Art Zemon's Blog Posts

I had had one continual problem over the last several days: black flies a/k/a buffalo gnats. I had blithely cycled into black fly season and it was a particularly bad one this year. As long as I was riding and moving eight or nine miles per hour, I was free of the nasties. But any […]

Fun though it was to laze about Galena, eat too much, and shop more than I oughta, I could hear the Stone Arch Bridge calling me and there were hills to be conquered. I set my sites on Cassville, WI, 44 miles and 2,800 feet of climbing away. It was going to be my climbing-est […]

I left Fulton bright and early because I knew that it was going to be a hard day. I needed to cover 49 miles, one of my longest of the trip, and I also had to climb 1,880 feet. Pretty much all of the climbing was packed into the last 15 miles. First stop was […]

Day seven dawned with more beautiful weather. I briefly considered delaying my departure from Moline so that I could ride over to the Rock Island Arsenal to see the atomic canon. I lost so much time on the previous day’s flat tire that I had not gotten to see it. Grown up responsibility kicked in, […]

With a gentle right turn onto the Stone Arch Bridge this afternoon, I completed my bicycle tour from St. Peters, MO to Minneapolis, MN. It has been quite the adventure. I pedaled for 15 days and took rest days in Nauvoo, IL; Galena, IL; and La Crosse, WI. I saw the Mississippi River from both […]

After two days of cold, grey skies and headwinds, I was singing out loud as I headed northeast out of Muscatine to mostly sunny skies and calm winds. Nothing could possibly go wrong on a day as perfect as this. Temps were cool as I left the hotel but forecast to warm up promptly. I […]

Day 4 – Nauvoo to Oquawka Fun though Nauvoo was, I had to leave and head north or I would never find either Minneapolis or a third restaurant. The day started cold, grey, and windy. Mother nature decided that three days of tailwinds was more than enough (thank you very much) and it was time […]

Imagine traveling north on one road for three hours and not passing through a single town. Sounds like something from the lightly populated ranchland of the West or some foreign country, right? I just did that in western Illinois, riding north out of Quincy to Warsaw. Intellectually, I knew that there were no services in […]

I am writing this in Quincy, IL, 114 miles into my bike tour from St. Peters, MO to Minneapolis, MN. So far, the trip has been almost all smiles. The roads have been smooth (except where they weren’t) and level (except for the hills). The drivers have been amazingly courteous, compared to the folks back […]

Just over a year ago, I bought my Masi Giramondo touring bicycle. I have clocked over 2200 miles on it, mostly doing errands around town and using it for local transportation when I am going somewhere alone. I did manage a couple of short trips last year including an overnight to Robertsville State Park (temperatures […]