Day 1: Breathtaking beauty
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By Barb Ickes | Tuesday, September 23, 2008 |
T his is living. I set back out on the bike ride this week that was canceled a couple of months ago on account of an ailing ovary.
This time, there would be no advance-column fanfare and much less planning. When I set out in June to spend a week on the Great River Trail, bicycling from Rock Island to Savanna, I had a backpack full of supplies, a roster of riding partners and drivers lined up to fetch me from the path at the end of each day’s ride.
Not this time.
Having done a fair amount of cycling in the interim, I
figured I was up to a round-trip ride each day this time, picking up the next day from wherever I leave off the day before. I borrowed a lavender-colored Tinker Bell fanny pack from my 10-year-old neighbor, Lauryn, stuck a couple of Band-Aids and a fiber bar in it and took off Monday morning from the Ben Butterworth Parkway in Moline.
If I had a dime for every grasshopper I hit on the stretch along the old Case-IH plant in East Moline, I could buy another bike. By the time I reached Beacon Harbor in The Quarter, though, the hopping little critters had thinned out, and I could ride without worrying about keeping my mouth closed.
Past The Quarter, the egrets and heron were nearly as plentiful as the grasshoppers had been. The birds evidently are accustomed to bicycles, because they didn’t budge as I pedaled by.
Just past the somewhat stinky water treatment plant in East Moline is an almost startlingly beautiful stretch called (Henry) McNeal’s Reserve. It begins with a narrow, tree-lined route with fairly steep hills on either end.
As I was about to enter it, I met Betty Barnes, walking her three-wheeled bike up the hill.
“This part is for cooling you off,” she offered cheerfully. “You ride down it like a bat out of heck, and the wind cools you.”
Betty told me about starting to ride a bike six years ago to exercise the new hip she got after replacement surgery. The vow to ride for exercise probably wouldn’t have stuck, except that she discovered two horses in a fenced-off section of McNeal’s Reserve, and Betty loves horses.
“I stopped there to have the apple I’d brought along one day, and I saw the horses,” she said. “I shared my apple with them, and I started packing apples and carrots with me on my rides, so I could feed them. That’s what started this six-year ordeal of riding.”
Then Betty read my mind.
“I wish more people — younger and older — would ride these bike paths,” she said. “I go as long as I can, and one year I was still riding up to December 23.”
Even on a weekday, I wondered where everyone could be. So much of the ride is just as quiet as night, and I was honked at only once — by a couple of geese that were crossing the path as I rode into Hampton. The campgrounds at Illiniwek Park had only a handful of RVs on the concrete slabs, and the fancy models called “Mobile Suites” and “Tour” tempted me to forget that it is not wise to pine for retirement.
Just past Lock & Dam 14, at an out-of-the-way campground called Fisherman’s Corner, I got off my bike and walked to the river’s edge. The lily pads there are as big as dinner plates, and dozens of geese were diving among the greenery.
As their heads went under water, their white rear ends popped out of the water like feathered diapers. I felt a little sheepish standing there — as if I’d been carelessly ignoring something that is too modest to shout out its own beauty. At the edge of the Mississippi River, where early autumn leaves rustled at my feet like dried paper, I didn’t care what the bike helmet had done to my hair.
The leaves crunched under my bike tires as I pedaled around the campground, drawing a few insincere barks from a small dog that had no real interest in leaving the shade of a picnic table.
And then it was time to turn around. I didn’t want to go too far on the first day — just a dozen-or-so miles to the edge of Rapids City, which is where I’ll pick up today.
I loitered some more at Fisherman’s Corner and lingered some at Illiniwek Park, and, before I knew it, I was back on the Ben Butterworth. I was sorry the first gorgeous day had passed. And I was grateful to that ailing ovary.
Barb Ickes can be contacted at (563) 383-2316 or bickes@qctimes.com. Comment on this column at qctimes.com.
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