The morning after Halloween night brought moody drizzles through crisp forty-degree air: the perfect weather for staying under the covers and resting off the previous night’s festivities. Despite this, nearly fifty people – many in shorts, some in costume from the night before – gathered at the Michigan Tech Trails with their mountain bikes well before noon.
The riders here will take any chance they get to get out and ride trails, with scoring an added bonus. “There’s nothing else at Michigan Tech Trails in terms of races besides a collegiate race,” said one rider. “It’s nice to be able to do just a casual enduro that people can come into if they’ve never done an enduro before, or just have fun at the end of the season when you really don’t have anything else going on.”
Among the riders are a giant hot dog, an aproned chef whose hat barely clings to the bike helmet, a unicorn with a tin foil horn, and a tandem bike whose facade resembled a particular ore freighter with a very catchy memorial ballad. “We got the idea on Wednesday,” said Seamus Barry, the builder of the Edmund Fitzgerald’s faithful recreation. “Thursday night I got the paint on, and then did all the detail touch-ups on Friday morning, just in time to roll around to Halloween night and then take it up to the trails for the race.”
While moving the slowest, the duo captaining the Fitzgerald down the tight, wooded trails was undoubtedly having the best time. “It turns like a ship, you could say,” said Barry. “Tandems aren’t known for how they turn to start with, and you add another 30, 40 pounds of cardboard and wood and paint and all that. But yeah, it’s really fun.”
After riding the Fitzgerald all over Houghton on Halloween night, Barry and his crew got a feel for how to handle the tandem effectively. “The first mate can really steer a lot by leaning side to side. It is a really noticeable difference, how they’re leaning. But most of the control, the braking, the shifting, the turning is all the person up front.”
A four-stage race, the enduro is a competition for individual best times downhill. “Enduro is probably the best format for a just nice casual event like this because you can go off and race yourself, but you’re climbing with everyone else,” says one rider. While the uphill transfer to get to the next starting line is mandatory, it’s not included in a rider’s time. “You get your nice high energy downhill and you’re just chilling with everybody going to the next stage.”
The winners of this year’s Halloween enduro were Corbin Grim in the men’s category, wearing his Copper Country Cycling Club jersey rather than a costume, Abigail Leagjeld, the unicorn, in the women’s category, and by unanimous vote, the Edmund Fitzgerald won Best Costume.
