After 13,000 miles on bike, rider walked down the aisle

CHISHOLM, MINN. - It took Heather Tietje 13,000 miles of bike riding and 11 years of raising money for the Minnesota Chapter of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, but it all paid off:

Her dad, Dave, walked her down the aisle at her wedding in April.

I made Heather's acquaintance Monday, finding her outside her tent near a giant steam-operated water pump on the grounds of the Minnesota Museum of Mining in Chisholm, where hundreds of tents and 1,000 weary bicyclists were strewn among the giant ore buckets, steam engines and 12-foot-tall tires that make a Stonehenge of iron-mining artifacts.

Resting after Day One of the 2008 Star Tribune Ride Across Minnesota, Heather, a behavioral analyst at the security hospital in St. Peter, Minn., was showing a photo album of her honeymoon cruise to Alaska to bicyclist Jodie Stacken, a business analyst from Chaska.

Strangers a decade ago, Heather, 35, and Jodie, 47, are making their 11th weeklong bike ride together, part of a group of riders who call themselves Wheel Women and who are among the stalwarts of the Ride Across Minnesota, now in its 19th year. The two met on the 1998 MS-TRAM.

"We like to have fun, drink a little beer and ride a bike," Heather says, putting the TRAM formula as succinctly as I've ever seen it expressed.

Over the years, the Wheel Women have returned again and again to TRAM to catch up and to make new friends. So when Heather announced that she was engaged to a guy named Jeff, who teaches and coaches high school football in St. Clair, Minn., the Wheel Women went into high gear.

Jeff answered correctly, and proved his worth on last year's TRAM when he and Jodie's husband, Mike, helped pack tents and schlep gear. Jeff was rated so highly that by the time of his April 26 wedding to Heather at St. John's Lutheran Church in Goodhue, Minn., there were four women TRAM riders in the wedding party, one of whom was Jodie.

Baling hay, and making hay

This year, he stayed home to bale hay. But his bride is making hay for the MS Society, and showing off wedding pictures. Her joy is that her dad was able, despite a 37-year struggle with MS, to make it down the aisle, on grit and determination, science and research, and the goodwill of people on wheels.

There may not be a provable direct connection between the TRAM and Heather's wedding happiness. But don't try to tell her that.

On Monday, TRAMmers traveled 61,000 miles (61 miles for each of them) from Grand Rapids to Chisholm. Today, it's a 62-mile roundtrip through the Superior National Forest and the George Washington State Forest, with a stop at McCarthy Beach State Park before returning to Chisholm. Wednesday, it's on to Biwabik. Thursday, it's down to the Lake Superior shore and Two Harbors, with a final leg Friday to Duluth -- a total of 250 miles and more money for a good cause.

"It's hard to fathom," said Julie Hoffman, whose husband, Larry, an electrical engineering professor at Purdue (Ind.) University, is making his 16th TRAM.

When you get off the Mesabi Trail and peer 462 feet down into the open-pit mine -- 7 miles long and covering 8 square miles -- you see million-pound dump trucks that look like toys. "Very impressive," said Larry.

Monday's ride also gave many riders their first encounter with a pasty, the traditional Iron Range meat treat, baked in dough and made to fit in your pocket when you go into the mines for work.

Jim Simonet of River Falls, Wis., learned, while trying a pasty, to be more careful about his choice of headgear. Riding with his wife, Sue, Jim was wearing a wolf head over his bike helmet. A couple of Iron Rangers gave him some good advice.

Rider could get pelted

Well, probably not this week. The grub is good, the people are great, the sun was smiling and 1,000 weary people rested among the rusted relics of the Iron Range Monday night, waiting to climb back in the saddle today.

And Heather Tietje was still choked up. She got to have her dad walk beside her on the biggest day of her life.