Munger Consulting Services

The day started with some regret. I mean, it was kind of cool and all – seeing a wolf pretty much right out of the gate after leaving the campground. But Diana didn’t see it. And I didn’t have the special helmet I purchased online a few weeks ago for just such an occasion. It’s so cool. You are biking along, you see a wolf, or a dolphin, or a UFO – or – we are near the U.P. – maybe we see Bigfoot or Sasquatch or whatever his name is. (Is it sexist to assume that Bigfoot is a he? Or would no she want to be Bigfoot anyway?) Now, normally you see it and you tell everyone about it and they go: “Oh, yeah, that’s great John. Did you get a picture? How many eyes did the alien have?” And you know they don’t believe you . . . So sad.

But with this helmet that problem completely goes away. You just look at Sasquatch – which is exactly what you would be doing anyway because how could you look away – and then you push this Bluetooth-enabled button on your handlebars – and, boom, you have the first real picture of this rare beast ever taken.

And the helmet has lots of other cool features as well. Turn signals built into the back of the helmet and operated by that same handlebar button console. Bluetooth operated speakers right in your ears. Earmuffs. The list goes on . . .

But I didn’t have that helmet . . . You see, whoever designed the helmet was really good at geeky electronic gadgets. But they forgot to ask an actual bike rider about the ‘helmet’ parts of the helmet. Instead, they created the helmet equivalent of a bowl cut. Essentially an upside down bucket with some random padding thrown in. Like two air vents. The front rides down over your eyes so you look like Charlie Brown riding a tricycle . . .

So after a few abortive test rides, sadly, I decided that I didn’t have the neck strength to wear this 11-pound helmet for 900 miles. I just had my normal, boring helmet with no camera, no blinkers, no built-in speakers . . .

The upshot: I don’t have a really cool color photo of a wolf in suburban St. Germain to show you. You’ll just have to believe me based on the completely accurate, 100% real, absolutely true picture I drew.

And this theme continued on as we went along. After leaving Eagle River – a super nice town by the way – we had to navigate a 54 mile stretch with no services whatsoever. No grocery stores. No Target. No gas stations. And basically no cars . . .

So we’re going along, having a nice ride, and it’s broad daylight. And what do we see: a full moon. And not just one full moon. Two. And they are bigger than the harvest moon. And they are cruising by us at 60 miles per hour, hanging out the window of, you guessed it, a pickup truck.

Well, I actually don’t want to dwell too much on how big they were.

Diana summed it up: “That looked like Porky Pig! So huge!”

Now, this one might be a mercy – but, again, no helmet with a built-in camera – so no full-color photo of these two full moons. Again, you’ll have to make due with my completely accurate, 100% real, absolutely true picture that I drew . . .

In any event, with our eyes unable to unsee what we had seen we soldiered on . . .

Eventually we needed lunch. We had sandwiches packed but we didn’t have any fruit. Fortunately, Pa and Ma Ingells came to the rescue. Yes, that Pa and Ma – from Little House on the Prairie. Turns out we happened upon one of the many homes that Pa Ingalls built along the way. This homestead was featured in one of Laura Ingells Wilder’s lesser known works: “Little House in the Middle of F-ing Nowhere.”

When we went to look at the house we saw that Pa and Ma had planted an apple tree in front of the house. Pa probably took all of the credit, but undoubtedly Ma had to walk three miles up-hill-all-the-way in each direction with buckets of water to grow the tree. (No wonder they moved.) So we should probably give the credit to Ma.

Good apples. And a good day! Thanks to the apples and a little bit of moonlight we made it through the wilderness and emerged in Florence. No. Not that Florence. But there is an Italian/Mexican restaurant. So it’s almost as romantic – just missing a bridge or two and maybe a duomo.

And let me know if you want to go into business selling super amazing new age helmets. I think there’s a market there. . . .