Eagle's Roost
A lovely Sunday morning greeted us, sun bright, air rinsed by yesterday’s rains.
What a way to end the ride.
Yes, I had filled Avery in on my idea to skip the projected last day back into Iowa and eliminate what would otherwise be by far the hilliest day of pedaling for the week. He was enthusiastic about my plan. Its fulfillment required the cooperation of some unknown driver in Cassville to shuttle me into Dubuque, but work on that was already begun before breakfast.
What mattered more at the moment was the delightful weather on the most rewarding and shortest ride of the week. To start we headed east, upstream on the northern bank of the Wisconsin River to cross at the very high span at Bridgeport. Once across we left State Highway 35 and moved to county roads – more meandering, no shoulder, less traffic, and away from the river for much of the day.
First we humped a climb to a plateau where corn fields stretch to the horizon, grain silos and dairy barns dot the landscape, and winds course through pastures of bluestem like high tides crashing against the side of the road.
Once more we dropped down to the river in a long, winding descent to Wyalusing, an isolated village as remote and hidden as Rivendell in Middle Earth or Stay More in Arkansas’ Ozarks or the Buendía’s Macondo. When we left its sun-dappled valley, another wending climb upward awaited, only to swoop a final time on the tandem in a thrilling carved slalom downward downward into the alluvial bottoms here at the end of our ride.
Across the water now is Iowa, no longer Minnesota.
We watch for falling rocks and I think of how progress happens and I stayed silent rather than regale Avery with a racist tale latched to those highway signs from my father’s constant retelling on car trips. I’m not more virtuous than my father, and he would surely say I am spouting PC baloney were he able to rebut my argument. But I know Avery is better for it, in the same way I know he’s a better person for those jokes of my dad’s I do repeat to him. (Including a context-appropriate example earlier in the day: What did the plow say to the tractor? Pull me a little closer, John, Deere.)
We ride along the Mississippi Flyway for migratory birds and I think of my grandfather and his outdoor life spent in blinds and boats on the moving and flat water of northern Missouri, firing his shotgun at geese and ducks on that aerial route. I watch a parade of Corvettes on a Sunday club drive and hear Avery remark on their passing and wonder if this bucolic scene will play in his memory decades hence as those of my father and grandfather do in my own and I know the answer is yes, though it’s certainly not the recollections I imagine or would pick, but rather they will be memories of his choosing and shaped by his experience. They will be of this time and this ride, of father and son together if increasingly autonomous. Avery makes his own decisions now. Not all of them, but those that matter about how and who he wants to be.
In the early afternoon light of a cool summer day, we ride along the final miles on a little-traveled country road, the river our constant companion here as it has been all along. We piddle through tiny Cassville and find our home for the night, the Eagle’s Roost Resort, and its owner. Bonnie, as I’ll call her, inquired at church that morning, on my behalf, if anyone wanted to earn some dough driving me into Dubuque. When I checked in in the early afternoon, she told me there were not yet any takers, but she had a line on a possibility. A woman in her circle was, even now, calling her son to line up a shuttle.
Avery and I steered back the half mile into Cassville’s business district for lunch at the Town Pump and the best burger of the trip. It was a homemade job, made by the bartender and fried on the grill smack dab in the middle of the big pane overlooking the sidewalk. I had what was becoming a familiar combo: The cold Spotted Cow and hot cheese curds were the perfect complement to the burger and fries.
The Eagle’s Roost owner, Bonnie, called with good news. A fellow parishioner phoned with her son already conferenced in to the call. Mom did the talking. Her boy agreed and told me his wife’s name – she would drive while he was at work -- and we agreed to a rendezvous. At the appointed time, a woman who could be named Cassie crunched into the gravel parking lot precisely on schedule. I left Avery on his lonesome and got in the creaky, dusty, un-air-conditioned Explorer of yore. A 4-year-old and a 5-month-old child sat sweltering in child seats. They were soon both asleep as we hit the curves of the highway on an ascent toward Dubuque. The daughter-in-law reported on the whereabouts of her husband, who had negotiated the arrangement and now was at work at the factory or warehouse where he was employed. She told me she and her children were being subjected to severe familial pressure to set out on the next day to Beloit and there honor the memory of her dead brother, killed in a bizarre crime as described by his sister, my driver, in a way I found truly hard to believe. Someone, my driver insisted, had attacked her brother while he, her brother, was running along the Rock River Trail. Murder by unprovoked stranger, without a clear or expressed motive. My skepticism alerts were clanging. I managed a few appropriate expressions of empathy.
I listened with one ear. I was more focused on the winding climb. Upward, steeply, Cassie drove and the Explorer’s engine chugged along and revved as we crested each rise. This was not the road we would travel, but I had to think our route would be even more hair-pin and even more steep. Furthermore, the cycling route I’d decided on, and that we would have followed, would have taken us to another dangerous bridge, instead of the wide-shouldered, level option. This shuttle to cut out the final day of riding was definitely the right decision.
Avery had no qualms. He knew it was the correct decision. The car-free portion of our trip was over.
We drove to dinner, abandoning plans for a third night of steaks because of a loud band and raucous crowd. Instead, we went to the worst pizza joint in the continental United States. It was a buffet, though, so we could eat all we wanted.
The Choctawhatchee Chariot would get another pedal the next day – a memorable and delightful ride the next day. The bad pizza would not be our final meal in Cassville and breakfast would redeem the river town. The ferry was not running – high water and strong currents sidelined it. Instead, we took in the passing Mississippi from a floating dock at the Eagle’s Roost as the sun sank below the Iowa horizon, setting on our Great River Road adventure. We watched in quiet reflection on 300 miles of Minnesota and Wisconsin. This year’s father-son tandem ride was complete, but never over. It would live on in the stories we would recount, starting this evening as we reminisced – the bridge of death, Snuffy’s last shake, the National Ski Jump Hall of Fame & Museum, a dash against time and wind and rain, the long Trempealeau jungle path, surprisingly delicious frozen pizza along with disappointingly awful fresh-made pie. Speaking of pie, remember that slice of butterscotch in Stockholm with the meringue 3-inches high?
The tales of this ride were already a part of us, embedded in our memories and our lives. Tomorrow, we would add more.