A subzero winter storm spells a handful of things for your average Northeast Ohioan. Plans to spend days indoors. Stocking up on water and snacks, making sure the furnace is in good shape and shovels and salt are on hand. Work from home. Maybe don’t even leave the couch.
But not for Eric McKinney.
By the time Cleveland temps plunged into the single digits late last year, McKinney, a Painesville father-of-three, shuffled into the apogee of his own winter plans: be the first recorded person in the world to bike on all five Great Lakes.
Our lakes have always been beacons for daredevils and thrill seekers. They attract solo kayakers, marathon swimmers, ice fisherman. They’ve even hosted Clevelander Dave Voelker, in 1978, who treaded solo across a frozen Lake Erie all the way to Canada.
But no cyclists, as far as he could tell.
And McKinney sensed this when, last year, he rode a trail out to the Fairport Harbor Lighthouse in Mentor. “When I looked around me, everything just seemed like uncharted, icy wilderness that was just there,” McKinney said. “I really started wondering, ‘Like, how far could I go with this?”
He went home and pulled up Google. No one, he found, had traversed the ice like he figured he could. “I thought, ‘Hey, could this be done?’” he said. “Not only Lake Erie, but all of the Great Lakes?’”
To actually ride and survive a bike trek over a body of water relies on both surface sturdiness and knowledge of where actually to tread without, of course, falling in. Last February, the Coast Guard was called to rescue four Clevelanders who fell into Lake Erie. All due to, McKinney knew, misjudgment of the ice.
And then there was actually convincing his wife it was worth the gamble. McKinney, who spent 11 years in the Army and competed regularly in cyclist races, leaned heavily on preparation. He outfitted his Trek 930 with studded ice tires. He rigged a milk crate on back and filled it with a space blanket, ice picks, signaling mirrors, Hot Hands and a flotation device.
Yet, he knew he was improvising. “This is something that’s never been done before,” McKinney said in a November 21 video. “And there’s no blueprint to follow.”
On January 3, after a month of cold plunges and tire tests, McKinney drove to Bay City, Michigan, to bike four miles across Lake Huron to Shelter Island. He had used NOAA to fine-tune his route, avoiding thin areas afflicted by shipping channels or warmer currents.
The ride turned out surprisingly simple, with McKinney dodging staggered ice sheets, avoiding bumpy or gliding sections either tundra-like or crystal-clear.
“That being said, ice fishermen fall through the ice all the time,” McKinney narrates in the recording, edited with cinematic music that calls to mind Lord of the Rings, his red beard is laden with icicles.
Therein began both a self-test and experiment for others to learn from. In Green Bay, he traversed thin sheets—with Lake Michigan’s current rolling underneath—through -16°F with a blistering windchill. He dodged cracks and windswept ridges on Lake Superior (and froze his GoPro). And, riding to Lake Ontario’s Cherry Island, outside of Chaumont, New York, McKinney snapped his bike chain and had to walk his bike back to shore.
“That’s what this is all about,” McKinney said, pushing his bike. “Can you find a way to get it done when everything’s working against you?”
His ride January 24 might’ve been the most scenic. He arrived Saturday morning to ride four miles from the Miller’s Ferry in Port Clinton to the southern edge of Put-in-Bay. He was immediately met with fields of choppy shards, then, a minutes later, a sheet of indecipherable ice.
McKinney spotted a coyote hunting birds in the distance just as the ice began groaning under his feet.
“It was otherworldly,” he told Scene. “It’s an awe-inspiring place to be riding. It’s almost like humans aren’t even meant to be there.” McKinney played it safe; he turned back.
As far as validating his ride, McKinney isn’t really sure where to take his success other than, first of all, relishing in it as a whopping personal feat. He isn’t leaving out ice biking altogether; after all, Lake Erie, being the shallowest of the Great Lakes, is the only one that freezes over entirely.
But for now, McKinney is just the Army vet cyclist guy who did a pretty cool thing.
And no, he’s not completely insane.
“Everything I do is just try, try to push the edge, you know?” he said. “And just kind of take something that people think is ordinary and turning it into adventure.”
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