The original artwork on cover of Trempealeau Bicycle Trails was painted by young John Kneppen Rural America is at the heart of this unique guidebook
BikingTrempealeau By Greg Marr Walter Ordway built it. Now he has to wait to see if anyone will come.
Actually, Ordway didn't build anything. It was already there; he just provided a guidebook pointing it out, and making it easier to use.
"Trempealeau Bicycle Trails" is a unique, slim guidebook to bicycling in the Coulee Country of western Wisconsin north of La Crosse. "Unique" hardly does the book justice. What Ordway has done has never been done in the Midwest before and likely nowhere else in the United States, Europe and the rest of the world. It's not uncommon.
Ordway went out in the community and talked with people who live along the Trempealeau area's lightly trafficked roadways. They're farmers, mostly, and there's about 150 of them along the seven designated bike routes. Of those 150, over 130 have agreed to be "Trail Stewards." The guidebook indicates their location along each route. A cyclist having a problem – a breakdown that can't be handled with a roadside
repair, for instance – can head to the nearest steward's house for assistance with a smile, or maybe just a glass of water and some friendly conversation.
Ordway also went out among the business community and found 75 of 86 businesses that were willing to offer discounts to people using the book. Food, lodging, beverages and more can be obtained with a discount of 10 percent or more. Each cooperating business is listed in the book.
Finally, there are the illustrations. It would be good to somehow involve the children, Ordway thought, so he had the children who live along the routes draw pictures of bicyclists riding past their homes. There are nine illustrations in all, including the cover, all penned by elementary school kids; there were over 400 sketches to choose from. Ordway's hand drawn and lettered maps compliment the kid's artwork.
One thing you won't find anywhere in the book is Walter Ordway's name. It's the community's book now; Ordway just put it together with and for them. "The communities should have the ownership and profit," he says.
To understand why Ordway would write a book and not put his name on it, you have to know a little more about him and what brought him from a western Iowa farm, which is still his home base, to Trempealeau in the first place.
Ordway never had a bicycle before going overseas some 20 to 25 years ago but he soon discovered its practicality. After time in the Peace Corps, Ordway set off on an adventure.
"I never intended to go around the world," he says. "I just started out in England and it just sort of happened. I was gone when mountain bikes were invented. I saw my first one in the Himalayas in 1980. Eventually I decided to see if I could do it, go around the world by bicycle with no money."
Ordway spent 13 months bicycling the Indian subcontinent and bicycled across southeast Asia, Indonesia and Australia. His pocket money fell under $100 seven times.
To survive, Ordway participated in what he calls "transactional living."
"In the United States, we transact with money. In the Third World, you participate in the daily lives and activities of the people and they find a way to feed you and give you a place to sleep on the floor of a hut.
Here we pay money to eat and sleep. There you work for it. There isn't much money so you transact with your labor."
"The bicycle is an incredible facilitator," he adds. "It's nonthreatening. You're exposed to the countryside and the people. It's a congenial sort of format for meeting people. I found it was my ticket to interact in the daily lives of people."
Ordway immediately noticed a difference when he returned to the United States. Here the bicycle is, at
best, a recreational device. The percentage of U.S. bicyclists who use a bicycle for practical purposes, like commuting, is quite small. In much of the rest of the world, a bicycle is a tool.
More importantly, Ordway saw people as isolated here.
"I saw the American family with all this technology and advancements – computers, Internet, Nintendo – had lost touch with its roots. People don't see it but the rural community is so much a part of society. Want
food? Go to the supermarket. We're off to bigger and better things. But the rural community is the root system of our society. You can't keep adding branches to the tree and leaves to the branches without a good root system. You can't let the root system erode. It will collapse."
"When I got back," Ordway adds, "I saw this disparity, a breakdown of the system, a tension in society.
We are so tight with our culture. People need to take a natural break and make it a part of of life's balance. It's there if people take the time to see it."
With this in mind, Ordway's simple bicycling guidebook takes on a whole different meaning as the routes wind through a tiny slice of rural America.
"We have to be explorers, get out there and take the time to relearn the country we live in," he says. "The
farmers are going to be gone. What's going to be left is a lot like the collective farms we abhor in Russia. We're not going to have anything but big farms. By and large, as farmers we're through. Legislation currently is not in our favor."
Another of Ordway's projects is to help draft legislation designed to redefine farming to include tourism and landscape perspectives in addition to agriculture.
"These small farms are true national treasures. We have to save the farms to preserve our culture. Things like this (book) give people in cities a view of what is America."
The bicycling guidebook was actually an outgrowth of another of Ordway's projects. He's developed a series of popular motorcoach tours that take people back into rural America. Tours include not only interacting with the locals but a potluck dinner prepared and served by the people of the community. More
than a mere sightseeing trip, it allows people an opportunity to become emmersed in a culture that represent the very root system of their society. When Ordway first happened on the Trempealeau area, he knew it would be perfect for the motorcoach tours. And he soon realized it would be perfect for cyclists as well.
"The roads are paved for the milk industry – paved and not being used. It's in the Coulee region so there
are a lot of vistas. It's a wonderland for biking. It's hilly but it's mostly step up, step down – not a lot of work for the beauty you see. And Trempealeau County is at the end of a long trail system, attached to the largest trail system in Wisconsin (Elroy-Sparta, Great River) with beautiful scenery."
Ordway had the idea; what he needed was the funding to do it. He approached the local tourism council
looking for funding but was rejected. State Senator Rod Moen heard about the idea, however, and paved the way for a grant from Wisconsin Department of Transportation.
"If Rod Moen hadn't come out for it, it wouldn't have happened," Ordway says. "I think it's significant that no governmental agency was involved in this project. I had a grant to do a job; that was it."
The DOT was responsible for 80% of the funding with additional dollars eventually coming from the
Trempealeau County Board of Supervisors and Trempealeau County Tourism Council.
The first thing Ordway did was go to the people and get their permission to use them in the book. To do that, he approached key people, farmers, and got them on board, who in turn went to their friends.
"What I did was sell the idea to one guy who would then sell it to his friends. It worked better that way then
having me, a stranger, go out and talk to everyone. I found a few farmers everyone trusted. Others figured if the first guy thought it was a good idea, they'd go along, too."
Ordway then went to local business.
"Economically, it has to be beneficial for businesses and the people who come. Businesses wouldn't have to take out ads in the book but I wanted a show of good faith. The book is free but it has value in and of itself
-– it's good for 10 percent off at most businesses in the area."
Once he had farmers and businesses line up, Ordway got down to the fun stuff – setting up seven bike routes in the area. Routes range from 24 to 36 miles and include scenic vistas of the Mississippi River and overlooks that will have you thinking you're in the mountains. It's no wonder that a traveling preacher once thought he had stumbled on the Biblical Garden of Eden when he visited the area.
The bicycling is spectacular if occasionally challenging. All of the routes in the book include details of scenery, a map, location of trail stewards and names of cooperating businesses.
"One thing guaranteed from a world traveler by bicycle," Ordway says, "is that you are not going to be disappointed. The scenery is gorgeous."
Ordway's work wasn't quite finished with the printing of 5,000 copies in the spring of this year; he still had
to get out and distribute it to the masses. To do that, he traveled literally thousands of miles across the Midwest visiting bike shops and organizations asking if they would be willing to distribute this free bicycling guide.
"Response on the outside has been incredible," Ordway says. "We thought we'd have enough books for eight months. We didn't get two months down the road and we're out of books. We haven't even touched the Milwaukee or Chicago market yet."
A second printing is in the works and should be available at local bike shops by the time this magazine hits the newsstands. (If copies are not available where you live, call 1-800/927-5339 or 715/538-2311 ext. 201.)
With the book out, Ordway is moving on to another project: mapping out seven more routes.
"This is just the first seven," he says. "Eventually there will be 14 all together and the book will be twice the size."
For Ordway, this project is "an investment of my passion and knowledge. It's important to see this happen in rural areas. We have to save our farms, save our culture. People pedaling bikes can smell, hear, become part of that environment. For the people living there, they see people coming by at a rate of speed that's nonthreatening. It creates a situation that's beneficial for both sides."
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