Mile 3757, Rome NY. The rain has us holed up in the motel with me
catching up on the blog while Wes watches football on the television.
Bay City is a very short distance from Midland, Michigan—at least
by car. However, if you travel by
Adventure Cycling map and Wes and Shaun’s remarkable way-losing skills, this
twenty mile auto trip can take more than 4 hours and leave you exhausted and
frustrated.
Getting out of town was the first challenge. The mapmakers hate main streets and direct
paths. Wes and I think we know more than
we really do, so try to create work-arounds to avoid the zigging and zagging of
the prescribed path. Very often, we add
miles, times, and turns to already long paths.
We finally get out of town on the prescribed path which takes us just
downwind of the landfill.
We cross into the country, where we see even more of the
mysterious greens plant. The route is
flat, the traffic moderate, the wind high.
We make reasonable time and are excited when we cross Interstate
75. This is our neighborhood freeway in
Detroit, and a marker of our eastern progress.
Wes and I know Bay City and Saginaw Bay rather well, having visited both
quite a few times. Bay City was one of
the queen cities of the lumber boom. Its
main street has a remarkable collection of Victorian mansions. Its downtown, once derelict, is reviving and
artsy. It has a nice waterfront. The Bay has numerous wetlands and wildlife
refuges. Does the Adventure Cycling trail
go by any of these? No.
After our foolishness of the morning, we thought we should follow
the path as prescribed. Mistake. For reasons unknown, it crossed to the far
northeast of the town, then circled through its most industrial bits on the
western side, then wandered in down-trodden neighborhoods until it exited on a
beat up farm road on the southeast. The
best thing about the route was the section that travelled on the Saginaw River,
where the town has created a bike path around and over the river and amongst
its marshes. We ended up eating at a
worn out workers’ bar on the tracks where the bar food matched the ugliness of
the surroundings and the surliness of the customers.
The wind is blowing and we are travelling in farm country. Along the way, we spot a pumpkin farm setting
up for its first Halloween Hayride. It
is the 20th of September, but we’re thirsty and curious, so stop in
for apple cider and cinnamon donuts (one of the essential tastes of Michigan).
I end up visiting with the enormously fat dwarf goats. They are very pleased to be fed fresh grass
from outside their pen, instead of the handfuls of grain pellets little
children pay $.50 to feed them. I’m
trying to communicate with the chickens, when Wes comes to remind me that we
still have miles to go this late afternoon.
The path takes an odd rails to trails conversion, which is
barely marked and runs a short distance in the midst of fields. It is not far from the tourist haven of
Frankenmuth. Maybe it is the first stage
of a longer project. It is in the midst
of this trail, surrounded by corn and the greens plant, when Wes suddenly
shouts, “Sugar beets! Those are sugar
beets!” Of course they are. Haven’t we been to the Sugar Beet Festival in
Sebawaing just a few miles from Bay City?
Doesn’t Pioneer Sugar appear on every Made in Michigan shelf? Smart as whips, we are.
I have made arrangements for us to stay in the North Bed and
Breakfast in Vassar. It was listed as
one of two choices on our map, but I couldn’t find any other information. When I called, the proprietor answered my
question about available accommodations with a question, “Are you allergic to
cats?” I said no. She said, “Good, because there are cats on
the premises.” I said I thought that was
an advantage. She laughed, and said, “I
can see we are going to get along.” This
was a foretaste of things to come.
Vassar is pretty river town in the north central part of the
Thumb, about 12 miles northwest of Frankenmuth.
Its 19th century brick downtown is intact and moderately
healthy. Its 1920’s movie house is still operating. We make our way to the B & B, following
the numbers. We come to big mansion on
the tallest point in town (maybe for miles), with ancient white pines and
stolid oaks guarding the grounds. We
enter up an almost hidden drive and are immediately astonished. This is a BIG house, built in 1880’s,
elaborate and well maintained.
When our landlady answers the door, two cats run out. She tells us where we can store our bikes and
takes us indoors, where we are confronted with a big cat smell. There are eight cats living on the
premises. They have the run of the place
and she gives us elaborate instructions for dealing with them. She warns us to keep our doors closed unless
we want cats in our bed. She shows us
around the mansion which was built by Townsend North, a nephew of the founders
of the famous college, the local lumber baron, and co-founder of the
village. The house has not been much
updated; its woodwork is a testament to the riches of the local forest. However, there is only one outlet in our
bedroom and it is in the middle of the wall above the sagging, plush sitting
couch.
Just as we are getting ready to leave, her other guests
arrive. They look intriguing. They are in their mid-thirties. He has a shaved head, numerous tattoos, and
big hipster glasses over bulging blue eyes.
She is exceptionally pretty, if fifty pounds overweight, with long curly
hair, and an infectious laugh. She has
golden brown skin and some sort of African ancestry. They tell the landlady that they plan to see
the movie, “The Butler” at the local movie house before going to their
conference tomorrow. That captures our
imagination, as well. As we head out,
the landlady calls out, “Will you please look for a pink sparkly cat collar
when you are going down the stairs? I’ve
looked everywhere in the house.”
The next morning, after enjoying the movie and particularly
Forrest Whittaker’s performance, we were looking forward to talking about it
with the other guests. That conversation
lasted about 2 minutes, because we soon found out little you can tell about
people based on first impressions. They
were fairly newly-wed. She was highly
educated and world travelled, the daughter of an Air Force officer. A strange set of circumstances had her move
to Fort Wayne, Indiana where she met her husband at church. She said, “I was originally dating his
roommate, but…” He interrupts, “He was no good.
I wanted to protect you from him….”
She starts to say something; they stare at each other and let it
drop. He was recently hired at a factory
that makes hard plastic parts for cars after years of looking for work and “taking
any kind of anything I could get.” He
is actually rather shy and tongue-tied for all of his hard edge looks. He stares at his wife admiringly when she
explains something he can’t. She homeschools their son, who is twelve. She says, “We are doing everything we can to
protect him from the evils of the world.
When he sees a woman who is wearing provocative clothes like shorts, we
tell him God wants him to put his eyes down and not look.” As they talk on, it is clear that they are
members of a super-conservative evangelical church. They were attending a conference on religious
home schooling.
Back on the road, we wind through small towns where families
are out watching their children play soccer or full pads pee-wee football. The path takes us to another rails to trails
conversion, where once again we see lots of Baby-boomers on Bikes. It’s nice but a bit wet and muddy. The route leaves the trail, to turn a bit
east and wander towards the lower Thumb and Port Huron. We take our lunch in the tiny town of
Clifford, where we have a raucous conversation.
Two are older women, with beauty parlor hairdos lacquered to their
heads; they are joined by a pink faced young looking 40 year old. It is obvious they know each other and this
place very well. All of us tell stories
of life in Michigan, especially the way the weather has changed over the years. We had just gotten into the more sensitive topic
of politics and the economy. (They were
shocked at the deterioration of Michigan’s commitment to its people and towns) The conversation veered over to the public
accommodations smoking ban.
A young man, accompanying his young daughter and son, had
recently come to the café and announced to all ears that “They had just come
from two soccer games after going hunting this morning and they needed some
food.” The father jumped into the
conversation. “I plumb don’t agree with
the smoking ban. If it’s my business and I’m paying the bills, I have the right
to do what I want in my business.” Wes
comments, “If we go in your restaurant, and you’re smoking, it affects us.” He
almost shouts, “Then you can just leave.
You don’t have to be any place you don’t like.” Both the pink faced fellow and I ask him
about employees in that situation. He
doesn’t answer. Pink face points out, “If
you smoke in your business and it’s against the law, and your employee get sick
from it, you know you would be liable.” The
dad shouts, “I don’t care! I just think there is too much government. If I’m paying the bills, I should get to call
the shots.”
This effectively ends the conversation. Very shortly thereafter, the 70 year old
women and we take our leave.
I have been trying to find a place to stay on the trail for
most of the morning. So far I have not had any luck. We have to go off the route. We end up riding down a crazy busy Michigan 57
(Van Dyke Road) on a Saturday night. Wes
is full of nostalgia because his school is just off Van Dyke 70 miles down the
road. We spend the night in a totally
plastic freeway motel on Interstate 69.
We eat at a “bad food and plenty of it” restaurant nearby, where nearly
every patron is very overweight. Both
Wes and I note that we have seen very few overweight men on the trip thus
far. We have seen a lot since we entered
the (formerly) industrial environs of eastern Michigan.
The next day, we head for the ferry at Marine City. This is the closest we will come to
Detroit. Several friends have asked us
why we don’t go closer. We know if we
get too close, we will be tempted to stop.
Even now, traveling through a part of Michigan we know well, it is still
just strange enough to feel like exploration.
We keep our minds on the oddities of the Thumb and don’t let the
comforts of home entice us.
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