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this week’s top ten
First in Northern Michigan: Mud, Sweat and Beers Launches 300-Rider Race May 1
The first major endurance race in northern Michigan since March 2020 is not only on — it’s happening next week. After canceling twice in 2020, the organizers of Mud, Sweat and Beers, a biking race/fundraiser traditionally held in Traverse City in May, made a big change: They decided to move the original, larger race of 1,000 riders to October 2021 and, in its place, launch a brand-new race for May: the MSB300, a 22-mile loop open to pro, elite and sport riders.
“MSB300 not only gives Mt. Holiday [a nonprofit ski area in TC] a much-needed financial boost, it is also a homecoming of sorts for the dedicated mountain bike riders of Michigan,” said race co-director Jim Kalajian, who has overseen the Mud, Sweat and Beers fundraiser for 12 years.
MSB300, sponsored by Short’s Brewing Company, Fox Motors, and McLain Cycle & Fitness, will begin at 9am on Saturday May 1, and will wind through Holiday Hills into the Pere Marquette State Forest, using specially designed trails by the Northern Michigan Mountain Bike Association that blend single track with wider paths.
Riders can sign up by searching MSB300 at runsignup.com. Cost is $70 per rider. All entrants must carry their own nutrition and water. There will be first responders on the trail but no water stations because of COVID restrictions. To learn more, visit www.mudsweatandbeers.com/214/event-info.
bottoms up Good Harbor Vineyards’ Trillium
While you await the annual arrival of the season’s striking vermillion and white wood lilies, you can sate your taste for them with Good Harbor’s ode to their natural brilliance, Trillium. A white wine of impeccable balance — medium sweet, medium dry, medium-priced — the liquid Trillium is, like its forest-floor-born namesake, a Michigan spring standard that shines far too brightly to ever be called wallflower. Initial sips of this Riesling-based blend suggest subtle flavors of nectarine and tangerine; every sip hits all the right mid-palate buttons before washing down in the sharp blaze of a bright acid finish. A super pairing for a peasant-style picnic (think bread, cheese, apples) or a spicy dish of Sichuan anything, Trillium is a flexible wine that’s also reliable — one sure to score with a range of wine drinkers with different preferences. We found ours for $11.69 at Deerings Meat Market, 827 S. Union St., in Traverse City. You can also buy bottles at www.goodharbor.com and/or sip some on site at the longtime family farmed Good Harbor winery, 34 S Manitou Trail, in Lake Leelanau. (231) 866-8031.
Great Lakes, Great Art
Crooked Tree Arts Center’s second visual arts exhibit of the spring season — “GREAT: Reflections on the Great Lakes” — is even better than its name promises. Featuring 48 original works from Michigan, Ohio, and Illinois artists, all reflecting on the seemingly limitless theme of “great,” the juried exhibit is a stirring sight of traditional and conceptual approaches to photography, painting, mixed media drawings, ceramic pieces, and printmaking. If the show itself doesn’t inspire you to capture your own vision of great with pen, brush, or camera, it’ll surely motivate you to reserve some spring time at your favorite Great Lake shore to recapture the sublime feeling these artists so readily convey. Case in point: Debra Howard’s Lake Michigan Nocturne oil painting, above. Runs through June 1 at CTAC Petoskey, 461 E. Mitchell St., (231) 347-4337, www.crookedtree.org
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In the wee hours of a morning in March 1990, a pair of men dressed as Boston police perpetrated one of the greatest crimes of the century, robbing the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum of 13 works of art valued at over a half-billion dollars. Now, 30 years later, the brazen crime remains unsolved, and priceless masterpieces by the likes of Rembrandt and Vermeer remain at large. Offering some compelling theories as to what might have happened and where the art could be is Netflix’s latest true-crime documentary series, This Is a Robbery: The World’s Biggest Art Heist. Featuring juicy interviews with eyewitnesses and investigators, this look into the peculiar and befuddling case identifies several “people of interest” and explains the criminal value of something that is unsellable on the open market. Buried by mobsters? Perhaps a hung on the wall of a faraway palace? Whatever the truth about where these pieces are today, the series’ knack for raising more questions than it answers is what makes it so fascinating.
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