T+109: Pet Cars, Lawn Fetishes, and Muer Fish Dinners

Mile 3883, NORTH CREEK, NY:  We are on the shores of the Hudson River, and hope to pass into Vermont tomorrow.  The round of bad weather has lifted; we have been traveling through the beautiful and nearly empty Adirondacks.  We have been re-building our mountain legs, and will need them as we go through Vermont and New Hampshire over the next few days.  The days are getting shorter, as are the miles we need to cover to get to Portland, Maine.

 

When we leave Imlay City, we travel on a back road to the small town of Capac, where we plan to cross I-69 and enter Southeast Michigan.  As we are cycling along, we begin to be passed by a large number of gleaming cars of all ages.  Not only are there restored Model T’s, there are also coupes from the 1930’s which have been turned into hot rods.  One is painted brilliant orange and decorated with purple flames.  There are woody station wagons from the late 40’s.  There are WWII Willy’s Jeeps, 1967 Impalas, 1965 Mustangs and hot pink Thunderbirds. There are Ramblers, and 57 Chevy sedans and Edsels. There is a 1975 Ford truck just like the one we owned when we moved to Detroit.  There are antique firetrucks and American cars and trucks of every conceivable year and make.  About 75 percent are lovingly and historically restored.  The rest are customized in some fashion.

We cycle through the town and there is an army of men directing traffic and closing streets.  Even though the car show had not yet begun, we saw many hundreds of vehicles parked and moving through town.   The drivers were nearly as diverse as their cars.  Certainly many were middle-aged and older white males, but there were also young men and women, people of color, couples, and families.   The cars were almost exclusively American made.  We did see one brave young hipster driving an early 60’s Mercedes-Benz.  Every single car was gleaming and polished.  Where they were parked, they often had their hoods lifted to show spotless, often chrome enhanced engines.   We are biking through a sea of pet cars, and stick out like sore thumbs.  These are not cars as a tool of transportation, but cars as objects of love and creativity.  These are hobbies and obsessions.  I puzzle about the dedication it takes to bring a 1937 Packard back to life.  Just finding the replacement parts must take hours and hours and tons of resources.  Even as we leave town via a back road, we still pass cars making their way to this event.   I later read that this little town of 2000 hosted 1500 cars at this event.

As we move across the landscape, we see a land use we have seen only rarely in this journey.  All throughout Southeast Michigan, we see houses with gigantic lawns, sometimes of many acres.  It is not unusual to see a house surrounded by a sea of featureless grass.  Very often, there are not even trees or ornamental plantings.  Because we are traveling on a Sunday, we see lots of people out tending these lawns with their riding lawnmowers.   We wonder, “What is the appeal of these very man-made, labor intensive mono-cultures?”   My guess is that these lawns are the anti-farm.  They prove that the owners do not have to depend on the land to provide them a living.  Also, lawn doesn’t just happen: it requires constant intervention and specialized tools.   Lawns are a metaphor for the dominance of the earth…and access to discretionary funds…and social isolation.   Because giant lawns are not productive, they are fetishes, imbued with power and meaning which makes their high costs seem worthy expenses. 

We follow the Belle River down to its meeting with the St. Clair River.  This is a landscape of large weeping willows and cottonwoods, interspersed with marshes.  Many of these marshes are inundated with phragmites, the invasive reed that can grow to 8 feet tall.  Where the water is further from the surface, there are big stands of oaks and hickories.  We cross the Old Gratiot road and feel positively sentimental.  We wind in and out of little towns and are tickled when we enter Macomb County.   We have wandered these environs quite a bit; they are a source of storytelling and reminiscence. (Remember that giant hill at Wahlberg’s Corners where we missed the turn to the Blue Water Bridge?  Remember the time we went walking in Algonac and all the canals were frozen?)

A cycling club from Mount Clemens, mostly on tandems, comes rolling by.  One pair slows down immensely to talk to us.  In mere seconds, the rest of the group is out of sight.  They are young-looking and fit 40-somethings.  They were surprised that we had come all the way across the country, but asked, “How did you find the time?”  Wes hollers, “I’m retired!”  The man says, “I guess we have a long wait ahead of us then.”  They wish us luck, wave good-bye and are gone in an instant.

Not for the first time, Wes and I wonder about the equipment we are riding.  A good road bike, equipped for touring, but not overloaded, can easily manage an average speed of about 12-15 miles an hour.  An excellent road bike without a load zips along at 18 miles an hour.  A tandem is faster yet.  Here we are, plugging along on heavy, slow bikes.  Now that we are pretty fit, we average 10-11 miles an hour.  Throw in challenging terrain, and our average rate goes down to 8 miles an hour.  Throw in our rotten state of fitness when we began and it is easy to see why we are still in Michigan on September 22.

When we talk to other cyclists, riding 70 miles a day is pretty standard.  We manage about 50.  There are some who ride 100 miles a day, though that strikes me as over the top.  Wes’ steel frame mountain bike Raleigh from the 1980’s is a relic.  My late 90’s mixte Trek is somewhat better.  I run the math in my head: how much further along would we be if we could average just 2 miles more an hour.  We are on the bikes a minimum of six hours daily, sometimes more.  Two more miles an hour would means that we could be 800 miles further along.   I tell Wes I am going to buy a fast road bike when I get off this trip.  He says, “Me too.”   About 30 minutes later, we ride past the bike club again.  They are in the parking lot to the St. Clair High School, off their bikes and getting ready to disperse.  We wave as we go by, and hope they notice that we may be slow, but we get there just the same.

We are excited to go into Canada and have looked for a motel near the Marine City ferry.  The closest bed and breakfast refers us up the road to the Blue Water Inn, which has an address in St. Clair, but is actually four miles up the river.  We are cranky when we get there, but our irritation soon turns to joy.  The room are newly renovated.  Unlike the kitsch filled bed and breakfasts or the generic plastic motels that have been our standard fare, these rooms are modern and urban and elegant.  We are the very end of the hotel and have a fantastic view of the river, though constant noise from the fans from the restaurant below. 

We have a delicious fish dinner at a River Crab, a Chuck Muer restaurant, watching the big ships move up and down the shipping channels of the St. Clair river.  We had hoped some friends could join us at this “pretty close to Detroit” moment, but we couldn’t give enough advance notice, so dined alone.   However, we have discovered a wonderful getaway just 50 miles from home which we will love to share with loved ones upon our return.

The next morning, we are ebullient as we make our way down the river path (another wonderful Michigan trail) to Marine City.  We have time to stop for lattes before we are one of two customers on the 10 minute ride across the river to Canada.   It has been fun and funny to be tourists in our own backyard, but we are anxious to see what other surprises await us as we enter that not-so-far, but still quite foreign, north shore of Lake Erie.

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Posted from North Creek, NY