Land Between the Lakes, KY.      January, 2005

January seemed like a good time to arrange a bike camping trip to the Land Between the Lakes in western Kentucky. During our regular Wednesday night ride, a friend mentioned some really nice backpacking opportunities in the park. I had never heard of the place, but was intrigued by the name, ‘Land Between the Lakes’. I repeated it over and over in my head. The named conjured images of a distant and exotic locale.

As he offered more detailed information about the park, the idea started to blossom. Maybe it was the beer talking, but I began to think it a good idea to load a Bob trailer with everything I would need for two or three nights in the park including enough beer and liquor to last. I imagined I would pull it from one end of the park to the other with my singlespeed. Yeah, that’s a good idea!

Offering the idea to my friends brought resounding and unanimous enthusiasm! Maybe they also had one too many. Maybe the chill from the frigid breeze on top of the mountain at the neighborhood singletrack clouded our collective judgment. Yet, regardless of the integrity of the idea, the gauntlet had been laid. All who agreed were now committed. We rode back to the house to warm up at the backyard fire, drink more,

and solidify the plans.

After much speculation and dreaming, gear lists and arrangements to borrow some Bob trailers for those of us without, we disbanded for the night.

The next day, after everyone sobered up and as emails went out to continue the planning, exchange LBL web page links, etc, it became apparent that some of us are awfully brave and agreeable when drinking. Suddenly, images of the long night train of bikes and campers snaking through the woods of Kentucky were reduced to only two hearty souls. Myself and my buddy Jim. Maybe it’s not such a coincidence that Jim and I are also the only two in the group who ride singlespeeds and singlespeeds are our only ride! With no other choice, we would be using these bikes to haul the trailers!

Jim and I exchanged equipment lists. With only the two of us to split gear, we carried one two-man tent. That was our only concession to any attempt at efficient packing. After that, we packed every camping luxury we could wedge, stuff, strap or precariously balance on each of our Bob trailers. When the dust settled, each of us had roughly 50lbs in each trailer! This does not count the weight of the trailer itself, which - I think - weighs about 17 pounds. To make it all worthwhile, however, of the 50 pounds in each trailer, I would say half the load was equipment. The other half was food, beer, liquor and more beer…just in case we ran out…which would ruin the trip.

With the vehicle fully packed and ready to go from the previous evening, we each finished work relatively early in the afternoon. We anticipated a 3 to 4 hour drive to the Park entrance. To celebrate the coming weekend and our new adventure, a suitcase of Bud was procured, individuals cracked open, and we toasted cheers the whole drive. Not that we condone this kind of behavior – in retrospect, we both shiver at the whole idea of drinking and driving – but the condition with which we arrived and the people we met at the Park that evening brings a knowing smile to each of our faces! Granted – we were not knee walking by the time we arrived – even though we did consume the better part of that case on the drive up. I would say heavily buzzed and overly confidant would color this picture accurately.

Our arrival in the Park was several hours after dark and our exact position relative to our intended trailhead was a little obscure. Fortunately, our instincts and map reading skills put us closer than we thought. As we pulled into the parking lot, we saw a ranger leaving her post for the night and heading to her car. As we rolled out of our vehicle, we called out friendly hellos and began to unpack gear in an attempted display of benign park patrons.

Of course, our curious appearance at this hour piqued this ranger’s interest. It should be known, our ranger was a girl and a cute one at that. Her utility belt slug low on her #10 hips by the modest weight of her 9mm Glock and other law enforcement accoutrements. In full flirt mode, and really needing direction to the trailhead, we walked over to her as she was walking to her truck. Distance did not deny just how good looking this ranger was! Her uniform, green and beige, fit just right. Her boots were small but purposeful and she even wore one of those wide brim, stiff ranger hats, slightly cocked back on her head where her shoulder length brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail. Suddenly, I discovered I had a clichéd thing for girls in uniform. I never realized this because usually when I see a girl in uniform, said uniform is bursting at the seams with flesh and breath! Usually, the opposite sex is stuffed like too much sausage in a green or blue polyester official uniform. The pants pulled up too high. Seams fitting into places that look hot and uncomfortable and smelly. Big black boots. Knock kneed under the weight of an 80 pound ass. Do I need to go further? Can you see the bottle-blonde, winged, Faucet hair-do in your head? This is my vision of females in uniform – until now – because this one was different. Well…I think she was different…It was a long trip and we drank a lot of beer. No – in clear retrospect, I’m sure she was hot!

On this cold January night, her attitude was warm and fuzzy smooth and we made small talk about the park and it’s features and our intentions for the weekend. Just before I felt like either Jim or I would advance and invitation for ranger-girl to join us on our trek, we heard a door slam and a figure approached. This was the ranger-man. Husband-man to be exact. They were a husband and wife ranger team! It was cute. My pants slowly felt slack again and things settled.

Back to reality. We really needed the location of that trailhead. So he comes over and our conversation with ranger-girl did not falter with his presence. To do so would have been suspicious…which we were…

“You boys been drinkin’?” That question sort of shook us off guard. I mean, of course we had been drinking. A lot. But he stood there acting amiable and interested, not saying a word for a good 2 or 3 minutes as he listened to us converse with his wife before he popped that question. The question you never what to hear from one who wears a gun and is authorized to use it by the government!

My policy in situations like this is to state in a nonchalant manner a vague version of the truth. Just as I was about to say that 'yeah, we had a few as we were unpacking', my buddy Jim states with enough confidence to stifle any further questions; "No."

So that was it. No more small talk. No more flirting. No more buzz.

The husband-ranger only wanted the facts. And some very pointed questions followed that seemed to imply some doubt that we could safely traverse the park without needing some kind of rescue at some odd hour.

We pointed to the gear we had strewn behind the truck, ready to be packed in each trailer and emphasized the tent, food rations, our high power headlights, etc. He seemed to back off with the sight of what looked like an outdoor store after an explosion. Of course, what he did not see, was the most treasured piece of equipment of all….the booze!

Alone now in the parking lot, we finished getting all the gear packed into the bags and strapped to the trailers. Neither of us had ever towed a trailer with a bike. We had not even attached a trailer. Bob trailers have one wheel like a wheel barrow and attach to a special skewer through the rear dropouts. Behaving like an overloaded wheel barrow, it was difficult to attach the loaded trailer to the skewer. The weight sits high, so the tipping point is found as soon as you try to balance the trailer with one hand and hold the bike still with the other and line up both to be attached!

Once the trailer was attached, there was more to learn about having all this weight attached to the back of a bike. Many more lessons were to follow. Even getting in on the bike required new skills. I quickly learned that I absolutely needed to keep the bike perfectly upright as I mounted the saddle and took to the pedals. Oh, and that 2:1 on the singlespeed! Maybe I should have re-evaluated my gear choice for pulling almost 70 pounds of gear and trailer! The bike and I labored to a shaky roll across the parking lot. As I got this thing going, I realized that in my haste to start moving, I forgot to turn on my headlight. No problem, I’ll just take one hand off the bar and reach up and – oh where’s the bike going??!! I mean this thing is really out of control with all this weight behind me tugging side to side, pushing, pulling; it really takes both hands on the bars to muscle this three-wheeled train forward! But we were moving now and headed for the woods!!

The drop-in to the woods was a real wake up call for trailer dynamics! Greasy with mud, off camber, steep – is somebody pushing me down this hill?? What’s going on??!! It actually started pushing the back wheel to the downhill side of the trail camber on this hill! Counter to intuition, I released the brakes because I knew it was pushing the rear end for a full on semi-on-the-highway jack-knife! The hill was steep but I knew there was no way I’d go over the bars…at least, not still attached to the bike. The trailer had both of now – the bike and myself – in it’s control. We did what it wanted. We were in service to its every whim!

I learned many things in that first mile. The most poignant of which was that the trailer does not like to go up steep hills. Not under pedal power, not under foot power. It resists and bucks and pulls. All hills were the worst hills I ever tried to pull. And these were easy, short hills. They were a little steep but easily rideable under normal circumstances. With the trailers, they were impossible. A dismount had to be planned at every foot of every hill. No exceptions. We pushed every hill that night. Have you ever wondered when those cleat holes on your Sidi’s are ever going to be used? Try pushing your bike up a hill with 70 pounds of Bob trailer attached! One; you must keep the bike totally upright – if it leans just a few degrees, you either let it go or fight the handlebars to keep them level while the trailer keeps leaning until it’s finally at rest on it side and your rear triangle is also resting, twisted and contorted, but resting! Two; you can’t just push with both hands on the grips. Doing so makes the front wheel a pivot that the back wheel wants to rotate around. So I learned to push the back of the saddle and only steer with my other hand on the bars. If you don’t hold the saddle down as you push, it’s tendency is to rise! If you can’t visualize this, just trust me – push from behind the saddle. Three; I was pushing so hard, my body was almost parallel to the ground as I pushed. And the trail was a little greasy…that’s were the spikes would have come in handy. That’s why Sidi provides threaded soles…it’s for pushing bikes with trailers up hills!

We endured about two hours of this. It was dark, and all we saw was as much as the headlight would reveal to us. Even with the darkness and the duress, I could tell the trails were really nice. With the trailers, the hills sucked ass but the flats and downhills were fun. It was kind of neat how the trailer sort of surged along. It never felt like it was in sync with me. Either it was pushing, pulling or falling over. My trailer is the original Bob with a rigid frame, with every rock or root that trailer wheel hit and every subsequent violent surging bounce, I thought the trailer was finished. I was sure it would be wasted on this - it’s maiden voyage – it’s first night out. Jim’s trailer had the suspension.  I thought it was marketing overkill when I first saw it, but on the dirt, that shit works. I rode behind him and watched it handle the same rocks and roots I had to prepare to endure. Granted, after it was all said and done, my trailer is no worse for the wear – but as difficult as it was, I know his was easier to drag just because it did not bounce in a violent, uncontrolled way.

Several times the singletrack would spit us out onto a fire road where we would stop, unfold the map and collect our wits. We’d find the continuation point for the singletrack and press on. At about ten o’clock, fully two hours since we denied our level of imbibement, we found ourselves on another fire road. We really wanted to stop and set up a camp and toast our first night of this big adventure! But this fire road was not the scenic lakeside panorama we envisioned when we planned the trip. We imagined awesome lakeside campsites, big campfires, and fiery sunsets. Now we were seriously considering this dusty bend on the side of a dirt road. No lake, no fire, no more hills to push. Fuck it! we’re staying here tonight! I, for one, did not want to push that SOB up another hill….EVER!!

The next morning, after consulting the map, we came to a unanimous decision. No more dirt. We were not far from the main Park road that spans one end of the Park to the other. The trails run roughly parallel to the main road and our destination was to ride to the tip of the land between the lakes, camp there and ride all the singletrack in that area.

Excited about the change in plans, we made a quick breakfast, brewed some coffee for the thermoses and headed out. A few miles of fireroad put us on the smooth asphalt of the main Park road. Now we were finally moving. The road was straight and quiet. Two lanes of long, rolling ribbon. We almost had the road to ourselves. We almost had the park to ourselves. It was cold and clear and we were really making time on the road.

Compared to the nightmare we just endured, singlespeeds with heavy trailers on the road really worked well. On the road, the trailers reacted to inputs from the rider in a similar manner as the dirt. Except, on the road, the trailers were manageable and actually fun to pull. The elevations rose and fell gently but with just one gear, standing on the uphills to power over was not an option. The trailer did not respond well to rocking the bars and climbing as is normally done with a singlespeed. To rock the bars like that felt like the trailer might twist the drop-outs right off the rear end! Pulling hills had to be done in the saddle, pulling the pedals around and muscling the hills with finesse. The real fun was on the downhills because all the extra weight pushed the singlespeeds far beyond the gear ratio. All we could do was coast and ride it out in full tuck trying to coast as far up the next hill as possible. In only a few hours, we had made it to the other side of the park – lands end, so to speak! We peeled off the road and headed for the water. As you might imagine, it was not difficult to find the lake at this point. It was all around us!

We found a nice ‘beach’ with a few car camping pads and a port-a-potty. Perfect. This would be the Base Station for the next two days of our trip. The next time we wanted to haul those damned trailers would be on the ride back to the park entrance where the truck was parked.

BS was nice. We were the only people there. We had a great spot in clear view of the water and plenty of woods behind us for the steady supply of deadwood we would need to maintain a steady fire in the firepit. As soon as we arrived, we removed the trailers and explored the immediate area on the bikes. It felt so weird to ride without the trailer! I felt strong and the bike felt nimble. We powered up hills and flew through the tight twisties. Despite all the fun the singletrack around Base Station had to offer, we had to call it quits because the sun was starting to settle and we had to get ready for what would be a cold night.

When we got back to Base, it was already cold. There was a strong wind coming in from the lake and it was carrying a frigid, wet chill. We immediately took off for the woods behind the campsite and gathered as much wood as we could find. We had a huge pile to process into smaller pieces but that would have to wait for after the sunset. We bundled up, grabbed as much beer as we could cram in our pockets and rode to the beach.

We found a good spot on a bluff above the water and watched the great ball of fire sink into the water. It was a beautiful sunset. It exceeded all my expectations!

The lake on the point is huge. It is so big, while we sat and watched the sun go down, we saw two huge barges pass and several freighters in the distance. It is difficult to see the other side of the lake and the water was so rough, if I did no know better, I would have thought I was looking at the Atlantic! There were white-caps and breakers on the shore! The sunset was breathtaking and the freezing temperature and icy wind off the lake almost unbearable. We toughed it out, letting the cold beer slowly take the pain away. We watched until the sky faded to black. We headed back to Base and quickly made a huge fire. That’s when the real party started! After several more beers, we broke out the hard stuff! Jose is a good friend and usually rides shotgun on all our trips! The tequila was nice and cold, but had that warm finish! Our firepit was equipped with a grill and after we burned enough wood to have a good pile of coals, we set the grill and started to cook a Conechah sausage we brought. I told you we packed enough to camp in style!

Conechah sausage is a Southern specialty. It’s like Polish Kielbasa, but with hot spices and more fat. Mmmmm! As we slowly cooked the sausage, we drank more beer and tequila, gathered and processed more wood and just had a good time raising hell! Now it was late in the evening, we were fully drunk and the sausage was fully cooked. These three disparate conditions; late, drunk and cooked, came together to produce a great mystery that remains unsolved. After the sausage was taken off the grill, Jim suddenly and without adieu, retired to the tent. I was laying down as close to the fire as I could get, trying to stay warm. We were so messed up and tired that neither of us was really paying attention. As Jim staggered off to the tent and as I warmed by the fire, neither of us knew or planned we would be passed out for the next few hours.

When I awoke, the fire was almost dead and I was really freezing. I popped another cold one because I was thirsty and needed some carbs in order to stoke the flames…of the fire. Jim was still in the tent and I thought he was out for the night. I still had some party left in me so I drank more beer, ate chips, smoked, kept the fire going and tried to stave off sleep for as long as possible. This was a party I had worked hard for! Even though I was the only one there, I was bound and determined not to miss anything by going to sleep!!

To my surprise, Jim staggered from the tent about and hour after I got up. I was really surprised to see him! He looked surprised to see me too! I was happy somebody finally showed up at my party and we toasted with another round of tequila!

“Um…where’s the sausage?” “Huh?” “Yeah, I put the sausage right here on the picnic table…right here on the Frisbee…” Jim held up the Frisbee. I shined my light on it. It was empty save for the grease stains where the sausage once rested!

“You drunk ass cock smoking mother fucker! Why did you eat all the sausage?!” “What??”

I did not eat the sausage. Neither did Jim. We took it off the fire, put it on the picnic table and passed out. Granted, I was up and hour before Jim, but by that time, I had completely forgotten about the sausage. We searched all around the table to no avail. Then we looked in the firepit for any remnants. We figured that we were so wasted, we only imagined removing the sausage from the grill. But nothing made sense. The best we could figure was that some animal pilfered the picnic; lifted the links; hid the sausage; consumed the Conechah!!

For the rest of the weekend, this loss would color all of our conversations. It just did not add up! We poured over the facts. We had exhibits to ponder. The Frisbee was left undisturbed. I was passed out by the fire not more than three feet from the picnic table where the sausage sat cooling in it’s Frisbee tray. How could an animal visit our picnic table where all of our food was spread out and only eat the sausage? Nothing else was disturbed. Including me. I never heard a peep! Jim was still entertaining the idea that I was so drunk, I ate all the sausage in some kind of alcohol induced stupor that left me without any memory of my gluttony. I reminded him that if I ate a full two pounds of sausage, I would certainly be sick. Spending the rest of the time in the port-a-potty, shitting myself raw!

Now, thoroughly drunk, and overly excited about the mystery of the disappearing sausage, we proceeded to welcome the sunrise! With the fire fully stoked, coffee and Kahlua brewed, we made breakfast.

My buddy Jim has some interesting and effective ideas for camping. One is to bring a mini thermos for coffee. One small French press will brew enough coffee for one of these. Add Kahlua for extra flavor, shake, and enjoy a hot beverage over an extended time span. Pre-heating the thermos with a flash of boiling water will insure a minimum of heat loss when filled with coffee.

I love fresh food when camping. Yeah, it’s heavy. But it is such a luxury to have fresh food to eat while roughing it! My favorite breakfast is eggs. Scrambled, omelet – it does not matter. As you might imagine, it is very difficult to carry raw eggs in a backpack. It is even more difficult to remove raw egg residue from all the pack items once said eggs break and contaminate everything! My buddy Jim lives in the future. In his future, egg shells are plastic. Short of cloning chickens that shit plastic egg shells, he simply recycles 16oz water bottles which hold almost a dozen eggs! Just crack ‘em, funnel the mess into the bottle, add salt, pepper, cream, whatever and shake to mix. On the trail or at the campsite, fresh egg breakfast is a simple as pouring a portion of the mix into a heated skillet. So we had gourmet coffee, fresh eggs, no sausage, grits and a shot of Jose for breakfast. We were all doped up for a day full of singletrack bliss!

But first, a nap. It was cold and we had been up all night! To say it was cold is an understatement. The stiff wind coming in from the lake was absolutely frigid. The kind of wind that penetrates any attempt at warmth. To get warm by the fire required some skill. I used the fire as a sort of block against the wind putting the fire between me and the air mass from the lake. This required getting as low as possible behind the flames and wrapping my form around the pit. This is how I passed out the night before, in the fetal position using the fire as my blankie! Today was especially cold, however, and it seemed the best way to stay warm by the fire was to actually crouch down into the coals!

Short of setting myself on fire to stay warm, we decided it was time to get on the bikes and do some exploring. This was our last day and the majority of riding we had done up to this point was a slow slog on the road. Properly layered, riding would be an excellent way to generate some heat.

Getting started in the cold is never easy. Maybe it did not help when I crawled into my 10 degree down bag to change into my riding clothes. It was so warm in there and the tent was like a wind block. I got in the bag, changed clothes and laid there trying to convince myself that even though it was warm and soft in my bag, there were miles and miles of unridden trails out there. What a crime it would be to come all this way, dragging these Goddamned trailers, only to sit around a campfire, getting drunk? Oh, that was a bad question to ask myself at that point. Because from my perspective inside that bag, it was not a crime to sit around the campfire all weekend! This is why it was so difficult to get motivated to ride!

After a few shots of tequila to get our minds right, we planned as a warm-up exercise to gather a whole mess of firewood for our post ride celebration. Knowing we needed something to look forward to after the ride, that something included cold beer and a raging fire! The beer supply was beginning to dwindle, but we still had the box wine we emptied into several 24oz water bottles! We would look forward to a wino party around a big wino fire, albeit sans 50 gallon drum and our other wino friends!

I was looking forward to our wino party as soon as we hit the trails! But now we were committed to the ride and it would be a shame to miss these trails. Fast and smooth, they were perfect for singlespeeds!

The Land Between the Lakes offers more than the typical park. It has a Civil war heritage, old restored homesteads, farmland, ruins of an iron ore foundry and an elk and bison preserve, among other attractions. When I ride my bike, I like to have a destination. Even though the majority of riding I do involves riding a loop, this has always bugged me. I like to get on my bike and go somewhere. I think this is why I enjoy riding on the road so much. Sometimes I wish my car and bike could reverse roles. I would use my car for recreation and drive it in loops on a track and use my bike to run errands! In my world, however, I am sad to say that this is impossible. I work for a construction company and much of my day is spent in my truck checking on jobs and delivering materials. I don’t see delivering a load of 2x4’s on my Bob trailer!!

We determined that a good and interesting ride would take us to the preserve to check out the elk and bison. We even joked about bison patties and if the mushrooms would be any good!! It was going to be a long ride, but we had the time and the park was ours at this point since it was apparent nobody in their right mind wanted to be outside in these temperatures!

Once away from the trails that roughly followed the lake shore, the riding got a little easier and faster. Close to the shore, the trials were muddy, twisty and rolling. It was fun to ride but one short hill after another is like doing intervals. Plus the trails here were wet and it was difficult to ignore my cold wet feet every time I splashed through a mud puddle! Inland, the dirt was smooth and hard and flat. I love being in the backwoods of some unfamiliar place and feel like I am hundreds of miles from civilization. Sometimes, a place can feel so remote that I not only feel miles but years from home. Something about riding a bike in absolute solitude. Being in the woods is like being in another time. Knowing that, here on these grounds, people defended their land, raised families, buried their dead. Now we were out here among them in a time-forgotten cemetery reading headstones, some of them predating the Civil War. I love finding evidence in the woods of days gone by. Passing the site of an old house, the fireplace standing guard over the remains, reminds me of a headstone without a date. All the crooked limestone headstones like bad teeth emerging from the ground. A rusted carcasses of a Model T. I wonder what it’s story was? Was it the only one in the neighborhood? Did the owners run moonshine with it? Now it sits here in the woods, slowly dripping it’s minerals back to the soil.

We hit the trail before the woods had a chance to reclaim or shivering bones. It was starting to get colder and the sky was turning pink. Just as I was recalling pink skies meant snow, the flurries started to blow all around us. It was late in the afternoon and we were far from the camp but we pressed on with visions of snow crusted bison grazing in our imaginations. Nothing is more fun to me than riding as the snow falls. For some reason, the falling flakes makes the woods seem more quiet and remote than usual.

Riding another hour seemed to bring us no closer to the preserve. The snow was falling at a good clip now and it was cool how it accumulated on the leaves and brush flanking the trail, leaving a wet brown stripe defining the trail in sharp contrast. We did not plan to ride in the dark – neither of us brought a light. Visions of snow-crusted bison turned to visions of cutting one open Luke Skywalker style!! We had to turn around and head back.

I do not know what kind of thermodynamics are involved, but for some reason the snow did not accumulate as fast on the trial as it did elsewhere in the woods. This was a blessing because as it got darker, and as the surrounding forest got whiter, staying on the trail simply involved keeping the wheels on the narrow black stripe! It was like somebody drew a curvy black line on a sheet of bright white paper with a sharpie pen! We rode the singlespeeds at full tilt! Something about running that black stripe. I felt like my bike was a slot car on the black plastic track!

Before we knew it, we were back on the trails that follow the lake shore. Here the trails were really wet and muddy and we had to ride slow to keep form getting too wet. We could not wait to get back to the campsite! Luckily, we had stashed our wood pile under the concrete picnic table to keep it dry, just in case!

Everything was covered with two or three inches of snow when we got back. We were muddy and wet and chill coming off the lake was almost unbearable.

My buddy Jim never camps without a small supply of lighter pine. He is a lighter pine connoisseur of sorts. I have been with him in the woods on local rides. We’d be taking a break and he’d spot a stump in the distance. Muttering ‘looks like good stump’ as he’d trot off down the edge of the trial. Some noise and commotion would ensue as he’d fight and kick the stump into submitting it’s bounty. He’d return with a twisted orange root, wet with mineral spirits!

Producing a small ziplock bag of lighter pine, he stuffed it’s minimal contents beneath the large pyramid of wood we assembled in the firepit. Within minutes of lighting the pine, we had the beginnings of a good fire. The wind off the lake provided an ample amount of oxygen to feed the hungry flames. We pulled in close to absorb as much heat as possible without actually catching on fire!

We did end up calling the rangers by the end of the next day. It snowed pretty heavy. We kept the fire going as long as we could but with all the snow, it was difficult to replenish the supply with dry material. We ran out of beer, the sausage was gone and we could not imagine the long cold slog back to the other side of the park dragging these trailers.

For the next trip to Land Between the Lakes, we would definitely not bring the trailers! The singletrack is too good to waste time dragging all the gear just to camp. The car camp spots are super nice and having the car at the camp means beer and sausage runs when necessary!