptable to return to the office up to 50% of the time. I still do part of my commute by bicycle but it is too far to go all the way by bicycle.

When I ride, I don’t wear a mask for a number of reasons. 1) In very hot weather, like a Japanese summer, it is very uncomfortable and potentially dangerous. Especially if you are exercising in any way. There is a risk of heat stroke or heat exhaustion. 2) In cold weather, it makes my glasses fog up and that, too, is dangerous when you are riding a bicycle. On the other hand, a mask keeps your face warm like a scarf or ski mask would. I have never a big fan of either of those pieces of cold weather gear. 3) And finally, I just don’t like wearing a mask. I feel more tensed up when I wear a mask. I find myself clenching my jaw more often. I don’t see that not wearing a mask when I ride is a problem. When you are riding a bicycle you naturally social distance from others. If you are not, it probably means you just had a collision with a pedestrian or vehicle. I hear that bicycles colliding with other road users is a bad thing so I try to avoid them. They can mess you up just as much as a virus infection. I do try to maintain my distance from other road users when I stop at intersections.

Hopefully, next year will be a better year for bicycle touring. I still want to take a trip around Mt. Fuji along the Olympic road race course.

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The Plan at Breakfast
The riding is over. I am preparing to leave Phnom Penh. I’m eating breakfast at the restaurant in the hotel and the plan for today is to go see the genocide museum maybe do a little shopping at the Russian market and catch a bus out of town to Ho Chi Minh City. 

Phnom Penh has the feel of a city that’s desperately trying to be modern. In many ways it’s similar to Tokyo; big buildings, lots of traffic, office ladies dress to the nines. But behind the big buildings are the street vendors, the trash and the poverty. It is clear that the U. S. dollar is a highly coveted commodity here. Many restaurants post prices in both dollars and riel. I don’t know which would give you a better deal. When you change money you lose a little bit of value. I haven’t been here long enough to know whether the dollar price is better than the riel price. There is always going to be a bit of rounding going on as there are no really small denominations in riel and nobody wants to deal with pennies, nickels, and dimes. I exchanged 400,000 Vietnamese Dong yesterday at the front desk here and they really gave me a bad deal. I realized it right away but there wasn’t much I could do about it. As soon as I had an Internet connection I confirmed that I lost 10 USD in value on a relatively small transaction. I felt they really didn’t want to exchange VND. They are really after USD. Perhaps, in the long run, it doesn’t matter, but I’m trying to keep this trip under budget. It also influences my overall impressions of the establishment’s honesty. I will mention this in my review. This place really could be nice with some more effort and pride. Given the Cambodian economy, 100,000 yen could make the place quite homey. 1,000,000 yen could make it a 5 star establishment. Of course, 100,000 yen is probably half a year’s salary for the average man in Cambodia. Perhaps there is a business opportunity for a careful foreign investor. Anyway, if I ever come to Phnom Penh I won’t be staying here again. There isn’t even a lake anymore. The government leased the land to a developer who filled the lake in and built buildings in its place.

When the Plan Falls Apart
What a crazy day! It started out okay but it pretty much went off the rails as soon as I checked out of the hostel. I stopped to chat with two other travelers who lounging in front of a neighboring hostel. We were talking about my bike and I was bragging how I had ridden it for 5 days without flats or mishaps when less than 30 seconds after leaving the gentlemen I noticed my back tire was low on air. I pulled over and aired up the tire. A few blocks later it was low again. I knew I had a flat. I stopped in front of the Science University and began to fix my flat. While I was working on it a guard came over to check me out. When it was clear to him that I was no kind of threat he smiled at me and disappeared. Flat fixed, I navigated my way to Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. I payed a thousand KHR to officially park my bicycle. 24¢ to park. Not bad. Unfortunately, I didn’t have enough riel or dollars so I decided to leave my bike safely parked at the museum and walk to the FX shop. I soon realized it was farther than I anticipated. There was a tuk tuk driver across the street. A great chance to go for a tuk tuk ride. It cost me 6,000 KHR to go close to my destination. I had pointed on the map to where I wanted to go. I think that because the Olympic Stadium dominated the map it distracted the driver from the pin drop on the FX shop. He didn’t take me all the way because I wasn’t clear enough about where I wanted to go when I pointed on the map. The FX office was near the Olympic Stadium which is a major landmark. He assumed I wanted to go there. No problem. It was now close enough to walk. 

I exchanged what I thought was a fair amount of Vietnamese Dong. The clerk handed me about 30 USD and few small riel notes. My first thought was to ask for riel only but it occurred to me that almost everybody prefers to get dollars over riel in Phnom Penh so I shrugged and excepted my greenbacks. 

Money in hand, I flagged another  tuk tuk. I picked a red one that was upholstered completely with astro turf and potted plants hanging in the windows. A real green design. I told him where I wanted to go repeating it several times. He quoted me a price of 8,000 khr and away we went. I thought I made myself clear about where I wanted to go. The Genocide Museum. Somehow the driver thought I meant some other museum it seems. After a while it felt like it was taking too long to get there so I checked the map and, sure enough, we were going on a tangent towards the palace. I told the driver he was going in the wrong direction. He did an amazingly tight u-turn. (Those tuk tuks can turn on a dime!) I suppose he wasn’t happy about the extra distance but it was his mistake. He didn’t charge me anymore than he quoted so I guess he was basically an honest guy. 

The Tuol Selong Genocide Museum
The Genocide Museum is a horrible place that everyone should visit. It is like the Genbaku Dome in Hiroshima or the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Memorial. It is a reminder how atrocious humans can be to each other. While it is not stated outright a little connect-the-dots leads one to understand the United States’ complicity in the tragedy. I will not go into details here. One should experience for themselves or at least do their own research. Start with these links. 

Unfixable Flat
I stayed later than I planned at the museum. I had planned to go the Russian Market to get some souvenirs. It was too late. I wanted to leave town by 1 pm so I could get to Ho Chi Minh City at a reasonable hour. According to various web sites the trip would take 6-7 hours. No time for souvenir shopping. I decided to go to the bus terminal. Despite patching my tire, when I came out of the museum it was flat again. I pumped it up hoping it would last long enough to get to the bus terminal that I thought wasn’t very far away. It didn’t hold. Cycling on the streets of PP is challenging enough but I find it preferable to pushing a bike through the chaotic crowds of tuk tuks, food carts, delivery motorcycles, street venders and other users. I stopped at a sandwich shop and ordered a sandwich for 1 dollar which I took “to go”. I put air in the tire a got another few blocks on me way before I was back to pushing it again. I really wanted to fix the tire again but the streets were too crowded and I was still hoping to get on a bus by 1. The bus agent was in the middle of Orresy Market and very hard to find. Looking around the ticket office I realized it could not possibly be the bus depot. It was just too crowded and too chaotic. The ticket seller confirmed this. I tried to pay for my ticket with my credit cards to conserve my dwindling dollars and riel but the charge was denied. I paid $12 from my dwindling supply of USD. It was 12:20 and the bus left at 2:00. Not the worst result. All the online sources put the bus ride at 6-7 hours. That would mean getting to Ho Chi Minh City at 8 o’clickish. Acceptable. 

Unfortunately, the terminal was farther away than I expected. It was back towards where my hotel was and further north still. Peddling a bicycle, maybe 20 minutes or so away. Pushing a bicycle – a lot longer. There was nothing else for it but to set out. I aired up the tire once again and set off. I thought If I put air in the tire every few blocks I could make it in time. The air was leaking out faster and faster. I had to push it or fix it. 

I finally got through the market which was crowded and chaotic. I was pushing as fast as I could. It became clear to me that I wasn’t going to make it by two walking. I came upon a Hindu temple and pulled out of the noise and bustle into the calm. I would take the 15 to 20 minutes needed to fix the flat again and even have time to eat my lunch afterwards. 

I pulled out my tools and took off my panniers, because of course it was the back wheel. Took off the wheel, levered off the tire and pulled out the tube. The patch I put on earlier in the morning had been obliterated. All that remained was a square of adhesive. I had used a self-adhering patch I got from Cycle Mode last month. I thought it would be okay temporarily. It just didn’t hold up. Okay. Lesson learned; don’t be lazy, put on a real patch. I did so. I put the whole thing back together. Fine. Now there is time to eat my lunch. While I was working on the bike an older monk came by. He said something to me which I didn’t understand. I said something to him that he didn’t understand. We smiled at each other and he went on his way. A good but, for all practical purposes, meaningless interaction.

Belly full. It was time to go. Oh no. The tire was flat again. Argh! Now there was no time to open up that can of worms again. I made another sub-optimal decision. Just ride it with a flat and damn it all with the damage it will do to my tube, tire and rim. Not to mention my soul each time I hit a bump, and there were many. I covered the distance but time was bleeding away. 

I didn’t have a properly functioning map. Without cell service I couldn’t search for anything except when I could connect to Wi-Fi like at the sandwich shop. As I got near the bus terminal I started to look for buses. I know, a no-brainer, right. Bus terminal = buses. I couldn’t see any buses or anything that looked terminalish. I stopped to ask for directions at a local shop. I managed to make myself understood somehow. The woman pointed me back the way I came. Okay I passed it up somehow. I went a few hundred meters and asked again. I was pointed in the opposite direction. By this time I am starting to panic. Time is leaking away. I turned around again. No sign of a bus terminal. Did the Mekong Express Bus Terminal fall into another dimension? Like the Emperor’s new clothes is it only visible to party members in good standing? Was I suffering from bus blindness? I finally found it. The buses were all in the back, out of sight from the road. Logical but not what I expected. 

I had made it in time with 20 minutes to spare. I was reassured that I would be able to put the bicycle in the cargo compartment but it would cost $10. Fine, an acceptable expense. One problem, no combination of riel and dollars in my wallet came to $10 and my credit card was denied again. There was a hairy faced occidental foreigner and his family sitting nearby. In the worse case scenario I could ask him to exchange some dong for me – maybe. Fortunately, I was able to pay in dong at a fair rate.  Whew. 5 minutes to 2. Mission accomplished. But no bus. After all that, it left an hour late.

Long Bus Ride and a Border Scam
If I had known, I could have tried to fix my tire again. If it is even repairable after all the abuse I gave it riding on it flat. I was glad to be on the bus with an E.T.A. of 9 pm. Still acceptable. I settled in for a long ride as the bus crawled through the city. I made the acquaintance of an Australian man traveling with his family; mom, dad (the same hairy faced chap in the terminal waiting room Ithat  considered borrowing or buying currency from) and his four kids. From him I learned why my credit card was rejected. The settlement company used by most businesses in this part of the world is Chinese and Visa and Mastercard just deny authorization as a matter of course. We swapped stories of our travels in Asia.

As the bus rolled through the benighted countryside, back along the road I had come on the day before the sun set and we were still on the Cambodian side of the border. It became clear to me that I was going to arrive in Ho Chi Minh later than I expected.  I wanted to notify my hotel but wouldn’t have cellular service until I got back to Vietnam. Meanwhile, the bus attendant , a stockily built fellow, came down the aisle checking all of our passports to make sure we had a proper visa (something that was already checked when we bought our tickets). He informed us that we would not have to pay anything on the Cambodian side to exit the country but there might be a 1 or 2 dollar charge on the Vietnamese side of the border for the entrance stamp.

After a rest stop another, skinnier bus attendant came through the bus checking our passports again telling us the same story. Finally, skinny bus attendant guy came through again repeating the process. I was still baffled and skeptical. After all, I didn’t have to pay any fee when I arrived at the Ho Chi Minh Airport. I didn’t pay anything extra when I was leaving Vietnam. I saw the list of fees at the land border crossing and I don’t remember there being a charge listed for any kind of entry fee other than the official visa fees.

We finally got to the border somewhere around 9 pm. The Cambodian border officer stamped our passports. There was even a sign posted that clearly stated that no payment was needed. So far the story held up. Next, on to the Vietnamese checkpoint. At the Vietnam checkpoint we had to unload our luggage to go through customs. So I followed the other passengers pushing my dirty and wounded Mini-V through the border station, the bus attendant once again informed all of us waiting in line that we would need to pay a dollar to get our exit stamp. Well, I was fresh out of dollars. I asked if I could pay in dong. The attendant told me 30,000. I wasn’t sure how much a dollar was in dong but I was sure his math was wrong. I handed the attendant my passport without any money in it. He was trying to get us processed in one batch. I think he was just adding to the confusion. 

After the passports were stamped Mr. Skinny would call our name and give us back our passport. When I got my passport back there was no stamp. The stamp “fee” was unavoidable. I wasn’t going to get screwed again with some ballpark exchange rate math so I pulled out my phone (I finally had cel service again.) and looked up the rate. 1 red blooded American dollar equals 23,000 dong and change. You better believe I was rounding down this time. I put 23,000 dong in my passport and put it back on the officer’s counter. I felt if anyone would accept a bribe in dong it was a hardworking, honest Vietnamese border officer. In a few minutes the bus attendant called my name again. My passport was lighter by 23,000 dong but adorned with a beautiful re-entry stamp. I think I could have gotten by with just 20,000 VND. Any amount to grease the uncertain good will between nations is worth it, right?. What a scam! Think about, a busload of about 30 travelers times how many buses. Each passenger being charged a dollar or two extra. Given the Vietnamese economy, a tidy little profrit that.

We finally rolled into Ho Chi Minh a little after 11 pm. A trip of 8 plus hours. It was only a few blocks to my hotel. At least, I planned this part out well. I pushed Mini-V through the late night revelers to my Hostel. M.O.M. Hostel & Cafe. A funny name but a nice place. Unfortunately, it was way past check-in time. Fortunately, a short e-mail message to the front desk unlocked the door before I had time to come up with a plan B. Unlike some of the other places I stayed in the room was prepay. I didn’t have enough dong now thanks to my donation to the border guards of Vietnam auxiliary fund. The clerk took my passport as insurance until I could exchange more cash the following day. The room cost about 5 dollars and I was about a dollar short.

Lessons Learned
1. Be more precise when giving directions to tuk tuk drivers.
2. Carry pencil and paper with you to write down prices and place names. It helps to avoid confusion.
3. Don’t change money at the front desk of backpacker hotels. They tend to use prodigious rounding skills to give themselves favorable rates.

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It was my last day of cycling. I was just a day’s ride from my final destination in the Mekong River Valley, Phnom Penh, the capitol of Cambodia.

I ate my croco-sant and 2 of my mystery fruit for breakfast. (Check out the video to learn more about croco-sant and mystery fruit. No spoilers here.) I planned to exchange some more dong for riel at the front desk when I checked out. Unfortunately, the man at the front desk was not the same as the young fellow from the previous afternoon. He didn’t seem to understand English but he was able to say enough that I understood that he would not change any money. So once again I was pedaling through a foreign country with almost no useable cash in my pocket. On the bright side I still had two mystery fruit and a lot of water. I filled up every bottle I could find with filtered water. Altogether I think I was carrying about 5 or 6 liters of water. The bottles were piled up on my rack and tied down with bungee chords. There were so many in my precarious pile that occasionally one would fall off when I hit a bump. I am pretty sure that at least one bottle went missing in action during the morning. 

My route took me back over the big yellow bridge again. Fresh from a good nights sleep it was a lot easier climb than the night before. On the other side I pointed my handle bars to the north. This section of the road was equivalent to the day I spent riding on National Highway 91 except now I was on the famous Asian Highway 1 That connects Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. I noticed fewer bicycles, more cars, ambulances, motorcycles pulling big trailers loaded with good and materials and lots of tuk tuks.

Tuk Tuks
Tuk tuks are cute little 3 person, 3 wheeled vehicles that are used as taxis and are ubiquitous in Phnom Penh and the surrounding towns. Even the name is fun to say. Try it! Tuk tuk. Tuk tuk. See what I mean the most fun you can have with your lips by yourself. When I first considered traveling to Cambodia I saw pictures of tuk tuks and fell in love with them instantly. I was wondering if I would get a chance to ride in one. It didn’t seem likely as I brought my own transportation with me. As the morning wore on I lightened my load by wetting my whistle from my stock of water.

I’m going to say it straight out. The most interesting thing I saw on the road that day was not tuk tuks. It was two pigs and some cattle. In Cambodia a common way to haul goods is on a flatbed trailer pulled by a small motorcycle (maybe only about 100cc or 150cc). The trailers are 3 or 4 times longer than the motorcycle in some cases. I passed by a motorcycle with an unexpected cargo. (By this time I don’t know why any kind of vehicle with a load would surprise me but this one did.) I passed a motorcycle and trailer parked alongside the road. The motorcycle was pulling a trailer with a big cage on the trailer. As I passed by I looked down and saw two enormous hogs in the trailer. They were laying down with barely enough room to standup. At first I thought the hogs were dead but when I doubled back to get a better look I could see that they were awake. I don’t know if they were drugged or sleepy or just a very placid pigs. I think they probably weren’t drugged because the hogs were way too big to get in the cage if they weren’t alert enough to walk into the cage under their own power. The unexpected doesn’t end there. As I looked up I saw a woman and a little girl trying to lead two cows and a calf across the busy road. Now Cambodian cows are not old Macdonald’s rotund, sloe-eyed gentle dairy cows. Cambodian cows are tall, slender legged, you could even say svelte, humpbacked behemoths. The woman held rope halters for all three beasts and directed them with her voice and a judicious tugs on the rope while the little girl walked along side with a thin stick. I don’t know if she used the stick to motivate the cows or if she had just picked it up for fun as children around the world will do. It is a universal law that if a child sees a stick on the ground they will pick it up and swing it around when their parents are not looking. (How do I, as an adult know this, you ask? Because of the other universal law that says all parents have eyes in back of their head until their children are old enough to move out of the house.) The calf was taller than the girl and the two full-grown cows were taller than her mother but somehow the woman got herd and offspring across the road safely.

By the time 11 am rolled around I felt like I was making good enough progress to take my lunch break. I learned the day before that Buddhist temples are a good place to take a break. They are generally quiet places. That is not to say they are somber places. Buddhism in Cambodia looks very different from Buddhism in Japan. Besides the obvious differences in architecture and the use of color (Cambodian temples are very colorful. Some might even call them gaudy.) To my mostly uninformed mind Buddhism in Cambodia seems more like a living religion where in Japan Buddhism is respected for its historical and cultural value but it is not a thing Japanese people believe in. I think some of the differences are sectarian. I am sure the general precepts are the same but the feel is different.

In any case, I found a quiet bench where I could eat my mystery fruit and swig H2O and watch strays dogs fighting over some unknown canine grudge. Later, one of combatants limped over to share my patch of shade. While it didn’t cozy up to me neither did it show any fear of me. Mostly it just displayed indifference. If I had tried to pet him he most likely would have displayed his teeth. We left each other alone and neither of us was the worse for the experience.

Phnom Penh
I still had enough water left and I felt that Phnom Penh was just around each corner and just over the horizon. It wasn’t but I got there in good time. I was happy when I saw the sign saying welcome to Phnom Penh. Phnom Penh is a big city. (Though, not so big as Tokyo me thinks.) Just because you have entered the city does not mean you have arrived.

The traffic in Phnom Penh was the heaviest that I experience during my whole trip. More cars, trucks, and tuk tuks than Saigon. (Actually there aren’t any tuk tuks in Saigon.) At a bridge leading into the center of the city I got embroiled in a traffic jam because of road construction on the other side. I think this bridge would have been a bottleneck anyway. I found myself wheel to wheel with tuk tuks and motorcycles. Traffic jams are not particularly dangerous for bicycles in the sense that it is moving really slowly. I was caught in it just long enough to get over the bridge. Once on the other side I dropped out and cut north following my route.

As I got near my hotel I realized that I had a problem. I hadn’t mapped the route all the way to my hotel. This is because I wasn’t exactly sure where I would be staying in Phnom Penh until about a week before leaving. I was trying to arrange another Warmshowers host but all of my attempts fell through. Not only did I not have any local currency I did not have any kind of cell receptions in Cambodia because the SIM card that I bought at the Ho Chi Minh City airport stopped working at the Cambodian border. I knew the general area where my hotel was located but I hadn’t mapped it out on my offline maps. Without cell reception I couldn’t just look it up on Google Maps and follow the directions. Finally, when I thought that I was close I approached a foreign couple I spotted on the sidewalk and asked them if they could look it up for me. I took a snapshot of the route displayed on the man’s phone. Somehow, I was able to reach my destination.

#10 Lakeside Hotel
The #10 Lakeside Hotel has been a misnomer for the past decade. It used to be on a lake until the Cambodian government leased the land to a developer who filled in the lake and built condominiums on top of it. I lies tucked in a back alley off of the busy Monivong Boulevard next to other backpacker hotels. The first floor is a semi-open-air restaurant and lounge. It has an air of neglected Franco-Indochine decadence in a very small place. The cost for one night was about $5. It was here that I realized that Phnom Penh wants dollars. All the prices were listed in dollars. Of course, I had neither dollars or riel. The front desk allowed me to pay in dong and exchanged enough for me to get dinner which was about 15 dollars. They changed an exorbitant exchange rate. I figured I lost ten dollars of valley because of their liberal policy of rounding calculations in their favor. I found that a lot of rounding goes on in Cambodia. If I were changing a lot of money a 10 dollar surcharge would not have been such a big deal but I was on a shoestring budget and 10 dollars was the difference between eating breakfast the next day or not. The whole experience soured my feeling about #10 Lakeside Hotel and gave it an overall impression of seediness.

Lessons Learned
1. Map out your entire ride, including your alternative routes and download to your phone when you have connectivity.
2. Check the exchange rates before exchanging money.

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Border Crossings
In the morning my new friend, David, led me out of Tan Châu on his motorcycle. He set a quick pace but I was able to follow him to the ferry terminal and out of the city. On the other side of the river we parted company in front of the school where he teaches. I wish I had had time to visit his school too. 

I really enjoy taking the ferries. They aren’t monstrous affairs like the Staten Island ferries or the Oshima Island Passenger Ferry. They are basically small platforms with a motor and a wheel house. I hope that in Vietnam’s drive to modernize they don’t replace them with bridges.

The ride from the ferry terminal followed the course of the main branch of the Mekong River to the border. As I road along I wondered what kind of people lived so close to the border and if they were all that different from those who lived farther away. 

David described the border crossing to me. But despite his description and reading about other travelers’ experience I still wasn’t prepared. The only other land border I had ever crossed before was between the U.S. and Canada and that only just barely counts as crossing into a foreign country. 

I found the Vietnam border station at Vĩnh Xương just as David described. The border station is a building built about 20 meters from the banks of the river and connected to the shore by a short footbridge. This location allows those crossing by boat as well as those crossing by land to be processed. I parked Mini-V on top of the river bank and walked down to the border station. If the river side is the front then I entered through the backdoor. On the bridge leading up to the door there were four very official military types sitting in front of the door and drinking coffee. They had all the appearance of government employees on their break. I walked past them assuming there would somebody on duty inside. When I got inside there was no sign of a border official. There were a dozen or so foreign tourist lounging around in a waiting room with a very nice view of the river and a tour boat docked to the river side of the border station. In the waiting area there was a glass case with snacks for sale and a woman willing to sell you Oreo cookies and chips. Nearby was a table where a young woman would exchange Vietnamese dong for Cambodian riel. But no border officials on duty. 

For some reason I was under the mistaken belief that I had to take a boat to cross the river and the border. I asked a young Australian sounding couple, or maybe they were Kiwis, who can tell the difference?) where to catch a ferry across the river. They asked me in turn if I was with a tour and said the boat docked to border station pier was their tour boat. Nobody knew anything. 

Not knowing what to do I went back out the way I came in, past the lounging border guards. They seemed completely unconcerned about my coming and going. I walked back up the bank to my bike and pedaled back up the road I came because, as David had explained, the real land crossing was on side road a couple of hundred meters before the border station. I went through the first gate, more like a rail crossing guard than a gate, to a building. There a Vietnamese guard indicated that I should follow him. I pushed my bike behind him as he led me back to the border station. The guard spoke not a word of English so I was still in the dark about what was going on. 

Back at the bank above the border station I met two Indonesian men who had just pedaled across from the Cambodian side. I spoke with them briefly. They told me I needed to get a stamp at the border station. When I asked them about their trip they told me that they had ridden from Indonesia through Thailand and Cambodia. I asked them how the roads were in Cambodia. The warned me that they were good but dusty. Our brief conversation was interrupted by the guard waving me down to the border station. 

I went down and the man took my passport. I thought, “Now I am finally getting somewhere.” Inside the office which I was not allowed to enter I could see that they had pulled up my picture on a computer screen. I supposed they had scanned my passport or I was already in the system from when the visa was issued by the Vietnamese Embassy in Tokyo. After a few minutes they gave me back my passport and once again I followed the guard. I notice there was no one in the waiting room and no one manning, or should I say womanning, the exchange table or snack stand. No Oreos or riel for me. 

This time the guard led me back to the gate on a motorcycle. We went through the gate into the no-man’s land that I believe exists between all countries. At the railway crossing gate on the Cambodian side of no-man’s land he passed me off to a Cambodian policeman who was also on a motorcycle. This man told me in English to follow him and follow him I did to another gate and another side street where he handed me off to another policeman who took me to the Cambodian border station. Like on the Vietnamese side, the Cambodian border station was on the river though set back from the waterline a bit. The Cambodian border station was like a walled garden or park. Quite pleasant. The police on the Cambodian side all spoke English to some degree. I was processed with a boat load of tourists who had approached from the river side. The tour guide helped me out a little bit when the policemen’s instructions were lacking in clarity. They took my picture and my fingerprints, stamped my passport and I was done. 

All of this took no more than an hour. It was probably closer to half an hour. I was really worried about entering Cambodia because the night before I noticed that my Cambodian visa was dated for the day after I was planning to enter Cambodia. I don’t know if this was a mistake on my part or the Cambodian Embassy’s part. Regardless, the date was wrong. If the border guard was a stickler for rules and details the mistake would be grounds enough to deny me entrance. There were three possible outcomes. 1) I would be denied entrance until the next day. In that case I would have to ride back across the border to Tan Châu and find a hotel. 2) I would be forced to pay for another visa with the correct date which would be problematic because I didn’t have any money that I could use.  3) The policeman didn’t notice the later date or didn’t care that I was trying to enter the country one day early. 

I suppose there was a fourth possible outcome. The guard noticed the date was for the next day, decided I was just too suspicious and introduced me to the hospitality of a Cambodian jail cell thus extending my vacation. Fortunately, fate favored the third outcome. Like the Mekong River, humans and fate choose the path of least resistance.

After getting my passport stamped I was standing on the road outside the entrance of the border compound taking a few pictures and video of the communist party banner fluttering in the wind when a different guard approached me. While inspecting my passport he asked, “Where are you going? I know you are going to Cambodia, but where are you going?” I answered, “Phnom Penh.” This seemed to satisfy him. I think he just wanted to talk to the idiot foreigner riding a mini-velo through his country or perhaps he decided that a tourist taking pictures in front of the border station was suspicious. I asked him to take a picture of me and Mini-V and then a selfie of the two of us. Weird but cool at the same time.

On the Cambodian Side
Safely through the border crossing I continued on my journey up the Mekong River. I immediately noticed a difference between Vietnam and Cambodia. While many things are very similar some are different. For one, there were fewer chickens and more households had two or three head of cattle. Another difference was that people seemed very interested in greeting me. Every couple of hundred meters someone was waving to me or saying hello. This was fun at first but as the morning wore on and I got hotter and more tired, constantly greeting people became exhausting and a nuisance.

As I rode along I was reminded of the Indonesian bicycle tourists’ warning about dusty roads. Within a few kilometers of crossing the border the soil seemed to become sandy. Also, there were stretches of unpaved road that showed evidence of road construction. Even though it was a weekday I didn’t see any workmen. Maybe it was a holiday. 

For an hour or two I road through a semi rural area parallel to the Mekong River though it was mostly just out of sight. I got the feeling that all the houses and businesses were lined up along the road and if I detoured onto a side street I would quickly find myself all alone in the countryside. 

After a while the rural road fed into a highway. This is the famous Asian Highway 1. Like Vietnam, there seemed to be no restrictions on what kind of vehicles (or livestock) could use the highway. One significant difference was that I saw fewer motorcycles being used for transportation (still many used for hauling cargo) and more Japanese and American cars. 

The Kindness Of A Stranger
I was making reasonable progress towards Neak Loeung, the first town I would stop at in Cambodia. The heat was really wearing me down and I was running low on water. All along the road from the border crossing I saw large signs advertising Ganzberg Beer. The thought of a cold beer was tempting. Unfortunately, I had no currency that I could use to buy beer or anything at all. When I was about 10 km from my destination I really needed to take a rest break. In Tokyo there are lots of little municipal parks and if you are in the countryside you can just pull over to the side of the road and sit in the shade but I couldn’t find a quiet place away from the road to take a break that wasn’t someone’s home or business. 

Finally, I pulled into a beautiful Buddhist temple to get out of the sun and rest in the shade away from the dust and noise of the highway. I found a pavilion with a table and benches. There was a monk napping on the bench by the table. I took a seat on a bench in the shade a few meters away not wanting to disturb his nap. I took my shoes off and ate some trail mix I carry for emergencies and drank my water. I was probably experiencing borderline heat exhaustion.

Eventually, the monk roused himself. He must have thought I looked bad because he pulled out of his bag a can of soy milk and gave it to me. I accepted gratefully. It was the best soy milk I have ever had. I didn’t know if his religion would allow him to eat it but I offered him some of my trail mix in exchange. He turned it down. I don’t blame him. It had been reheated in the sun several times by now and I noticed that tiny ants had gotten into when I was in Long Xuyên. The monk went an extra 2nd mile. He offered me a bottle of water and an energy drink. Apparently, Buddhist monks can and do drink energy drinks. I am sure he wasn’t carrying it around just in case he found an exhausted Westerner intruding on his nap. We didn’t share a common language or culture but he shared with me kindness that crosses borders, culture, and politics. In a world that is becoming more polarized and divided we need to reach across all of our borders. Ideological, economic, ethnic and social.

Enough pontificating. Thanks to the monk I was revived enough to continue my journey. Looking at the map it was clear that I would have to cross the river because Neak Loeung and my hotel were on the other side. 

It turns out the bridge crossing the Mekong River has two names. The obvious name is taken from the nearby town, Neak Loeung. The less obvious name is Tsubasa Bridge. There are some of you gentle readers who might be thinking that tsubasa sounds distinctly Japanese and you would be right. Tsubasa means wing in Japanese. The bridge was donated to the Cambodian government by the Japanese government as part of a larger project to improve Asian Highway 1 from Thailand to Vietnam. During my travels in Cambodia I crossed two other such bridges. I’m glad I had a chance to cross it as my tax yen helped pay for it.

There are three outstanding features of this bridge. First, the bridge is the longest bridge crossing the Mekong River at 2.2 km long. Second, going over the bridge represented the steepest climb of my entire trip through the Mekong River Delta at around a 4.5% grade. The third and most outstanding feature is that the suspension cables are bright yellow. 

Now, I have to admit my faithful, little Mini-V is a wonderful bike on the flats but she has a hard time going up hills with her little 20 inch wheels and lack of granny gears. But her and I did our best and managed to get the top. Partway Mini-V insisted that we stop to take a picture and some videos. I happily obliged her whim without remarking that she might be too tired after riding 50 km in the hot, Cambodian sun. One does not want to get on the wrong side of one’s bicycle.

After crossing the bridge, cursing out the inconsiderately placed rumble strips on the downhill side that I thought were going to taco my front wheel when i hit them at speed, it was a short ride into the town. Fortunately, my hotel was on the near edge of town. 

At the hotel I was able to exchange enough dong for riel to get dinner at a nearby cafe, a beer at the tavern across the street and some mystery fruit. (Watch the video to learn more about the mystery fruit.) I should have exchanged more but I thought I would be able to in the morning. 

Money Makes the Wheels Go Round
The challenge of traveling in a foreign country for the first time is that you never know how much money you are going to need. Ideally, you want to exchange just enough so that you have very little left when you leave the country. All during my stay in Cambodia I miscalculated how much money I would need. I kept getting Cambodian currency and Vietnamese currency mixed up in my head and my wallet. I think I even accidentally payed for something with a 10,000 yen bill instead of 10,000 in riel or dong. 10,000 yen in Cambodia and Vietnam is a princely sum.

Neak Loeung
My hotel in Neak Loeung was at the edge of town overlooking a swampy area. The hotel staff led me to my room on the second floor. The room was clean and brightly appointed. When the woman closed the curtains I didn’t think much of it at the time. I later opened the curtains so I could get a look out of the window and never closed them again because the only thing outside my window was open space. The room came complete with a television. I turned it on and started surfing the Cambodian air waves. The reception wasn’t very good. First, I found a sports channel with English sportscasting of a sailboat regatta. Boring. Then I found what appeared to be cock fighting. The screen was so staticky it was really hard to see what was going on. I finally gave up and went to the next channel. Click. A Cambodian soap opera. I don’t want to watch soap operas in any language. Click. Now we are talking. Crystal clear reception in English! Oh wait, it is the RT News Channel. The Russian Times News Channel. Why does the only channel that gets good reception in Neak Loeung have to be the Russian propaganda channel. I watched it for a while because it is always good to know what your adversaries are saying. It was just as bad as watching Fox News (only better produced) and I turned it off after 15 minutes.

Enough television. I took a shower then went next door to a restaurant for dinner called the Rio Cafe. The restaurant looked like it could have been plucked out of New York, Tokyo or London. At the same time, very comforting and very uninteresting. The menu was in English and the prices were in dollars. I felt like the prices were on the high side. My meal cost a whole 2 dollars. After dinner, I risked life and limb to cross the street to an open-air tavern where I got a beer so patriotic it was named in a burst of inspiration Cambodia Beer. The beer was outrageously priced at a dollar fifty. I pet the tavern cat and drank my cold Cambodia. After imbibing I strolled next door for mystery fruit and a crocodile shaped pastry. (To see the croco-pastry and the mystery fruit check out the video on the wayfarer.bike YouTube channel.) The pastry and fruit were for breakfast.

Too Many Bugs For One Gecko
I got back to my room well after dark. I turned on all of the lights in the room as one does. I didn’t pay any heed to the open curtains. I settled down to write a few words and delete a few pictures. Before I knew it there were little flies swarming all around. Fortunately, they weren’t the biting kind. They were just the annoying kind. They weren’t doing so well. The bed sheets and floor were peppered with dead flies. Earlier in the evening I noticed a gecko hiding in the curtains and periodically making forays along the walls. A little known fact about geckos. They make chirping sounds like song birds. Actually, more like newly hatched birds that can’t carry a tune yet. Mr. Gecko was in good company because I can’t carry a tune either. I spotted another one clinging to the outside of the window. I’m glad I was able to provide them with the equivalent of a smorgasbord. I wished they had brought all their friends and relations too. Finally, I made the connection between the open curtains and the room lights. I closed the curtains and turned off all the room lights except one on the far side of the room. I worked this strategy out with Lt. Gecko. Closing the curtains would keep more flies from getting in and the light would lure them away from the bed where Mr. Gecko would ambush them. It seemed to work. In the morning there was no evidence of living bugs. The floor and the overhead light were littered with the carcasses of fly soldiers that didn’t survive the night. I don’t know if my compatriot, Capt. Gecko (He surely deserves a promotion after his heroic efforts during the battle of the bugs) survived. There was no sign of him in the morning.

Lesson Learned:
1. In Cambodia, Buddhist temples make great resting places.
2. Kindness is colorblind and tone deaf. It knows no boundaries or obstacles.
3. If hotel staff close the curtains it is a good idea to leave them closed.
4. The sound of geckos in the night is comforting but don’t ask them to sing campfire songs. They just can’t do it.

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Once I pulled the trigger on a trip to Vietnam so many questions had to be answered. Where in Vietnam am I going to go? Ho Chi Minh or Hanoi? Where will i stay? How will I get there? What will I eat? How many bags can I take? 

I saw that there are a lot of fully supported bike tours to many of the most popular places. This sounded good. Bike, lodging and meals included. The photos and the videos of the trip were very enticing. The tours of the Mekong River valley sound wonderful. A fully supported tour from Ho Chi Minh to Phnom Penh in Cambodia seemed really cool. As I read the details the distances cycled didn’t jive with distances on the map. How could a distance of almost 300 km be covered in 3 or 4 days of 30 km of cycling? Then it hit me! The tour was giving fast forwards on buses from one nice cycling place to the next. None of the un-pretty, unpleasant places in between. Truly a gentleman’s journey. Not for me. I don’t think anyone has ever accused me of doing things the easy way. 

Suginami Green
Well, if I’m not going to go on a bike provided tour what will I do? I still want to cycle. Could I take my bicycle with me? Surely Mad Max, the Surly Blue Beast, is too big to get on an airplane without paying more than the airplane ticket. But maybe a folding bike or a mini-velo could be arranged. 

Back in July I bought a used folding bike. After a week I sold it. It didn’t fit me well and was uncomfortable to ride. In early November, my friend, Mario, and I went to Cycle Mode where I saw a Brompton. Brompton bicycles are the BMW luxury sedans of folding bikes with a price to match. Of course, I wanted one with all the bells and whistles. You know, power windows, anti-locking brakes, 4 wheel drive, mag wheels, and two cup holders. Sigh, one can dream. 

I took a morning off to line up for Suginami Green. This is a one-weekend-a-month garage sale of impounded bicycles. There will be more about this in an upcoming post. 

You never know what you are going to find at Suginami Green. I went with a notion to take another shot at finding a good folding bike or maybe a mini-velo. I had two purposes in mind. The long term purpose was to find a mobile bike to used for part of my commute to my new job. The other purpose was to find a bike I could take on an airplane as checked baggage. 

Mini-Velo

I lined up at Suginami Green bright-eyed and bushy-tailed with a quiver of hope in my heart. When they opened the gate and the small mob streamed into the impound yard I was at the head of the pack. I new exactly where to go. There, parked next to a handful of overweight folding bikes was a pretty blue mini-velo. At this point you are probably saying to your screen in an irritated voice, “Paul, you keep yammering on about a mini-velo but what in the name of sam hill is a mini-velo?”. Well, I’ll tell you. A mini-velo is what you get when you accidentally put your full sized road bike in the washing machine. Everything shrinks down, especially the wheels. I know that is physically impossible but bear with me for just a few more sentences. A mini-velo has a frame like a road bike and gearing like a road bike only smaller with smaller wheels. We are talking 20 inches instead of 26 or 28 inches. The seat post and handlebars are often longer so a full grown human being can ride it. You probably think that’s ridiculous or call it a kids bike. Well it is a little ridiculous looking and it would make a good gateway bicycle to hook kids on road cycling. But, as bicycles go, they are kind of cute.

Anyway, when I saw it shining their in the Suginami morning sun I could hear it calling my name and begging me to take it for a ride in Vietnam. 

I have been commuting on it to work the last couple of weeks to get used to riding it and to make sure it can go the distance. It definitely feels different from Mad Max, my full-sized road warrior, and I won’t be charging up any mountains on it but it’s a great little bike. I think it will hold its own on the relatively flat roads along the Mekong River.

As is my tradition I christen all my bicycles with a name. I was struck by a lightning bolt of creativity and named it…wait for it…are you ready for it? Mini-V! All right, not the most creative name but it fits. Really…fits.

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The journey ends. Today was the last day of the trip. I am my fellow wayfarers rode from Muscoda to Prairie du Chien. A ride of just 44 miles. The route was mostly flat with a few long, gradual climbs, finishing with a long descent into Prairie du Chien. It was a bit warmer today so I worked up a little bit of a sweat. The only downside to the ride really were the gnats. Anytime I stopped for any reasons they swarmed around me. They got in my nose, my mouth and my ears. When I slowed down to go up a hill they caught up to me. With almost every gasp I took in another gnat. I don’t know what they were after. They didn’t bite or sting. They just bothered. Perhaps they were looking for a place to lay their eggs.

I left as early as I could manage from Muscoda with the thought that I would finish off the ride by crossing the Mississippi River just a mile or two away so I could brag that I road from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan all the way to Iowa. Unfortunately, I took a wrong turn and added another 6 miles to journey and fell behind most everyone. Since I had arranged for a ride to Elkhorn I didn’t want to keep the gentleman waiting another 30 minutes or more while I indulged myself.

There were quite a few others who left after me including Dennis and Nanette, my companions of the road during the rainy and windy days. I fully expected others to pass me up as I stopped for pictures and videos. As I rode along I wondered where everyone was. They should have passed me by now. I got to the top of fairly big hill and looked back over the ground I had covered and there was no one following me. This was definitely not right. I checked my map for the first time today. I was quite a bit off course and the only way to get back on course was to backtrack 3 miles. It was  an easy ride back as it was mostly downhill.

On the last leg of the trip 3 ladies caught up to. They were moving at a good pace and chatting most of the time. I wasn’t sure I could match their pace the remaining 8 or 9 miles to Prairie du Chien. One of them told me she had ridden GRABAAWR about 20 times. Very impressive. I did pull ahead of them only because they stopped to adjust something on one of their bikes. They did eventually catch up to me on top to the long descent into town. By then, we all slowed our pace. For my part, I wanted to delay the end just a little bit and finish with someone instead of alone.

When I passed the Prairie du Chien sign I thought, “So this is the end. I could keep going.” and “I am not ready for this to end.” I was anxious for it to end so that I could tell other people about how much fun I had and the really great people I met but I didn’t want the experience to be over yet. I wanted the adventure to continue.

Thoughts on Supported Rides and Groups

There are significant differences between supported rides and unsupported rides other than the obvious differences of paying someone to all haul your gear. Because it is unsupported you are riding with and adjacent to other people. You still have the option of riding alone by leaving earlier or later than everyone else but you can also find someone who matches your pace. The downside of riding with a group is that it is harder to stop and start when you want to because you are participating in the group dynamic. On days when I was riding with others I didn’t take as many photos and videos. The upside is that you have companionship and support from your fellow riders. Good companions make the miles fly by and the hills smaller. It is a proven fact that a shared hardship is less hard for the sparing.

Differences

This entire tour was different from my tours up until. Besides the obvious differences of riding in a group vs. riding alone and riding in the U.S. and riding in Japan, there were some significant differences. One big difference being the distances. On my own I would probably limit my daily distance to between 20 to 40 miles. Compared to the century of the first day these are really short distances. In this ride I proved to myself that I can do longer distances even over consecutive days. The key is to rest when you need to. There is no need to be macho and try to tough it out. As I often ride during spring and fall when the days are shorter, shorter distances are practical. Plus, I like to stop to take photos and videos. Another big difference is that we were really riding in the countryside (Inaka). There wasn’t a convenience store or gasoline station every few hundred meters. Doing this same route would take more carefully planning in terms of water. In Japan, every school and nearly every park will have water available. Even in the outskirts and suburbs of Tokyo water can be obtained fairly easily. Further out in the countryside it is probably a different situation. The road conditions varied from freshly paved to in desperate need of re-paving. This is probably similar to Japan. Perhaps, pavement conditions are bit better in Japan. Traffic got heavier and heavier the further southwest we went with the last day being the worst (yet still tolerable). When I was traveling in Chiba (particularly in Chiba) and around Mt. Fuji even the country roads had more traffic. This is due, in part, to the terrain. The land is mountainous and the only place to build a road is in the valleys and over the passes. Despite the countryside in Japan being sparsely populated the population is concentrated in the valleys. Alternate routes are far and few between. Perhaps traffic conditions are better farther away from Tokyo. One final word on the topic of roads, roads in Wisconsin are wider. For the most part, even on heavily trafficked roads there is an abundance of space both on the shoulder and in the driving lane. Most of the time, drivers have little excuse for not giving pedestrians and bicycle riders a wide berth when they pass.

Lessons Learned

I mostly packed with traveling by train and plane in mind and only carried what I could easily carry in my hands without a bulky suitcase and I also packed as it I was going on an unsupported tour. Since I don’t have to haul my own gear and food was provided for me I could have left the trail mix at home. Sleeping indoors in the school gym or church was available I could have left the tent at home as well. (I preferred the privacy of my on tent.) Instead, I could have brought more clothes. Regardless, of whether the tour was supported or unsupported I should have brought some rope or parachord to use as a clothesline. Also, I need to get a new air mattress. My mattress sprung some more leaks despite patching it. By morning it was completely flat. I threw it out the morning I left Muscoda.

Recommendations and Advice

1. Whatever bike you are riding, make sure you are comfortable riding it and it is tuned up professionally before the event.

2. Make sure you have plenty of water. (Good advice no matter how you roll.)

3. Have a bike bag of some kind either on your handlebars or on a rack to carry essential items like sunscreen, a small toolkit, camera, batteries, snacks, rain gear, etc.

4. Pack better. Since this was a completely supported trip I shouldn’t have bothered trying to pack like I was on my own. There was no reason to pack everything in my panniers since I wasn’t going to be mounting them on a rack. A big suitcase would have been a better choice.

5. I can do long distances if I want to/have to. Even a hundred miles a day is not out of reach. But I also learned, or maybe relearned is more accurate, that I would rather spend more time in the towns that I stayed in. There is a lot of local color that I missed out on because I didn’t spend enough time in the places that I passed through.

6. Have fun. I had plenty of fun. Type I and Type II.

The Final Word

Would I do this ride or one like it again? If the opportunity presents itself and time and budget allow, definitely, yes. I would recommend it even to season unsupported bicycle tourists. It is encouraging to meet like-minded people and share an experience with them. On surface it may seem expensive, especially to younger people. But what you get in return for the money is well worth the price of participation.

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Today can be considered a Type II Day. A very strong wind blew against us all day long. It was unrelenting. At least, it was not accompanied by rain or uncomfortable temperatures. I got lost twice.  

The route today was from Baraboo to Muscoda with a 3 mile option to loop around Devil’s Lake. Ahead of me I could see a couple and a rode with my new friends for most of the day. I was following an older gentleman that I met the day before named Bob, at the Baraboo lodging. In my opinion, an extraordinary fellow. He has been doing long bicycle touring since his retirement some 20 plus years before. Today, he was quite some way ahead of me but I could still see him on the straight stretches of roads. I was gradually gaining on him because he would stop briefly at intersections to confirm the cue sheet. (He rides completely without a GPS or smart phone. He only uses a rudimentary bicycle computer.) We went down a long slope until I caught up to him at a roundabout. We were both were wondering which way to go because there were route markets on the pavement. Finally, I looked at the map and realized we had not only missed our turn but had backtracked almost all the way to where we started in Baraboo. So we turned around and headed back up the hill. We finally got back on track. The place to turn wasn’t as well marked as it could have been. If we had been following the cue sheet more closely or the map on my phone we wouldn’t have missed the turn.

The loop around Devil’s Lake. I don’t know history of the name but I saw nothing of the devil in the place. It is a beautiful lake surrounded by rocky bluffs. We had a few steep climbs and winding descents along the way but views were well worth the detour. I rode with Bob for the rest of the day. I liked his attitude about touring. It didn’t matter how slow we went. So long as we got to the end of the day’s ride before the tavern closed he was happy to go any pace and take breaks along the way. Riding the heavier bike I found his pace (and attitude) perfectly suited me. At the first rest stop we met up with Dennis and Nanette, a lovely I couple from Rhinelander. We rode with them the for the rest of the day. They, too, were on mountain bikes so tended to set a slightly slower pace.

From the first rest stop our struggle against the wind began in earnest. It was blowing from the southwest which was the direction we were going in. The first rest area was a quaint, old-fashioned church in the village of Blackhawk. Rested up and refueled with bananas and Fig Newtons, we set out. Not more than a few minutes after leaving the rest stop we spotted a route marker from the previous year pointing to the right. Dennis was leading out our little peloton and turned right. I was riding next to his wife Nanette and she suggested that that we go straight because there was no new route marker but until now last year’s route and this route had not differed at all so we continued on. We went on for several miles blissfully ignorant of our error until we met another couple coming from the opposite direction who informed us that we were going the wrong way. I loaded up a new map and sure enough we were off course again. We turned around and backtracked almost all the way to the rest stop. That was the fastest average speed we achieved all day. The fierce wind that was like an invisible hand dragging us back was suddenly pushing us forward. I felt like I had a sail strapped to my back.

Back on course we turned back into the wind. The wind was either blowing into our face or pushing at our left side. When it was coming at us from front and left we had to compensate for the resistance by leaning slightly to the left. How much a strong side wind impacted us became very clear when a semi-truck passed us from behind. The sudden blocking of the wind combined with sucking of the truck’s slipstream had the effect of jerking us momentarily into the road. It happened in an instant and was over just as quick when the truck was gone and the wind pushing us toward the shoulder. The combined affect was that we were buffeted first left then right.

As we got closer to Muscoda the roads got straighter and the terrain less hilly. If not for the wind we would have made excellent time. It would have been easy pedaling. I have to say, I like winding and slightly hilly roads better. Long, straight roads get a bit monotonous. Even when we were not talking just the presence or others nearby made the experience more tolerable.

All in all, this was the hardest day of the whole tour. Fortunately, I had recovered physically from my bouncing Century on the first day. While I have no desire to repeat this day and maintain that the best way to ride in the wind or rain is to not ride at all, I am glad I did it.

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Mauston to Baraboo. A truly perfect day on the bike. Today was a short day with only 73 km (44 miles) of riding. The route was a good combination of hills and flats. I had several plans for  activities once I got to Baraboo so I didn’t want to dilly dally along the way. Despite this desire I still ended up making frequent stops to take photos and videos. I couldn’t resist. The first rest stop was Lyndon Station. I decided to pass by without stopping if I was feeling good. I breezed by the rest stop with every intention of stopping at the second rest stop. I got in the zone and didn’t notice the marks for the rest stop. As a result, I pulled into Baraboo shortly after 12 noon. 

Perhaps, the highlight of the day was seeing two Sandhill Cranes with two baby cranes in tow. It was the first time for me to see this type of bird. I also spotted what I think were wild turkeys crossing the road. I am not sure because they were so far off in the distance I couldn’t see any details. When I asked some of the local Wisconsin riders they said there were turkeys in Wisconsin. There may have event been fledglings following I though, if not turkeys, perhaps pheasant but now that I consider it some more I might have seen more cranes. In the absence of confirmation I am going with my first guess of wild turkeys.

I saw more cows than any other day but still not as many as I expected. Maybe there are more cows further south. 

I feel like I am finally hitting my stride. My knee was hurting on previous days but it has been getting better little by little. Today it just a little uncomfortable.  Additionally, I am getting used to the bicycle. While I would not buy this kind of bicycle I am beginning to make it work for me. It certainly has its advantages in some circumstances such as wet pavement, bumpy ro unsaved roads. I can go where the skinny tire gang fear to go. There aren’t too many places like that on this route.

I started out early this morning in order to finish earlier. Despite starting earlier may people passed me up. I don’t mind. It was a good opportunity to take pictures of other riders besides myself. Everyone was so nice as they passed me up. Many people asked me if I was alright even though I though it was obvious that I had just stopped to take a picture. Still, the gesture was appreciated.

Baraboo has a very “Americana” feel to the town. I walked around the downtown area a little bit while looking for a place to eat. All the store front  around the square are in that traditional late 1800’s early 1900’s style.  Of course, Baraboo is famous for the Ringling Brothers Circus. There is a museum, a theater and, of course, Circus World, a locally running circus. I am in the town square listening to a brass band playing early 20th century marching tunes and eating a bratwurst.

A word about my plans for Baraboo. I had made arrangement weeks in advance to meat an old friend from elementary school. She drove up from Stoughton and we had dinner together. In addition to that, I wanted to interview Rob Layton, the owner/operator of Bike Wisconsin and GRABAAWR for the Pedalshift Project Podcast. Rob is a busy guy but this short day was a good opportunity to talk with him.

My take away from this beautiful day of riding is that no matter what you do, Ride Your Own Ride.

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Today was a Type II fun day. It rained almost the entire time I was riding. It cleared up for the last 12 miles (25 km) of the ride to just dump down rain when I was  less than 10 minutes from the lodging area. On top of all that my Frog Toggs rain gear was a complete failure. It held up for an hour or two but eventually the water started seeping through. By the time I was well into the ride my clothes were soaked. Additionally, the pants ripped wide open at the inseam when they get caught on the seat when I got on the bike. I can’t say that I recommend Frog Toggs rain gear. Sorry Kermit.

Despite the rain I had a great ride. The terrain was very flat. We rode through a mix of farmland and swamps. There was a long section of road that passed through the township of Armenia that was absolutely my favorite. The swamps and forest encroach right onto the road. Other than the road itself and the rare house, there isn’t a single sign of human habitation. I could ride that stretch of road every day and never get tired of it. I wouldn’t stop much though because as soon as you do the mosquitos attack.

In the afternoon I joined up with a retired couple from Rhinelander. They set a nice steady pace that I could keep up with and we cover ground steadily. I didn’t stop to take any pictures in the afternoon but I took plenty of pictures in the morning despite the rain. Waterproof cases for my cameras paid off. My iPhone 8 plus, the iPhone 6 and 5c. Were exposed to the rain for hours and they are all still very functional. Unfortunately, touch screens are very difficult to use when your fingers and the screen get wet. It was almost impossible to unlock my iPhone 8 plus because the fingerprint sensor didn’t recognize my touch as a finger at all. It made it impossible to use the maps. Of course, because of the rain I didn’t want to take out the cue sheets. I should have put them in a zip-lock bag.

I saw very little wildlife. The rain had probably forced them all to take refuge, each according to its species. I saw less roadkill today as well. I wonder if that is an indication that there is less wildlife in the area to tangle with humans or fewer humans. In general, this are seems more populous than farther north so I think the former is more likely. I did rescue a turtle we found on the road. It was a fairly large and heavy critter. About the size of two fists. I picked it up and moved it to the grass on the other side of the road. We assumed it was trying to get to the other side but there is no assurance that that was its actual intentions. No man knows the mind of a turtle.

As I mentioned, the last 25 km the rain stopped. I had almost dried out by the time we rolled into Mauston. We could see some ugly black clouds rolling. We hoped we could reach the lodging before the rain came. Our hopes were dashed to the ground with the rain drops. Just as we passed under an overpass a heavy rain started to come down. The weather went from a few isolated drops of water to deluge in less than a minute. If we had been smart we should have waited out the storm under the overpass but we weren’t. Maybe after riding all morning and most of the afternoon more rain didn’t seem to manner. We forged on. The rain was coming down so heavily we couldn’t clearly see the route marks on the road. The gentleman I was riding with spotted a school zone sign so we turned in that direction but it was the wrong school. Next to the wrong school was the Mauston Police Station. We went in there to ask directions. We weren’t far from our final destination. By the time we had our directions the rain had stopped. The storm came and went all within the space of 10 minutes.

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Today I rode from Wausau to Wisconsin Rapids. A total of 64 miles or 119 km. I missed breakfast at the church where they were serving it so I and a father and son duo from Missouri headed out of town and stopped at a store on the way. That was actually better because I was able to get some hot gas station food that tasted pretty good under the circumstances.

The route today included a detour up Rib Mountain. To be honest, I think calling it a mountain is wishful thinking. It is more like a big hill than a mountain. But, for Wisconsin, it is the closest thing to a mountain that the state has. At the turn off point for Rib Mountain I looked at the elevation profile and saw that there was only 250 meters of climbing spread out over 3 or 4 km. It didn’t look that bad to me. But aI decided that the better part of valor was discretion and bypassed the mountain. Later, a woman who completed the detour said the grade was 9%. That is significant.

I made good time today. I reach each rest stop with time to spare. After the third rest stop I got caught in the rain again. This time I was more prepared. I brought my rain gear. I also jerry-rigged a cover more my phone so that I could leave it on my handlebars and still see while keeping it dry for the most part. The rain let up quickly and I was able to continue on. I pleased with my impromptu phone cover and my foresight to bring my raincoat with. All in all, it was a good day.

The forecast is for rain all night and day so I made the decision to sleep in the gym. I unfolded my tent to give it a chance to dry out. After I got cleaned up I took the shuttle bus into town where I did my laundry and got dinner at Arby’s. Afterwards, I popped into the Dollar Tree and bought a pair of flip flops and a small inflatable kick board. The most bizarre thing was calling up the shuttle driver to be picked up by a big yellow school bus on demand. It seemed impractical to operate a large school bus just to pick up one person but that is what happened. If I wasn’t so tired I could have easily ridden my bicycle the short distance to town.

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