Podcast: Arien Coppock, the ultimate domestique.

Arien Coppock learned to hammer it on a bike while growing up on a farm in South Africa. Stacked with several national championships, she raced as a pro in Europe until the global recession forced almost half of the women's pro teams to close shop. 

Arien, just shy of thirty years old, is well into the subsequent chapters of her cycling career, working with adventure company Duvine and, as of just a few days ago, raising a small family in Italy with her husband, Tom.  

Arien has genuine cycling DNA (her 82 year old grandmother still takes three hour rides!) and her story is an interesting narrative of pushing one's self to the limits, digging even deeper as a domestique, and bridging the gap to become an award-winning cycling guide.

Arien's photo is courtesy of LinkedIn

An uncontested breath of fresh air

My 2017 started with something most people take for granted: a full breath of air. I grew up with asthma then grew out of it in my late teens. In my twenties when I lived in Germany, it returned. Yet again, it waned. This past summer it came back with a vengeance. Making me gasp for air at its worst and giving me eighty percent of a full breath at its best, I battled asthma as I climbed the Dolomites in September only to return home and land a nasty bout of bronchitis on top of the asthma. Will it wane again? 

For the last few days of December in 2016, we left the cold, dry air of Chicago for the warm, humid air of Florida. With each passing day I felt the inflammation recede and the air dash into areas of my lungs that haven't seen fresh air for a long time. I'm hoping asthma leaves me be again as it's done in the past. 

Working on half capacity of air means stairs go slower, speaking is tougher, and a good, solid effort on the bike is usually out of reach. The sound of someone wheezing and hacking for air makes other people nervous, too. I feel gaunt, pale, and blue-lipped like Doc Holliday in the movie Wyatt Earp.  

The medication I've taken over the years is almost as bad as asthma itself. It causes hormonal changes, nightmares, racing heart rates, weight gain and a suppressed immune system. A day in the life on these medications can be like a drug company advertisement - it helps one problem but may cause a gazillion other afflictions only almost as bad as not being able to breathe. Ask a doctor if breathing is right for you. 
 
All kinds of athletes suffer what's called exercise-induced asthma. One particular fella, Bradley Wiggins, has caught flack for taking medications to help him breathe better. Popular opinion assumes he's enhancing his performance, however marginally, with the medications that also suppress his immune system, make him gain weight, and deteriorate his good rest.

Maybe Wiggins was looking for a leg up. Clean racing in the pro peloton definitely has its work cut out for it. What I know is that, without understanding how much of a deficit not being able to breathe properly puts on an athlete, it's irresponsible to judge or punish someone for trying to get a lungs-full of air. In my experience, asthma medication doesn't enhance performance, it makes any performance at all possible. I don't see that conversation happening out there. 

As for my own racing, well, I missed the entirety of the cyclocross season this year.  I'm more cyclist than racer so no one was missing me on the podium, but the 'cross season in Chicago is a great way to cap off the year before the Long Winter sets in. I was bummed not to be out there cheering on my team mates, and snapping my fair share of course tape.

I'm hoping this latest bout with breathing issues continues to wane. Breathing makes me hopeful and when I'm hopeful I plan. When I plan, I execute. What a great way to recalibrate after such a busy and complex 2016 - with the basics. Inhale, then exhale. Simple. Normal. Nothing more, nothing less.

An interview with DeFeet founder Shane Cooper

When Mark Cavendish was growing up in the nineties, the cycling sock he and his buddies craved most was hard to come by in the UK. From its first days, DeFeet socks were well known not just for their performance, but for out of the box design that grabbed the attention of cyclists worldwide.   

Today, DeFeet is a lynchpin in the American-made athletic wear industry. While their product lines have branched out to other parts of the body, such as knee and arm warmers, DeFeet socks continue to be source of truth, where design meets performance meets the road (and, er, gravel). Cav will be happy to know they're also readily available in thirty seven countries. 
 
Shane Cooper and his wife, Hope, cofounded DeFeet in 1992. Shane's father was in the knitting machine business so you could say it runs in the family. The story of DeFeet runs twenty-five years deep, and it's got all the makings of a great business story - with tragedy, triumph, perseverance, innovation, and even a superpower to shed light on how a company like DeFeet continues to rise to the top in a very competitive industry.

Top reads of 2016

My favorite reads this year each earned a spot in my permanent collection. What that really means is I read them all cover to cover and I bore the hell out of others telling them how good they are. They're composed well - I'm a stickler for good writing. They're largely compact, though Raising The Bar meanders a bit (in a good way).  They're all entertaining and packed with wisdom. Except the sausage book. There's no wisdom there save for avoiding, at all costs, a trip to Sweden to eat the Swedish national sausage with shrimp paste. 

1. Raising The Bar

Business isn't binary, yet most business books might have us believe it is. Gary Erickson's generous accounting of his own history entwined with that of his company, Clif Bar & Co., provided the best example I've read to date of a company that finds more value in its journey than its destination. My only complaint might be about the printing quality. I'd gladly pay a few more bucks for a higher fidelity, longer lasting copy of a book I'll keep around for years to come.  

> Raising the Bar: Integrity and Passion in Life and Business: The Story of Clif Bar Inc. | Gary Erickson | 2012

2. Soigneur (00)

The inaugural edition of Soigneur in English - a collection of their best articles and photos, translated into English tops, by far, my list of cycling journals in 2016. This is the only periodical (admittedly it's heftier than a monthly or quarterly pub) that has stood the test of time on my bedside/couch/backpack for reading. To boot, the English language and translation is better than a lot of the native-English journals on shelves today. That's craft, baby. 

> Soigneur Magazine | English issue 00 | 2016

3. The Rider

All the language, sentiment, and leidenschaft in cycling writing, from what I can tell, owes its origins to Tim Krabbé's book, The Rider. It's an incredible tale but what makes it that is Tim's ability to suck the reader into the peloton to share in its tension, comedy, and pain.  For writers, The Rider is a wonderful lesson in brevity and the craft of writing.  

> The Rider | Tim Krabbé | 1978

4. The Wurst of Lucky Peach

I am plant-powered. I'm also sausage-powered. This 40th birthday present from some friends is a great foray into the world of not-always-good sausage. The best thing about the book for me is the writing - a simple premise (sample the world's sausages), simple constraints (write about them!), and boom, travel! I'd like this for cycling routes, please, maybe for my 50th.

> The Wurst of Lucky Peach: A Treasury of Encased Meat | Chris Ying | 2016  

A podcast with Matt Hawkins of Ridge Supply

Matt Hawkins is a busy guy: he's a cyclist, a dad, a husband, a fledgling warehouse fulfillment guru, and perhaps most notably to cyclists like me, he's the creator of one of cycling's most distinctive new brands of cycling apparel, Ridge Supply. 

Here's a fact about Matt and his attention to detail: he has a penchant for great customer support. When we talked, he easily recalled a time I ordered bottles from Ridge Supply and one of them was no good. It took about eight minutes for a new shipment to be headed toward Chicago. Matt's good.

Matt Hawkins, clearly out to catch some miles in that beard. 

This talk goes a bit longer than the others because Matt and I discuss his journey from construction manager to cyclist to guy everyone in US cycling needs to know. There are also a couple of easter eggs - about Marine life, cowboy boots, and the harrowing experience that spun Matt's life in a completely different direction.  

Listen: 

A podcast with Nick Francis from Help Scout

Nick Francis is a calm, collected guy. He's cofounder and CEO at a company called Help Scout, a customer service dashboard used by seven thousand companies around the world.   

My first interaction with Nick was several years ago when the product first came out. It was kinda meta. Nick was providing customer service for his customer service dashboard via his customer service dashboard. Got it? He was helpful, polite, and those first interactions inspired our own approach to customer service for both Kin and DoneDone.

An artisan, hand-crafted reminder to stay, ahem, focused.

Nick and his team have accomplished something few other software companies have: they've kept their product experience simple and refined amidst an increasingly complex feature set. 

I visited Nick in the Help Scout office in Boston, just a few hundred feet from the final resting place of one Benjamin Franklin. 

Listening to my river

I nap. Even if I've had a good night's sleep, I still try to sneak a ten or fifteen minute escape in each day. At my best I can fall asleep inside of two to three minutes. I can channel my nap laser in a car and sleep while my wife runs in to grab a coffee. I'm that good.

A quick nap is much different than a good night's sleep. It's usually five or so minutes of calming my thoughts, five or so minutes of actual sleep, then the best part: five or more minutes of listening to my river.

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

- The Peace of Wild Things, by Wendell Berry

Usually awoken rudely by my own snort or uncontrolled head nod, I immediately sink myself, semi-conscious, back into half-sleep and listen to the internal systems that make me run: my body, my critical thought, my creativity. Together, they're my river. 

I isolate small aches and pains and explore them. I do abstract fly-overs of large problems I may be working through at my company. It's common for completely obvious ideas (writing, work, riding, etc.) to appear as serenely as a deer walking up to a stream to get a sip of water - just like this piece I'm writing now.

A quick daily nap is the only way to check in with myself completely and totally. The river is my surest route to understanding myself right here and right now. 

A podcast with Kevin Wolfson of Firefly Bicycles

In this episode I speak with Kevin Wolfson, cofounder of Firefly Bicycles - makers of beautiful, meticulously designed custom bikes. Kevin leads the company's frame design and customer experience. 

Custom frame building in America is growing as avid cyclists seek deeper connections to the bikes they ride and the companies who make them. One company leading the charge is Firefly Bicycles in Boston. They're small, dialed-in, and building custom bikes for cyclists around the world.  

Photo courtesy of Firefly Bicycles

For people like me who eat, sleep, and breathe cycling, riding a bike that was custom-built for our body (I'm gangly!) and riding style is a cycling experience superior to any other. Mass produced bikes aren't horrible, it's just that they're designed for a market of people generally sized like you. A custom frame is uniquely designed, cut, welded, and built for you. It's the closest thing to fitting like a glove as you can get in a bicycle.

A podcast with Shawn Liu of Harvest

Starting a business is eerily similar to racing cyclocross. Crashes happen early in fits of emotion, sweat, and elbows. If we've trained well and have a bit of luck, we steer through the commotion of the start and settle into a pace, recalling the contract we made with ourselves to do the best we can. There are chases to bridge to those better than us. There are the small wins of outmaneuvering those who fall short of our own abilities. There's the rush of a good finish and the aftermath of wheezing and adrenaline.  There is "I want more."  

The pro, Shawn Liu. 

In LORE's inaugural podcast, I speak with co-founder Shawn Liu of Harvest, a ten year old software business that more than forty thousand organizations use to manage billions of dollars in time and invoices.  Shawn implies they fell into the business - lucky that other companies had the same needs they did when they built their software. Shawn's a humble guy, but the more I hold business up to the light alongside bike racing, the more I realize he's just a well-seasoned pro. He's a cool-headed entrepreneur with healthy doses of curiosity and modesty. He's got a game face earned from ten years of seeing his own company grow because of hard work and throwing a few elbows here and there.   

An ode to passion

For as long as I can remember, I've been blindingly passionate about one thing or another. From reptiles to music, programming to business, writing to cycling, something has always dominated my thoughts. Reptiles? Snakes in particular. Ask me about the diminutive left lung of the common boa constrictor. I dare you.

Back in the early 2000's when Flash 5 came out, the entirety of the human race disappeared from my focus. I sat tethered to my computer in a dark apartment in Germany, my attention fixed on enriching the way we interact with the world wide web. My passion brought ninety hour work weeks, vertigo, and dinners of powdered soup mix. It ultimately led to the founding of a company called We Are Mammoth. 

Then there's the bike. I was suffering from a chronic running injury and my brother suggested cycling as a replacement. A couple of months in, my wife grew concerned about my quick-growing obsession with a machine that carries me miles away from home. She was right to worry. I get lost, cold, and wet. I'm somewhere foreign. I'm screwed. I'm in love. 

Of all my fixations past and present it's the bicycle that best expresses passion to me: a pursuit so enveloping I pay no regard to the eventuality of returning home. Even when I'm not riding it, the bicycle hollers out at me, "psssst, let's learn a bit about bottom bracket standards, shall we? Come on, no one's watching."  

Flying blind isn't always a good thing. My passions lean toward obsessive. Wielded in the name of progress and learning, that's a force for good. Letting them close the door on other important parts of life though, like family and recuperation, has led to burn out and not just a few heavy discussions with my (patient) wife. Since my passions inevitably lead to career decisions, I've learned to leave that door cracked open to ensure I don't lock out the people who are dependent on my success - family, friends, employees. In cycling parlance, I've learned to get home on time.      

Strip away the form that my passions have given me over the years, and you're left with little more than a fleshy human iPhone case. My passion emboldened me to cross the ocean and be with the love of my life. It directed me to cofound companies that now employ people in eighteen states. Perhaps unnoteworthy to readers who've never heard a bicycle speak, my passion has led me to acquire troves of knowledge on resting heart rates, anti-inflammatory foods, Italian topography, and ultimately it's led to LORE itself. With forty years of hindsight to look back on, it's fair to say I have more adventures ahead, and I'm not afraid of an occasional tangle with a one-lunged snake. 

The Dolomites: What goes up?

During the first day of cycling the Dolomites, a fellow rider named Jerry asked, "How does a guy from the midwest prepare for something like this?" The answer goes something like this. 

Eight months ago my buddy Richard Banfield asked what my cycling goals for the year were. I told him I was turning forty and had a couple of regional road events I was building up to. Unimpressed he replied, "Ok, but do you want to join me on a trip to the Dolomites in September?" Hell yes.

The trip, hosted by a stellar cycling adventure company called Duvine, would be six consecutive days of hard riding. There'd be a chef, gorgeous hotels, guides, and we'd ride from the center of northern Italy eastward and upward through the Dolomites into Slovenia. It would be the opposite of my cycling terrain in Chicago. It would lay waste to my puny legs. There'd be prosciutto at every meal.

Yours truly winding up Passo di Gavia. Photo credit: Chris Case

Training began with a few mutual words of encouragement between Richard and I, such as "we're f*$#ed" and "you're f*$#ed" and "I'm f*$#ed." I dug into a regimen aimed at growing my thighs into twitchy, 24-inch lightning bolt cannons. I worked in several 3-4 week blocks consisting mostly of sustained tempo and threshold efforts of up to one hour because, after all, how high could these hills of Italy be? I B-raced a couple gravel grinders and A-raced a summer road event called Horribly Hilly Hundred. I spent five weeks in southern Germany pushing through some pretty gnarly solo rides.

I rested well, I ate well, and did my best interpretation of yoga for five months.  My elastic-cuffed buffet pants started feeling constrictive in the calf area. My fitness graphs looked like the mountains I'd be climbing in September though it should be noted that my cannons never fired a single lightening bolt. 

Italy. It goes up. 

Fast forward to mid-September. We met in Tirano, Italy on a Sunday morning kitted up and ready to be shuttled to our bikes at the head of our first ride. There were ten guests in addition to Chris Case, the managing editor of VeloNews magazine, NYC chef Seamus Mullen, and the charismatic, french-slinging founder of Duvine, Andy Levine. The tour crew consisted of four guides, two of whom would ride with the group, the other two who would shuttle our belongings in vans from point A to B. We started riding and by riding I mean going upwards. 

A climb up Stelvio earns you a snowball fight. 

I'll take a moment to describe the terrain we ride on in Chicago and I'll do so with brevity: flat. Ride fifty miles in any direction and you'll only see a thousand or so feet of cumulative topography. 

The northern regions of Italy are dramatically different. Rides begin in lush valleys and summit well above the tree line. Descents wind through pastural highlands and conclude in foggy, primeval forests. A climb up Stelvio, where we slipped on ice and lobbed a snowball or two, dropped us into the Adige river valley just an hour later to ride through miles of apple orchards and hot sun. Every ride required handfuls of brakes to pause mid-descent and soak it all up. The panorama feature on an iPhone's camera? Italy's Dolomites are why it's there.

A day in the life of a 'stache doper.

One afternoon's ride concluded a little earlier than usual and it just so happened there was a sunny yard to sit and drink beer in after getting cleaned up at the hotel. That got us talking. Our ride ended early because we'd decided not to climb Monte Zoncolan, one of Italy's most notorious climbs, at the conclusion of an already big day because 1) our legs were shredded and 2) we had no mustaches. Upon inspection of the matter it was agreed that regardless of weariness Zoncolan (pronounced "bazonk-a-donk") would be ascended the following morning and it'd best be done with mustaches.

The 'staches of Monte Zoncolan. Photo credit: Richard Bandfield

Now. If you wanna see famous professional cyclists whinnying their way up Monte Zoncolan, an Italian hero named Marco Pantani almost made it look manageable. The ten kilometer beast offers no refuge save for a few meters of arguably flat road in the switchbacks where, comically, memorial placards of cycling legends are placed as if to say "Il Pirate never caught his breath here, ninny." 

It looks peaceful, but Monte Zoncolan carved a crater into my self-esteem. 

I recall enjoying the mustache before Zoncolan and at the top of Zoncolan but not during Zoncolan - that time was spent applying enough weight to my front wheel to keep from flipping over backwards, and battling the bike's impulse to direct me into the forest for some sweet, sweet sleep. 

Mothers everywhere will hate this statement.

I'll never give birth but I've seen it happen three times which qualifies me to say something that may likely result in a mother smacking the back of my head. During the miraculous experience of birth, where there is screaming and blood everywhere and a lot of pain, there are also several onlookers present, usually holding cups filled with crushed ice, to cheer on the poor woman as she endures her miracle. 

The torture tunnels of Monte Zoncolan.

If you've only witnessed a woman giving birth on a movie screen you should know that the screams, such as "Get the f*&k outta my face oh my god blagghhhhhh..." also happen in real life. The thing is there's only so much support nurses and spouses can contribute to the messy adventure. 

My point here of course is that there was nobody else on the planet to propel me up those mountains. While there was no blood spilled, there was wailing and much gnashing of teeth. Now to the slapping part: I regrettably posit that climbing Zoncolan is somewhat similar to giving birth.

This is a good moment to pause and publicly apologize to Goretti, one of our faithful guides, for disagreeing with her on the side of Zoncolan when she was merely suggesting that 'up' was still up and, indeed, not the opposite of up which was my mind's suggested direction of travel at the moment of the encounter. 

Your passport, please.

Cycling up Italy's mountains reminded me that the biggest battle in cycling often isn't in the legs, rather somewhere above the shoulders. As the week's climbs cruelly stretched out and upward in their final km's, so did the idea that I could simply stop pedaling and head for the nearest van. What's the point right? The point is it's raw, singular, beautiful, and absolutely amazing and quitting isn't an option. 

Photo credit: Richard Banfield

The opportunity to ride Italy's most famous climbs is a passport of sorts to other expanses of the world best experienced by bike. It'd be a damn shame to say this was a once in a lifetime experience. I'll see you again, Zoncolan. 

If you're interested in the routes, stats, and perhaps even feeling good about yourself cuz you could do this all faster, head over to my Strava profile and dig into the week's rides, from September 18 - September 24, 2016.

Finally, a very special thank you to friend and mountain goat, Richard Banfield, for inviting me on this trip.

Going solo

Misery loves company but it doesn't really need it. I found that out this summer over the course of a thousand plus miles of beautiful, challenging and lonely riding in Germany. There were no groups, no brothers, no teams. Just me, my road bike, and the occasional dairy cow. 

Riding hard on my own worked a whole different set of mental muscles that are great tools to have in business, life, and even group riding. It's made me a tougher, more self-dependent rider who can lay down 300 TSS without saying a word to anybody else. 

Southern Germany is full of hills and windy farm roads which, if you're not careful, will carry you straight into another country. I sought out the hilliest rides I could to prepare for the biggest week of my cycling year: a trip from the west end of the Dolomites to its eastern most descent into Slovenia. The rides were typically between 50 and 80 miles with between 4-6k of climbing. There was gravel. There was shouldering of the bike up treacherous forest paths which RideWithGPS said were probably ok to ride a bike on. It was delicious, and most rides were between 200-300 TSS. To put that in perspective, the Horribly Hilly Hundred (my mid-year goal) was 400 TSS and our weekly morning group ride is about 150 TSS.  

At first it was lonely. I felt like an outsider - no group to ride with. No one to heckle at. Every set of (German!) eyeballs staring at me as if to say "what eeez you doing hea!" 

Over the weeks though, I became Solo Man. I spent less time being alone and instead focused on solid pacing and endurance. I played music in my head (I can do that) and could even do some writing and work-related thinking free from the reach of the internet and family. 

There were times I wasn't sure I'd actually make it. I developed a mean bout of asthma while over there - I managed to get some medicine, but not before making a few trips between cities. Riding over a smallish mountain range called the Swäbish Albs inevitably meant winds reversed themselves. Sometimes it was sunny and warm on one side, and wet and foreboding on the other.   I routed a trip up to the top of a mountain that had no roads so my cleats became shovels, and up I went w/ the bike in hand.  

So what did it all get me? Analytically, it made me faster. I've ridden from southern Michigan to Chicago two times this year - once before Germany, and once afterward. The difference is clear: a half hour saved (even with more stops), a smaller TSS (less effort), and my state of mind upon arrival was one of conquest rather than defeat. Mentally, it built my sense of resolve. I depend on myself and, at the risk of sounding insane, I even get along with myself out there by putting my mind and body to work. 

My trip to the Dolomites isn't going to be solo. I'll be with a group and support train, but given its six days climbing up mountains, the group may as well be the voices in my head which, after this summer, are definitely playing more cowbell and less funeral march these days.  

Letting things simmer.

As a cyclist who writes, or a writer who cycles, or a dad who writes and cycles, I've learned a thing or two about the hardest part of any of the above: letting things simmer. 

As a cyclist, I possess a primordial urge to slay the dragon on every ride. Sitting in or taking a day off the bike to recover doesn't come easily despite the fact that rest clearly leads to more productive, enjoyable training over the long term. Resting is quite simply one of the hardest parts of training.  

Writing requires a lot of subjectivity to make it worth anything. In subjectivity comes, naturally, an absence of objectivity. Any writing that hasn't been evaluated objectively has a thee gazillion percent higher risk of being sloppy, insular, misleading, and terribly-written. As such, letting it simmer for a day or two allows the writer to revisit the work and, if it's still hot like a rocket, ship it. More often than not, the time away reveals obvious needs for improvement. 

As a parent, I'd like my kids to be quick and tidy about losing a bad habit, learning their math facts, or not eating like they've just returned from a two-year stint on a desert island. Alas, that extra deep breath and conscious choice to do absolutely nothing about it pays dividends far beyond the more immediate style of laying down the law, which all too often is parent-speak for "wasting one's breath".

I've tricked myself into thinking that every result is better when its attacked with militant urgency. Call me older and/or wiser though because patience has seeped into my system, and I'm realizing the big dividends it pays. To get all those rich textures and flavors, baby, I gotta let it simmer.

That one f'n block.

Every time. Every. Single. Time. On my way to the lakefront from home, I ride down this long block of Argyle street and, regardless of time of day, there is always someone doing something half-assed with their car. This is "that one f'n block." 

They might be backing their car up the f'n block, window down, smoking a cig, yelling at a subordinate over speaker phone. Maybe it's a simple, but really poorly executed u-turn on a f'n block that's too narrow for that. Maybe it's two cars deciding to do both of the preceding ass-hatting simultaneously. More than any other stretch in my commute or regular rides, this f'n block never fails to deliver. It's a bummer too, cuz it's a slight descent with some speed bumps to hop. 

Over time though and in stark contrast to how a cyclist might otherwise react to aforementioned jackassery (spitting fire, throwing boulders, etc.), I've become enchanted by the very real possibility that this f'n block exists in a different dimension. Like a visitor from another world, I take my time, curiosity peaked, ready to thumbs-up any driver doing anything on the far side of logical. This is that block, after all. That f'n block. 

The Strade Bianche of Illinois

At about the half way mark of the 60 mile jaunt through this stretch of Illinois farmland, I asked "sure is beautiful out here, isn't it?" Tom who is from Louisiana replied, "um, no not really."

The thing about this patch of the midwest is it's flat and gratuitous. Depending on one's origins, those two qualities can be the absolute worst, or in my case, something stark, beautiful and hopeful. Stark because, well, there's really not much variety - it's fifty miles of view in any direction composed of ten percent land and 90 percent sky. There are occasionally tornadoes. It's beautiful for its simplicity: land, sky, and farm houses. It's a composition of nature being shepherded by man. It's hopeful because this landscape contains some of the most fertile soil in the world. It feeds nations. It fuels dreams - like Tom's dream of finishing the sixty miles and eating a burger, or the dreams of midwest-borne people itching to get away and explore the expanses of the rest of the world.

I won't defend this area as being amongst the most breathtakingly beautiful in the world. It inspires me in the same way that first view of the Swiss Alps do, though. There is hard work, generations of farmers, America's progress, and the inevitable, violent storms all there to be appreciated if one just takes a moment to dig into why it's considered part of the country's Heartland.