Out in Greene County, Iowa

Cycling among the cheeseheads turns out to be a glorious, scenic, six-day, 350-mile adventure

By CHUCK OFFENBURGER
August 9, 2006
COOPER, IOWA

For six days last week, my wife Carla and I bicycled amidst some of the most beautiful scenery in the U.S. For most of our 350-mile ride in Wisconsin, we had Lake Michigan on one side of us, the oat and wheat harvest happening on the other side of us, grand 100-year-old dairy barns all around us, and lightly-traveled hard-surfaced roads in front of us.

We found only one real hill, just north of the town of Egg Harbor.

We had one excessively hot day, one wet day and four other mild, beautiful summer days.

We camped outdoors in about as plush a way as you possibly could.

And in the historic resort area of Door County, we found the best cherry pie I’ve ever eaten – made with the famous Door County cherries.


Chuck and Carla Offenburger during a break on the shoreline of beautiful Jacksonport, Wisconsin, during the “SAGBRAW” bike ride in that state. Jacksonport is on Door County's east shore on Lake Michigan.

Bike rides just don’t get much better than the 29th “SAGBRAW” was. That stands for “Sprocket’s Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Wisconsin,” with the title sponsor being the Wheel & Sprocket bicycle shop with six locations in Wisconsin. There were 1,150 riders from 27 states and two Canadian provinces.

As Carla explains in her column about our adventure, after we did a ride across the U.S. in 1995, we decided to begin trying across-a-state rides elsewhere around the country. Many of them are modeled somewhat after the Des Moines Register’s Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa (RAGBRAI).

“SAGBRAW was one of the first spin-offs from RAGBRAI,” said David Harrenstein, our pal from Lanesboro, Minnesota, who organizes groups for bike tours all over the Midwest and talked us into trying Wisconsin. He and his buddy David Clabby, of Waterloo, Iowa, brought Harrenstein’s two Overland Touring Company vans and provided the official “sag service” during SAGBRAW.

Harrenstein and I have known each other for more than two decades, after meeting in 1983 when both of us were riding RAGBRAI for the first time. We were standing next to each other in a checkout line in a tiny grocery in Packwood, Iowa, during that ride. He was buying beer and I was buying cigarettes. Our lives have changed a good deal since then.

Our pal David Harrenstein, of Lanesboro, Minnesota, heads up SAGBRAW's “sag service” for cyclists who tucker out or have bicycle breakdowns.

After all his bicycle touring experiences, Harrenstein offered a keen observation during our Wisconsin trip. “When you sit back at the end of the day on a bike ride, and listen to the conversations in the campground,” he said with a grin, “about 65 percent of what we talk about is ‘What we ate today.’ ”

For us on this excursion in Wisconson, our food list included lots of fresh fish, that outstanding cherry pie (a la mode every other time) and, of course, cheese. I didn’t come anywhere close to finding out just how many cheese curds I could eat at one sitting.

We were in some great places, some thick with tourists, but still easily reachable by bicycle on the wonderful back roads.

Among those were Green Bay and Sturgeon Bay, where we saw the tall ships making their annual summer sail around Lake Michigan; Manitowoc, where we camped with a field of wildflowers in front of us, right on the shoreline of the lake on the campus of the University of Wisconsin-Manitowoc, and my favorite stop, Jacksonport.

Our friends Jerry and Pat Kelley, of Indianola, Iowa, have a lakeshore cottage at Jacksonport, a comfortable but rustic 1940s structure with pine and cedar siding, and lots of books and comfy chairs to use for reading and reflection. Kelley’s family has had a summer home in the Jacksonport area since 1909, when his cheesemaking grandfather Michael Lyons built one.

That community is in the heart of Door County, which Jerry Kelley reports “has 26,000 year ’round residents, but we have two million people coming through here on vacation every year.” Among the in-and-out residents of Jacksonport are some of Wisconsin’s best-known Democratic politicians – current Governor Jim Doyle and former governors Gaylord Nelson, Patrick Lucey and John Reynolds, all three of whom went on to other government positions.

“I go up to Bley’s Grocery every morning to get a newspaper, and you’ll liable to walk in there and see the governor and two or three former governors drinking coffee and arguing over which brand of bread is better tasting,” Kelley said. “You see that and realize, ‘This is a rather unusual spot in America.’ ”


When more than two inches of rain fell in the early morning hours in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, the campground was swamped. Chuck Offenburger is shown wheeling his bicycle away from the tenting area toward the asphalt driveway at Sturgeon Bay High School.

Speaking of politicians and places known for unusual things, how about Sheboygan? We rode through there at mid-morning Saturday, and in this city that brags it is the “Home of Bratwurst,” they were having the annual “Brat Festival.” Wisconsin State Senator Joe Leibham, a Republican, had his own float in the parade with this sign across the back: “Freeze Taxes, Fry Brats.”

Sheboygan, pop. 50,000, is one of those places you want to visit at some point in your life, just because the name of the town is so fun to say -- like Winnemucca in Nevada, Malibu in California, Littlelot in Tennessee and Blooming Prairie in Minnesota.

As we were going into a corner café for breakfast, we encountered Sheboygan resident Don Hicks, who said he’d keep an eye on our bicycles. When I asked who famous is from Sheboygan, or if it has ever been mentioned in a song, he drew a blank. But when we came back out of the café 45 minutes later, Hicks reported while he still couldn’t think of anybody famous from the community – he forgot comedian Jackie Mason – he did recall hearing Sheboygan being in a song. And he sang two raspy lines of it:

Mention my name in Sheboygan –
It’s the greatest little town in the world.

It’s the kind of ditty that keeps you humming for the next four hours on your bicycle ride. And come to find out later, it was once even recorded – why? – by the Everly Brothers, charter members of the Rock ’n’ Roll Hall of Fame from my hometown of Shenandoah, Iowa.

As good as this SAGBRAW experience was, I’m afraid it has ruined Carla and me as cyclists in one way: We were so spoiled in the campground that we may never again pitch our own tent on bike rides.

Most of the major bike tours are now offering premium campground packages, like we bought for this Wisconsin ride. “Shuttleguy, LLC,” a company based in Dodgeville, Wisconsin, turned us into pampered campers.

Each day when we arrived at our overnight destination, we found a spacious, high-quality tent all set-up for us. Our suitcases had been delivered inside the tent’s front flap. There were two lounge chairs out front. Inside, a queen-sized air mattress was inflated to a puffy eight inches thick in the tent, waiting for us to unroll our sleeping bags. There were clean towels for both of us, and cold drinks waiting for us, too. In the mornings, there was gourmet coffee, too. We’d pack up our suitcases, leave them sitting at the tent site for pick-up and pedal away on our day’s ride – leaving the real work to the nine-member crew of Shuttleguy.

All of the above cost us $50 per night, covering both of us.

Shuttleguy was founded by Dodgeville high school English teacher Tym Allison, who five years ago was asked to organize a bag-shuttling service for a ride coming through Dodgeville. He rounded up some of his students, and they did the task as a fundraiser for some special project.

But besides teaching English, this Allison has the spirit of an entrepreneur, too, and he recognized a business opportunity. Now he and his significant other Sonja have invested in more than 50 quality tents, three vans & trailers, canopies for a campground headquarters and lots of other equipment. They recruit a crew of seven college and high school students, headed by Sonja’s daughter Natalia, who despite what is really very hard work in sometimes hot and steamy conditions, were continually good-natured and fun.


There can't be many more spectacular campsites than Chuck and Carla Offenburger and other SAGBRAW riders had on the University of Wisconsin's Manitowoc campus -- with a field of beautiful wildflowers all that was separating them from the beach and waters of Lake Michigan.

Shuttleguy, LLC, now is doing eight or nine bike tours per summer, including RAGBRAI. They even shuttle bike riders to and from the tours, if they have appointments to keep elsewhere. It’s like if there is a service you need, they’ll find a way to provide it.

And they came up with the most head-turning business motto I’ve ever found anywhere: “Make Life Easy.”

You can check them out on the Internet site www.shuttleguy.com.

Like I said, their service is addictive.

Mark Epperson, of Panora, Iowa, who has been one of their customers on RAGBRAI and now SAGBRAW, said “if you’re over 40, Shuttleguy is the best way to do RAGBRAI. If you’re under 30 and want to do the wild party scene, then go stay with the big crowd in the regular campground. But if you’re over 40, Shuttleguy is the only way to go.”

They made Wisconsin seem even more pleasant than it already is.

You can reach the author by e-mail at chuck@Offenburger.com.