Biking a Kayak

In the summer of 2021, I ended a brutal relationship. She had called my life mediocre. I decided it was time to prove her wrong. I’d long dreamt of slipping away up North onto Lake Superior and kayaking the circumference. I thought I needed a great endeavor to show what I was made of. Maybe I just wanted a bit of peace and quiet to clear my head and listen for what to do next with my life. The problem was I had never really kayaked.

People humored me. I spent 2022 learning how to kayak with ISK and with Trey Rouse. But it seemed like a pipe dream. It became real in December when I found myself with a man named Paul who’d done the trip in 92. We spent an afternoon in his dining room looking out over Superior and talking about what it really took to complete a trip like this. At the end he said, “in order to do something like this, you’ve got to be a little crazy. But you’ve convinced me.”

As the trip came together, it turned from a circle to a line because I wasn’t terribly interested in coming back. I didn’t want it to be a vacation, but an excursion to find a new life. I would bike to Duluth and kayak to Montreal as the first leg of a larger trip that would eventually lead out the St Lawrence Seaway, around Nova Scotia, down the east Coast, and maybe even across oceans.

Not everyone thought I was crazy. A lot of friends and family saw why I needed to do this and offered support. Some even joined. There are still folks out there yearning for adventure. My friend Katie is one.

Spring of 2023, we took Memorial Day weekend to bike my kayak and most of my gear the 170 miles or so between Saint Paul and Duluth. It was hot. And my load pulled us to a crawl. By the time we rolled into Duluth, I couldn’t sit down from saddle sores and had neuropathy in my hands. I struggled even to button my shirt. 

May 26-29, 2023

Route Map - Saint Paul to Duluth