Tons and Bergs

Over the past three summers, I’ve spent more time in airplanes and airports than on the saddle of my motorcycle, flying close to 200,000 miles and almost always to places hotter, grittier and more uncomfortable than the Oklahoma Panhandle in mid-August. This doesn’t leave time for Great Rides. In fact, I rarely have the opportunity to get lost going home from work. With the time I thought I’d have this season, I had hoped to try a local scavenger hunt of sorts, something I could schedule at a moment’s notice, and that wouldn’t take me too far afield so that I could accomplish the task as day rides, as opposed to getting lost for a week.

Enter the Great Lakes Motorcycle Club’s Titanic Grand Tour. Ultimately, it’s an excuse to get out and ride to places that you’ve never been to before, cleverly disguised as a contest to collect “Welcome to,…” signs at cities and towns ending in “Ton” or the various spellings of “Berg”. The big winner gets a gift card, the value of which won’t even come close to covering the fuel required to chase down these locations, let alone the set of tires worn down to nothing but chicken strips and belts in the attempt.


In January, when the snow is still on the ground, biker’s thoughts turn to spring, and start plotting how best to waste fuel and burn up tires. So, before my international travel schedule got in the way, I did some research and plotted all of the tons and bergs within about 350 miles of home. Then I arranged these into ten different day rides, 550 to 820 miles in length, each containing 8 to 21 locations. Since the wife was working again, and I had alternate Fridays flexed, I figured I could pick up about 130 locations and 7,000 miles on my days off. It’s just a guess, mind you, but I was guessing that a minimum of 150 locations would be required to win this contest. I needed just 25 to qualify for the t-shirt.

Fast forward to August, I had seen more and more of the Sandbox, but achieved little more than 2,000 miles on the summer. I had swapped the FJR for a GSA, but was gone too much to get to know it. Worse yet, I hadn’t even qualified for the t-shirt. With more travel coming up, I knew my season was winding down, so I modified one of my remaining eight routes to pick up some adjacent sites from another route and reloaded the GPS. If all went as planned, I’d pick up 23 Tons and 2 Bergs in a 670 mile day and still be home in time for supper.

If all went as planned. Famous 455th to 459th words.

Perhaps I should have set an alarm, but I ended up getting out of the house about an hour later than originally scheduled. Not a mile from the house, one of the GPS’s started routing me home again. Eventually I figured out that this was because my inbound and outbound routes were coincident for the first and last three miles, and Ms. Garmin simply assumed that I had intentionally intercepted my inbound leg, asking me to make a U-turn as soon as possible and complete the route. It would not be the last time she made this request.

Once we had resolved our little misunderstanding, she and I became much more cooperative, finding Afton with no problem, entering on a twisty rural/residential roadway from the north. However, minor roads rarely have the Welcome To sign, so I had to head out of town on some county pavement and scan behind me for the plaque. Once sighted, a quick U-turn (and another request to make a U-turn as soon as possible), stop on the shoulder, neutral, kickstand, dismount, gloves, camera, rally flag over the tank, snap snap, stow camera and rally flag, gloves, remount, select first gear, mirror check, U-turn, and back on the road. The entire process takes about two minutes. The two minutes, of course, begins once I found the sign.

Data collected and I was off to Weston, enjoying what for the most part was a nice early morning. Not too cool and well overcast so as to keep the rising sun out of my eastward facing helmet. I found Weston right where I was supposed to, except I never found a Weston sign. Not the green DOT sign, not a “Weston, home of the Underachievers” sign, not even a post office (those being the three accepted signs). I found the bar. I could have registered my turkey there, but I couldn’t claim it as a Ton. I moved on to Irvington, then rode the very enjoyable length of Wisconsin 88, crossed the Mississippi at Winona, and recorded Stockton and Lewiston.

From there, I should have headed a couple miles south and got on eastbound I-90, but the ramp was closed, and I ignored the advice of the flagman, heading further south, past the “road closed 10 miles ahead” sign and ten miles down CR-25 to where the road was closed, where I turned around and flogged back the ten miles, then headed west and south until I could find an open road and another bridge. About this time, the rain had caught up with me, and I hightailed it to Houston, Chaseburg, and Newton, outrunning the wet.

Midmorning now, and I was in full swing. The day was fine, the bike was running well, I had established my rhythm in my bonus hunt, and Ms. Garmin and I had our relationship back on track. I was thoroughly into the moment and enjoying every minute of it. The forest, rolling hills and twisting roadways of the northern reaches of the Driftless area in full summer are spectacular, especially with the sights and smells of active agriculture permeating my noggin. As well, the variety of dead things on the road remind me that I’m not in the big city any more.

Dead deer are ubiquitous, city or country. Dead opossums, pheasants, raccoons are mostly country dead things. The eight dead chickens were a surprise, as was the beaver. I don’t think I’d ever seen a dead beaver before, except as a display, or as a hat. One sparrow I killed myself, or it killed itself as it flew into my chest. Sad, but better a small bird than a cinder block.

It wasn’t all dead things. It never is. On this day, I saw a couple variety of hawk, either an adult Golden or juvenile Bald Eagle, scores and scores of sandhill cranes (I’m sure they weren’t whooping, despite my earplugs), and I braked hard for a couple of small deer (go figure). As well, there were the usual farm animals; cows, ducks, horses, Amish. Lots and lots of Amish doing their Amishness; driving wagons, using draft horses to make hay, working in the barnyard, looking plain, smiling and waving – always smiling and waving. Driving their buggies, smiling and waving. Weeding the garden, smiling and waving. Using a push mower around the farmhouse, smiling and waving. They look so happy. Makes me want to trade my cube for a non-electric, non-plumbed house in the country. Well, maybe I’d keep the plumbing, but I’d love all the smiling and waving. I’m sure they’ll be fine come the Dark Times.

One definite advantage to that lifestyle is that Road Closed signs don’t seem to apply because, on my third attempt to find a way into Kingston, I was again thwarted by the road under construction, but out of the dust trots a happy horse, pulling a sulky of sorts, operated by a smiling and waving, plain clothed, Lincoln-beard wearing believer. Personally, I didn’t believe the road was open, so I turned around, only to be greeted by another request to make a U-turn as soon as possible, and found an even longer way around.

At Clifton, I blew passed the sign before I knew it was there, gave a steady squeeze to the binders and made a U-turn. I made another U-turn at the sign and was immediately greeted by a barking farm dog who, I believe, believed that the farm, the road, the sign, and all that he surveyed were his to protect. Fine, the last thing I need is another dog bite, so I headed to the other side of town, where I made another U-turn, not for the Clifton sign but for the lack of it. Next I tried the third side of town to the same effect, and another U-turn, and back to the start and yet another U-turn. By this time, the dog had settled in on the farm’s driveway, and I figured I’d have about eight seconds to either swing a leg and skedaddle, or,… or,… Fortunately, the mailman cometh, and beast was distracted.

Outside of Portage, I found myself waiting to pass a couple of Lifestyle Riders with their pillions, all four unjacketed and unhelmeted. Then came the rains. The hard steady rains. The big raindrops at seventy miles an hour sharply intersecting exposed skin rains. They stopped on the shoulder pretty quickly, presumably for some raingear, but I could tell that they were already soaked through. I rode on, happy, dry and warm.

Ultimately, the detours and missing signs added about 130 miles to my day, arriving home well after dark but before the severe weather. Discounting the unsigned towns, the f-ed up and ignored detours, and the flyspecks that my mapping software thought were towns but weren’t, I collected all but three of my target towns. Combined with the few I had previously, I should qualify for the t-shirt, but not nearly to the extent that I had hoped for at the start of the season.

I’d like to think that I’ve got five more weeks to collect more Tons and Bergs, but I’ll be back to the Stans in a week and a half, and that effectively ends my portion of the contest. On the plus side, the bulk of my day was spent on lettered routes which, in southwest Wisconsin, mean twisty well signed two-laners, mostly untraveled and begging to be flogged.

Summers aren’t nearly long enough.