KENOSHA, Wis. — With its angry waters stretching to the horizon and breakers rolling in, Lake Michigan looks oceanic on a blustery, gray afternoon. I had my first, awe-inspiring glimpse of it Sunday in Racine, just before the rain began in earnest and gave me a good soaking for the next hour as I made my way through the city’s stately south-side neighborhood along the lake shore, turned west for a bit through a considerably less stately neighborhood and finally south again into Kenosha, not too far from the Illinois border.  It was a day of urban riding, part of a day anyway, something I haven’t done, really, the entire trip. (In Minneapolis, the biggest city I’ve passed through, I stayed almost exclusively on bike paths.) I was lost, or at least perplexed, about half the time. After spending so much time pedaling through daunting, wide-open spaces of the West, I’m still getting accustomed to making dozens of turns in a day and keeping my eyes peeled for the one street sign among a million that will point me in the right direction. It’s true that there are a lot more people around me now, and I’ve asked many for directions, but eager and friendly as most of them are, their advice turns out to be accurate only about half the time. (“Sheesh,” I want to go back and say to them sometimes, “How long did you say you lived in this town?”) Besides, as any cyclist can tell you, people who walk and drive don’t have a clue what’s important to someone on a bike.  “You’re about 10 minutes away,” the deli clerk said to me about the road I was interested in, meaning a 10-minute drive. It also amuses (and amazes) me how often the person behind the counter at the gas station convenience store will ring up my Gatorade and Lorna Doones, look at me in my full bike regalia, including helmet, and ask if I filled my tank outside. It’s happened a dozen times at least.  The best thing about being among the people of the Midwest, where I went to college and where I was a Times correspondent once upon a time, is that I know some of them. Visiting with friends the last couple of weeks has changed the nature of my travels. My journey has been a largely solo venture, with little in the way of flesh-and-blood company to look forward to for days or even weeks at a time. I became used to that, even got to enjoy the spine-stiffening self-reliance of it. But in Minneapolis I stayed with an old softball-playing buddy and his wife who, after 20 years, had invited me to catch up with them after reading the early installments of this blog. My time there coincided with the weekend that my childhood friend Glenn Shambroom, a musician who now lives near Boston, was spending with his brother Paul, who teaches photography at the University of Minnesota. We all had dinner together; for a solitary traveler it was an embarrassment of riches.  Then as I approached Madison the other day, my friends Chuck and Elizabeth Barnhill drove 25 miles north out of the city to intercept me. They treated me to my first ButterBurger (unappetizing name, but pretty tasty) at Culver’s, a fast-food chain I was unfamiliar with; then Chuck unloaded his bicycle from the car and we rode back together to their home. Elizabeth ferried my saddlebags in the car (a fabulous luxury for me), Chuck supplied the route (an even more fabulous luxury), and we had a terrific, swift ride through Wisconsin cornfields on a bright and beautiful day, witnessing, among other things, a mini-tornado, a vortex of wind about 30 feet high that swirled leaves and corn husks in a mesmerizing spiral for two or three minutes as we watched, before it crossed the road toward us and died.  I had met the loquacious and witty Barnhills (he a lawyer, she a former math teacher and a nationally ranked amateur tennis player), earlier this year on a bike tour of Provence. (Yes, I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time on a bicycle seat this year.) They were kicking off a year of celebrating their 40th anniversary, traveling with their friends Jerry and Amy Nickles, also of Madison, who were also waiting for my arrival. For a day and a half, the four of them saw to it that I ate heartily — Elizabeth’s pies! — drank liberally, conversed happily and slept comfortably. They got me to the bike store to shore up on fall-weather gear (a merino under-layer, warmer gloves and waterproof shoe covers) and pointed me toward the road east and out of town. Jerry, a professor of medical physics at the University of Wisconsin, smashes atoms for a living, and he took me to his lab and showed me his cyclotron.  All of this companionship has given a bittersweet flavor to getting back on the road alone. I’ve grown to like waking early, sussing out the weather, consulting my various maps, ritually loading up my bike and rolling out the door of a motel. But leaving a warm hearth and home to pedal into the morning chill is, well, a little more difficult. It reminds me, of course, that I have an actual home myself, and an actual life, and they’re waiting for me when I return from my quixotic adventure. Several readers have asked me whether the trip has been a joy or an ordeal, and the answer, obviously, is both, some days more of one, some days more of the other. But keep in mind that ordeals can be as satisfying as pleasures, and what I was thinking as the rain began in Racine and I watched the waves of Lake Michigan tumble to the beach was that barring unforeseen incident I’m about a month from getting back to New York. The closer I get the more I wonder: What will I do when I get there?  (You can read about my previous cross-country bike ride, why I am cycling across the country again, and how I hit a wall at 500 miles.)
In the Midwest, the author bikes on city streets in Racine, a first for this trip, and visits with friends.