Iron Belle: Days 3-6

Recovery

Day 3 June 30, 2025, Miles 52-58

Rochester: After breakfast, it is clear we are not going anywhere today.  We are still sore and exhausted.  We will extend our stay.

A Lyft quickly returns us to our bikes. The now despised Google map with bicycle routes highlighted offers to return us to the Clinton River path.  I find the State of Michigan Iron Belle website and discover the trail is closed.  We would have had another Swamp Debacle had we gone that way. 

Instead, we zip around on paved roads and are back to our hotel just as the skies open.

At the front desk, we are informed that our room is scheduled for maintenance.  We will have to move.  Well, drag.

Until we open the door to the offered room: nearly twice the size with a river view.  We sleep for hours in the big king bed and only rouse ourselves to dinner on the veranda overlooking the stream, where one of the big trees has fallen during the storm.

Thank God we had the sense to stay.

 

We have it figured out… until we don’t.

Day 4, July 1, 2025, Miles 58-72

Lake Orion: The ride along the Paint Creek trail is lovely, but we could hardly move slowly.  I blame sore muscles for the strain I am feeling.  But when the bike does not accelerate down a small hill, I realize the problem is not me. All the jamming and cramming of the bikes has messed up my back brake and it is dragging along the rim.

I release the brake, so now have no back brakes at all.  Thank goodness this is a rails to trails conversion—one of the first in the nation—along the old Michigan Central rail line.  Route markers proudly proclaim 38 miles from its origin adjacent to the restored station. 

Wes is plodding along.  At every intersection, I wait- forever it seems—to see his bright orange shirt telling me he is still on the path.  But oh-so-slowly. 

When we pop out into the hot noon sun and screaming Telegraph Hwy traffic, Wes is panting.  “I can’t go anymore.”   We have only come 9 miles.

“Well, let’s go do our laundry and figure out what to do.”

Wes goes north; I go south.  Frantic phone calls later, “where the hell are you?”

At the somewhat disheveled laundromat, the skinny grey-haired attendant, is pleased to see Heidi and asks us three times to make sure she gets water, but she cannot let her in the facility.  That leaves Wes sitting on a bench outside as the shade slowly leaves and the temperature rises. 

I wash the mud and stains from the swamp debacle and try to find lodging.   Except one Red Roof Inn 3 miles south, the rest are 15 miles south in Auburn Hills.  I make the reservation. 

Wes pleads, can we find someplace to wait out of the sun?  Sure, I will go the Meijers just down the street, replace my sunglasses that the swamp ate, and get Heidi some food.  I leave dog, Wes and bike on a bench to foray to Meijers. 

No sunglasses.  The clerk tells me, “We don’t get all the stuff the big stores have.”  But I do get some food for tonight, return to the bench, where Wes pronounces he cannot possibly ride another 3 miles. 

Ok.  I try the Lyft gambit again.  A ride will come in 30 minutes.  Whoops.  The driver declined.   The app searches and searches for another driver and I see all sorts of cars circling around Auburn Hills.  We wait; it looks.  We eat our dinner sitting on the bench.  We wait some more.

“C’mon Wes” I cajole.  “It’s only 3 miles.  Think of it 16,000 feet.”  Nope.

We wait some more.  It is now five pm, hotter and louder than ever.

“No driver is coming.  We must bike it.”

And we do.  The dog trots alongside me until her tongue hangs out.  But it’s more down than up and we are there before 6.   To our delight, there’s a family friendly bar and grill just next door.

Red Roof Inn (and Suites!) is creepy, well used and none too clean.  In the narrow corridor, we pass numerous rooms that are propped open on the external bolt.  At the very end of the hall, we enter a dank, dark, sweltering room with two queen beds.  Wes immediately turns on the rattling and noisy air-conditioning which spews a pitiful stream of semi-cool air.

Wait.  I requested a king room.  Wes rolls his eyes at me as I announce I am going to see about changing rooms.   The tattooed sports guy at the desk apologizes. “All the king rooms are out of commission cause the motel got hit by lightning, and satellite and media is out.”

Back to the room, a quick hose-off and over to the bar for a quick beer and big salad which our bodies thanks us for.  At the room, I conk out while Wes turns on the television to find out it doesn’t work.  The manager drags another television in from who knows where.  It works until it doesn’t.

I am awakened at 1am by Heidi, who needs to go outside.  The motel is humming with activity.  One mom with three young daughters is cleaning (out?) their room.  There are drinkers lurking on the stairs, noise and hubbub from rooms up and down the halls.  Back in the room, I try to sleep on the hot bed, but cannot. 

I am worried about finding a place to stay for tomorrow in Oxford.  There is nothing.  Expensive bed and breakfasts that don’t take dogs.  A few airbnb’s that are not available.  Not a single commercial chain.

Anxious, I rejoin WarmShowers, a hospitality app for touring bicyclists which provides housing in private residences.  I fill out the tour profile and provide photos of Heidi and Wes and I, hoping to make us look appealing to convivial hosts.  At nearly 2am, I spot a host in Oxford.  Andy KyongHo Chang, who has cycled across Michigan and walked the Camino de Santiago.  This looks promising.

At 2am, I make the request.  Too worried to sleep, I again the dog out at 3am, only to encounter a drunken young couple wobbling down the hall.  When I return with the dog, he is wobbling back down the hall with an ice bucket.  I finally fall asleep around 4am.

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A Touch of Grace

Day 5, July 2, 2025, Miles 72-86

St. Augustine Monastery: Was wakes me at 6, “We have to go before the sun starts beating.”  Bad coffee and the rest of yesterday’s lunch serves as breakfast, and we are out into the cool morning.  Telegraph Road is mercifully quiet as we push our bikes back up to the trail. 

We ride past lakes and ponds on this cool blue morning.  Before long, we join the Polly-Ann, another beautiful rails to trails conversion skirting woods and marsh.  Although Wes is still slow, he is in good spirits.  I wait for him at every crossroads.   He can hardly wait to get a latte in Oxford.  Mr. Coffee has been without his fix since we left Detroit. 

At the coffee shop, I discover there’s a bike shop a few blocks away.  I leave Wes happily nursing his lavender latte while I go to get my brakes fixed.  At Oxford Bikes, I am met by two men, one of whom is tall and athletic, about my age.  I tell him I popped by brakes because they were rubbing.  He sees the brake is not touching the rim, and says straight-faced, “You know they won’t work that way.”

This proves to be the first of constant stream of jokes from Mike, who asserts, “I’m not really here.  This is my day off.”  He’s agog that I am actively on tour and decides to fix the brakes and do a full check without asking us to come back.  He puts my bike, shorn of the trailer and panniers, on a service rack conveniently attached to a tree outside the shop.

Then he starts tsk, tsk, tsking.  “Have you been have trouble with your back derailleur?”

It has been pretty clunky, I admit.

“It shouldn’t even be working.  It’s mis-threaded and the casing is broken.  You’re not leaving this shop like this.”

As we visit and joke, I learn that Mike is a retired computer specialist who had been working on AI since its inception.  He works part-time at the bike shop as a hobby.  We remember the first days of using computers with punch cards and COBOL.  He laughs when I told him about trying to put a graph in my dissertation.  In 1985, that meant specifying connections between individual pixels on the page using commands like DOTAT and LINETO. 

While waiting for the repairs, I check and re-check WarmShowers, growing increasingly anxious.  If this doesn’t turn out, we will be without a bed tonight.  Right as Mike is smoothing and adjusting the gear shift, I get a text from Andy.  We are welcome to come to St. Augustine’s House, three miles east of Oxford.  What a relief!

Finished with his machinations, Mike plops the bike down in front of me, “Tell me if this is gooder.”

It is much gooder.  Smooth shifting, sharp breaking, fun biking.  Huzzah!

Inside the shop, a constant stream of people are buying e-bikes.  (One couple our age bought 100 pound behemoths, more motorbike than bike.  She looked bemused, but her husband insisted.)

I buy new sunglasses to replace the clips lost to the swamp, a bell for Wes’ bike and a brake and derailleur job on the spot.  Mike insists I take extra brake and derailleur cable.  ‘Have you got extra tubes?”  I don’t, but we do have patch kits and we know how to use them.  I do buy an extra tube for Wes’ trailer which seems to have a damaged stem and loses air consistently.  We had great fun pumping the flat tire in the swamp. 

The whole bill is much lower than I expected.  They gave us the “I can’t believe you are going to ride your bike to Iron Mountain” discount.

My bike is spinning beautifully as we head east in the hot afternoon sun.  A couple miles up, I see a young bald eagle standing by the side of the road.  He doesn’t fly off, so I assume he is hurt.  But no.  It tries to get a large rabbit carcass off the ground but cannot do so before I get too close.  He drops it with a squawk and flies off to a nearby tree.  A raven harries him on the way.  I wonder who will get the rabbit prize.

The road soon turns to sandy, steep hills.  So out comes Heidi and we start walking our way to the monastery.  Wes once again is nowhere to be seen.  At one treacherous loose downhill, I wait and wait to warn him.  He is not doing well.  “How far?” 

“Just a bit more than a mile,” I sooth.  3/10 of a mile is just a bit, right?  It certainly sounds better than “slightly less than half-way.”

Along the way, I suddenly recall that our dear friend Sam Castelli used to come to a retreat near Oxford.  In fact, after he died of COVID, that is where his ashes were placed.  Could this be the same place?

St. Augustine is a lush, treed respite.  We lean our bikes on the stone and beam chapel and text Andy.  And wait.  And wait some more.  We have arrived during one of prayer times, an “office” in their parlance.

But all is well.  We are taken to the refectory, where we are placed in two small rooms simply furnished with single beds and a desk.  There is no WIFI.  Nor air conditioning.

Andy has an open round smiling face and buzz cut.  He has been here full-time since 2019 and remembers Sam.  What grace we are here.

We are asked to store our bikes in the pole barn, which is home to a resplendent metallic orange Harley Davidson motorcycle.  Andy laughs, “It’s Bishop Jeffrey’s.”

When we went to the service for the first time, we were stunned at the beautiful—and new-- chapel.  In the choir seats facing each other, 6 men, none of them young.  Andy was the youngest, but closer to 50 than 20.

At Vespers we meet Brother Richard who confirms he knows all the Little Brothers.  I remark that we have known them for 30 years.  He smiles, “I’ve known them for 40!”

Both Brother Richard and Bishop Jeffrey are tiny slender men, no more than 5’7” and maybe 140 pounds.   Wes towers over them.  Brother Richard is probably 70 years old, but his face is unmarked by the deep lines of stress.  He crinkles when he smiles, which he often does.  Bishop Jeffrey looks a bit like a ferret, with a long straight nose, and tiny active hands.  Both are barefoot and wear black Capuchin robes.

On the left of the bishop are two residents, Richard McSherry and our host Andy.

When I ask his name, “Richard McSherry” he says to me, without making eye contact.  Richard McSherry has the thick parted hair of a 1950’s matinee idol.  He is almost always silent, although he reads with passion and beauty, which is a surprise. 

I ask if he is a monk, and he tells me, “Oh no. An Associate.”  He has been here for more than a decade. “Only Brother Richard has been here longer.”

Right before the service begins, I am shocked to be greeted by Billy Mark, who worked for Matrix years ago and who was Kresge Artist the same year I was.  I haven’t seen him in 10 years.  He’s been coming here for years, he tells me.

The service is a series of chanted Psalms, readings and prayers.  The chapel is spare, with open timbers and a 30 foot ceiling.  The windows face the towering trees.  As my mind wanders during the soothing drone of the chant, I find myself staring at the crown of a giant elm tree highlighted in the clerestory windows.

When they sing the Lord, the King, the Most High, I automatically change it to “ The Creating.  (I tried Creator for a while.  Creating is more accurate.  It’s ongoing and encompasses the livingness and dynamism of life around us and beyond us.)

After participating in several offices within the cycle of the day, but not all of them, I have so many questions.

At the open conversation period during dinner, I asked if water from the property if the water goes to the Clinton (i.e. Erie) or the Flint. (Saginaw Bay.)  Brother Richard had never given one thought to that.  “I guess we could try to find out,” he says helpfully.  (Guess I won’t be interviewing him about his personal relationship to his local water.)

We settle in for a pleasant night, but it’s not pleasant for Heidi.  A booming thunderstorm has her running from spot to spot, trying to find some hidey-hole where she feels safe.  I finally put her panting anxious self in an armoire and cover her head.  At last, she sleeps.

While Wes and Heidi gently snore, I plug away on the blog.  I eventually fall asleep on the top of my bed in my non-airconditioned cell, grateful, once again, that grace has touched our trip.

It is beautiful and restful here.  We don’t get it, but somehow it touches us and brings us peace and respite.

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A Day of Reflection

Day 6, July 3, 2025 , Miles 86 and holding

St. Augustine Monastery: We got up early-ish with every intention of cycling away.  Wes is super-anxious about getting out before the sun gets too hot, but I am shilly-shallying, “Why don’t we stay another day.  It’s beautiful here.  I’d like to receive Eucharist at 8:30.”

Wes, shrill, “That’s too late!  Are you trying to torture us?”

At the one spot by the library that has WIFI, I fail to find any lodging in Ortonville, our next destination.  No hotels, motels, no Warmshowers.  I even check Tamarack Recreation Camp and a farm stay.  No, no. and no.  Finally, I find an Airbnb in Ortonville.  It’s available.

Tomorrow.

 There. It’s decided.  One more day at St. Augustine’s…or as I am told, “It is not August- een, that’s a city in Florida.  It’s Augus-tin, named for the Berber saint of the 4^th century.”

So it’s a day of journaling, sleeping and being quiet.

And taking stock.

We are doing ok.  We are still sore from the swamp and it seems that 15-20 miles is about as much as we can do.  Wes is slowly more able to lift that recalcitrant leg over his bike.  But he is slow.  When I am letting Heidi trot with the bike, we are going about 6 miles an hour.   But hey, we are moving.

As our goddaughter said, “Even if you only do five miles, you are still beating those still sitting on the couch.”

I am sitting on my little bed in my little cell.  I’m going to go pray in a few minutes.  We have a place for tomorrow.  I am content.

T+151: We Don’t Know, We Just Go…

Mile 4084: Meredith, NH

Using my handy-dandy mapping tool, I find a way to take us out of West Lebanon that will allow us to get past the congestion and freeways before returning to US Highway 4.  We are curving around a back road when we spot a tell-tale trail marker just off the road.  The trail does not show up on the program, but this looks quite promising.  We’ll take it. 

Not too far along, we see what appears like college students out for a jog. We hope we haven’t made a bad choice. The conditions begin a little dodgy, but get better as we go along.  The trail is lovely as it crosses back and forth over the Mascoma River.  We don’t know where we are, but we are paralleling Highway 4, so we keep going. 

A few miles in, we are greeted by a handsome 60-something woman and her gregarious Jack Russell dog.  She tells us we are on the Northern Rail trail, and that it goes 30 miles or so all the way up to Grafton.  She also tells us about some the sights up ahead, including Mascoma Lake, with the Shaker village of Enfield across the way.  She asks about our trip and is very surprised to find out that we started in Portland, Oregon.  She tells of a recent trip she and her husband took to the Netherlands.  There, they would ride their bikes during the day, then get on a canal barge at night for their dinner and lodging.   She tells us they enjoyed it so much, she has developed a taste for more bike travel.  We offer “tips of the trade” and we all laugh about the various strategies we have employed to deal with saddle pain.

The ride is spectacular as it passes Mascoma Lake.  Two distinct features tickle our fancy.  In celebration of Halloween, various scarecrows depicting sports deaths are placed on the park land between the trail and the lake.  The bike-wreck scarecrow seemed to be plowing into a giant rock on a small moto-cross bike, with the stuffed rider about to fly right over the handlebars.   The hockey scarecrow had a black eye and broken teeth, and a hockey stick out of his head.  The six or seven of these creations were quite funny and creative---and must have been a big community effort to design, costume, and place these images.
This is also the first place we spot what we soon come to call “New Hampshire add-on houses.”  A house might begin with a small single gabled cottage.  Another generation would add a wing at a right angle, then another might add another gabled cottage addition, which might then have a connected corridor or two with eventually joined the barn. Over the years, simple structures become quite complicated.  I tell Wes that is what we are going to do with our cabin.  He just rolls his eyes.

We follow the rails to trails all the way to Grafton, even though the track is becoming more and more marginal.  There are places where it is hardly more than a sandy two-track.   Sometimes the trail is just a few feet from Highway 4.  We look longingly at the smooth surface, but don’t leave the track, choosing no competition with vehicles over an easy ride.   The trail takes us through a variety of huge culvert tunnels, which strikes us as a good solution for contested intersections.  

We are getting discouraged at our slow progress.  We are working pretty hard and not going very fast.  It is nearly noon and we have only gone about 12 miles.  We enter a rock cut where the train track was cut through 12 foot tall granite walls, and see a small brass marker.  We have just passed the Orange Summit, the highest point on the trail, and the highest point the railroad reached between the coast and its terminus at White River Junction at the Connecticut River.  Although we had been seeing  Mount Cardigan before and beside us, we didn’t realize we had been climbing all morning. 

We stop for a break at Danbury, where we will turn off to take a road to the little town of Meredith on the shores of Lake Winnipesaukee.  By the time we get there, we are tired, crabby, and worried.  I know we have to go a total of 60 miles to get to our bed and breakfast.  It has taken us until after 1pm to go 20 miles.  How on earth will we ever make it the rest of the way before we lose the light?    We have an uncomfortable break at the small country store.  Both of us are picking at each other.  My phone doesn’t work and there is no wi-fi, so we can’t scout the road ahead.   A young man and several senior ladies out for a bike ride try to allay our fears about the route ahead, but I, for one, am not having it.  One lady says, “It’s not bad.  There are ups and downs, but it’s just like life, isn’t it?” 

We are still sniping at each other when we head out on Highway 104.  It is pretty easy and quite beautiful, but we are both convinced these good times will end momentarily, leaving us to slog up the mountain to the Lake.  The miles start to slip by.  We’re cruising along.  Wait!  Where’s the climb into the White Mountains?  This part of the ride has been no problem whatsoever. 

As we ride along, we see lots of the “Add-on Houses.”   However, very few of these look like working farms.  There are no animals, no tractors, no work-trucks.  The fields lie fallow even as the houses are well-maintained.  We pass the grounds of the private Hampton School, and realize that this is probably the third private residential school we have seen since entering New Hampshire.   Although the road is fairly populated, there are very few commercial establishments.  I ask Wes, “How are people making their livings here?”   He answers, “Maybe they aren’t.”   This is obviously not a place where people are trying to make a living and can’t, as we have seen in New York and Washington.  This is a place where the living is coming from elsewhere.

I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop and the ride to get much harder, as we zip along to Bristol and the crossing with Interstate 93.   There is a little outbreak of plastic land close to the freeway.   We have about 15 miles to go when the climb in the foothills of the White Mountains begins.  We spend the rest of the afternoon climbing, climbing, climbing.  We have just cleared one good sized hill when we see a long-haired hippie-ish looking fellow standing next to his station wagon.  He has pulled his car into the little verge between our road and a right turn.  He has been watching us hump up the hill and as we go by, he calls to us, “Do you have a place to stay for the night?”  We answer that we have a bed and breakfast waiting for us.  “Too bad.” He says, “I was gonna offer you a room at my house.  Where you headed?”  We tell him, and he sighs, “Man, you got a big hill ahead of you.  Good luck.”

He wasn’t kidding.  The country we are entering reminds me a lot of the glacial highlands of the Rockies.  There are deep, cold lakes surrounded by granite shelves.  In the distance we can see foothills with the occasional glance at the rocky highlands beyond.  We are about 5 miles from the town of Meredith and we look up to see what should be called a cliff climb.   We’re beat, but too bad.  Up we go until we can’t.  Then it is off our bikes and time for pushing. 

At the top of this steep hill, our road joins the Daniel Webster Highway and the traffic increases.  Now we are tired, it is close to dusk, and we are still not there.  It is spectacularly beautiful alongside the shores of Lake Winnipesaukee, but hard to appreciate it because of the dangerous road conditions.  We feel a surge of energy, however, when we get to the town of Meredith.  It is a lovely tourist town, dominated by large, white 19^th century hotels which overlook the lake.  The town is a warren of 18^th and 19^th century buildings sitting cheek to jowl on the hills just above the lake.  Like all tourist towns, it is full of restaurants, bars, and cute little shops. 

We need to make our way to the Tuckernuck Bed and Breakfast.  When I had made the reservation, the innkeeper was thrilled to hear that we were cross country bicyclists. Her husband, she told me, was an Ironman, and had participated in many super long distance triathlons.  I told her we were far from Ironmen and that a 60 mile day was a pretty long day for us.   It had been a long day, and we were feeling every bit of those 60 miles, when we found the street on which the inn was located, and saw that it was another big climb.  We were pushing our bikes up the hill, on our last legs, when a young police officer, in a Meredith Police Department sedan, pulled alongside us.  “Don’t you know you are supposed to be riding up this hill?”  It took us a moment to realize he was joking before we had the presence of mind to assure him that this was just our “cool-down.”

Our brains are fogged by exhaustion as we get to the house on the top of the hill: our inn.  We drag our bikes around to the side and meet a young couple who say, “You must be the bicyclists!  Kim has told us all about your trip!  We can hardly wait to hear your stories!”   They take us to meet the landlady, an effusive, petite blonde with a somewhat raspy voice, who welcomes us mightily and tells us how excited she is to have us staying there.   We don’t feel special, just tired, sweaty, and hungry.  She gives us a great deal on a beautiful suite at the top of the house.   It is all we can do not to fall asleep right then and there.

After a shower, we feel slightly less exhausted and want to get some dinner.  Our landlady gives us a bunch of menus and guidance.  She also tells us that the other guests in the house are the young couple we had earlier met; they were newlyweds on their honeymoon.  There is also a threesome from England, fellow innkeepers enjoying a holiday in various beauty spots of eastern and western United States.  She assured us that they were all very interested to meet us and hear our stories tomorrow at breakfast.  Apparently, there would be no sitting back and listening to other’s stories for us in the morning.
Oh, how we wished we had been better able to follow our landlady’s advice about eating establishments.  We had seen a little brewpub on the way in to town.  We thought it would be a good place to eat and listen to the Tigers/Red Sox baseball game that night.  It was a fail on both counts.  The place was packed with sports fans, all right, football fans cheering loudly, then not so loudly, as the New England Patriots barely beat the New Orleans Saints.

After a disappointing corporate plastic goo-fest for dinner, we walk around the town, follow the lakeshore and explore the historic inns.  In one, we were sitting by the blazing fire, when a distraught man came in, trailed by a manager.  His wife had lost her phone.   Could we please move so they could check the overstuffed sofas where we were seated.  We do, but no phone is found.  Off they go, the man almost wailing, “What are we going to do?  Where can it be?”

We find the town charming, but we’re too tired to do much, so we go back to our inn.  We turn on the game, but fall asleep with the Tigers comfortably ahead 5-1 in the 7^th inning.  The next morning, as we make our way to breakfast, our landlady asks us, “Did you hear what happened in the game last night?”  Her husband, who had driven the 2 hours to attend the game in Boston, called her around midnight to tell her that game was now tied and there was still one more inning to go.  He was going to be very late getting back. She woke up to find out that Red Sox had won, in one of the most stunning comebacks in baseball history. 

At breakfast, all eyes are on us.  We start by telling them about how much economic distress we have seen as we travelled across the country.  Not very romantic, to be sure, but it does get the newlyweds going.  They are from Rochester, New York and in their mid-twenties.  He has a degree in civil engineering; she in marketing.   Together, they have sent more than 500 letters of inquiry.  They have gotten a few bites, but they see people with lots more experience getting the jobs.  They wonder how they will ever get a start, but they were still hoping a job would materialize for them.   The Brits are shocked at this.  They didn’t know the economy was that bad in the US.

We tell stories of our bicycle trip through England, Ireland, Wales and Scotland and make the Brits laugh with those “innocents abroad” adventures.  We all end up telling stories of our favorite places to visit.  I don’t think we ended up talking much about our ride across the country, but it was good fun anyway.

When we make our departure, our landlady, who had generously volunteered to find our next lodging, tells us how much difficulty she had making arrangements in the little town of Cornish, Maine.  After numerous attempts, she was able to find a place for us not too far from the town.  We thank her and commiserate with her.   Who would have thought securing lodging would have become such an on-going hassle?  She tells us of one set of bicyclists who had stayed with her.  They had arranged their entire lodging six months in advance.  Only once did they miss their reservation.  It’s clear we are not that rigid or that well-organized.

As we prepare to leave, I stop to stare at a topographic map on the wall.  Just to the northwest of Lake Winnipesaukee lies a circular range of mountains called the Ossipees.  Surely, this must have been an ancient volcano.  I show Wes and he agrees with me.  We ask Kim.  No, no volcanos around here.  Wondering what else could make such a distinctive outline, we vow to look more closely as we ride by.  Our route out of New Hampshire will take us half way round this strange feature.  By the end of this day, we will be in Maine.  Almost there.  Somehow or another.

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Posted from Centennial, Wyoming

T+106: Thumb-ities

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 20^th 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 19^th 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.

T+106: Pere Michigan

Mile 3757: Rome, NY

We are waiting out the rain this morning, hoping to make our passage into the Adirondacks today.  It is really clear that fall is closing in.  As the crow flies, it is 350 miles to the Portland, Maine.  The question looming: should we make a run for the coast and forgo the mountains, or hope for another round of good weather?

 

The Pere Marquette trail in central Michigan has received multiple awards, and rightfully so.  The track from Evart to Clare, Michigan passes in and out of forests, alongside marshes, rivers, and lakes.  It is well marked and well maintained.  Because it is rather far from highways, there are a lot of animals and birds.  Just outside of the crossroads town of Lake, we pass a hiker laden with all sorts of photographic equipment, fisherman’s vest, Indiana Jones hat: the whole regalia.  He asks if we have seen any bear scat.  We answer no, but sure enough, a mile down the road, in the opposite direction, we spot the unmistakable signs of a berry eating bear.

Lake is at an unusual spot in Michigan.  Barely higher than the surrounding country, it sits in a circle of marshy lakes.  To the west, water flows to Lake Michigan; to the east, streams run to Saginaw Bay in Lake Huron.  Wes is standing on his pedals, making a small hill, when we hear the unmistakable SPROING!  He has broken another spoke.   We are about 20 miles to Clare, where we know there is a bike shop.   Another repair.

We make it to Clare to discover that the bike shop is closed on Wednesdays and, of course, it is Wednesday.  There are two other shops on our path: one is an auto shop in Coleman, then big shop in Midland.  Wes will have to nurse his bike to the next repair.

Just down the street from the bike shop, we experience a curious cultural anomaly.   Clare had a bakery that had been in business since the 1890’s, but was slowly dying.  It was a few days from closing, when the entire police department of this small town pooled their money, bought the bakery, and renamed it Cops and Doughnuts, and began decorating it gave it lots of goofy cop jokes. It is now a hopping joint, with visitors from all over the world, and a big crowd when we stop in.   We are eating our coffee and muffin, when a big group of the owners/local police stop in.   A handsome, young, slender cop stops by our table and asks how we like our food.  We talk about their decision to keep the business going, how much it has grown, and how it has become the anchor of a downtown revival.

Once we leave Clare, the landscape changes as we enter the flatlands of the Saginaw Bay.  This whole area was once underwater: its lake heritage shows in the bogs, salt wells, and miles of perfectly flat cropland.   As we have been traveling, we often play “Name that crop!”  Of course, corn, and wheat, and soybeans are easy.  What is this crop that looks like lettuce, or maybe collard greens?  There are miles and miles of it.  What is it?

In Coleman, we stop at the Bike and Auto.  Sorry, the bike guy is gone for the week.  After admiring the Raleigh bikes for sale at this shop, and laughing that the antique Raleigh on display looks just like Wes’ bike, we plug on.   For the first time since we entered Michigan, we are passing through farm towns.  When we stop at a little diner to get yet another root beer float, the farmers look at us, but don’t speak.  We drink our sweet treat and are just about ready to go, when one man asks us where we headed.  When we tell him we have been and where we are going, a dam breaks loose.  Now people all over the diner are asking us questions about our travels.  It was clear they were interested, but they didn’t feel comfortable starting a conversation. 

The path to Midland is well marked, with lots of pretty little pocket parks.  Wes and I vow to bring some of our Lower Michigan friends up to this wonderful trail.  There starts to be lots of riders and walkers on the trail.  At one point, we see a young mom along with her eight year old son taking an afternoon ride.  The little boy is fascinated by our bikes and trailers, and speeds up to ride alongside of us.  I slow down to answer his questions.  When he finds out we rode all the way from the Pacific Ocean, he asks, “Is there a bike trail around the whole world?”  I tell him no, but that there should be.  He tells me all about the sites along the trail, and really wants us to go off the trail to see a big bog.  He is riding a small BMX bike, which he is really pedaling as he works to stay alongside me.  We talk about how he could fix his brakes and tighten his chain.  In the meantime, Wes is getting further and further ahead.  The little boy wants to show me how fast he can go, so he speeds up.  I let him win for a while, then slip into my top chain ring and easily move past him.  He tries to keep up for a while, but can’t.  As I move away, he calls after me, “Don’t forget to stop by the bog!”   We don’t stop, but I wish we had.

Just outside of Midland, we pass the 3000 mile mark on the trip.  This feels momentous.  We have taken photos at many of the 500 and 1000 marks.  It will be interesting to compare the photos after this trip is over. 

We cruise into Midland, stop a nice little craft brewpub, eat great home-made food from a food cart, and make our way to our room.  We are following the hazy instructions to our motel, when we come across another young male on a bike.  He is a bit older, perhaps 12, and like us, pedaling hard in the right lane in heavy 5 o’clock traffic.   We talk a bit as we go by.   Some blocks later, we are at a confusing intersection, trying to determine what to do, when we are  re-joined by the young teenager.  We ask if he lives nearby. He does.  We ask if he knows how to get to our motel.  He does.  His directions are clear, precise, and well-spoken.  He rides with us some blocks, asking about our trip.   This is one lively mind in a body of a boy.  Just as he turns off, he provides an exact visual description of our hotel and its environs, then wishes us well.  We tell him to start planning for his bicycle trip across the country.  He says he will.  We believe him. 

We find the motel easily with the boy’s instructions and description, but it is now too late to repair Wes’ bike today, so we will have to do the repairs tomorrow.  The next morning is very rainy.  It is just been a few days since our break at Ludington, but remembering some of other disastrous attempt to ride in the rain, we decide to stay, do repairs, and work on the blog.   This of course ensures that the rain will lift.  It does. 

On the way to the bike shop, we are riding on a very uncomfortable, busy road, so decide to cut off into the paths of the Whiting Forest.  There is an open gate on the paths, so we take it and soon find ourselves biking through the wonders of the Dow Gardens.   There are sculptures, exotic landscapes, and intricate bridges.  It is rightfully one of the celebrated tourist stops of Michigan.  There are also docents leading groups on tours.  One was taking a group of 12 over a bridge, “Please note the sunburst design of the bridge, which is picked up in the layout of the…. HEY! You can’t ride bikes in here!”  Wes rides a bit further.  The tour guide says, “The nerve!”  I am not sure Wes even hears, but I get off my bike.  We push our bikes around a bit further, looking for a way to get out of the gardens.  The only way out is through the gift shop.  We shamefacedly scoot our bikes through while the salespeople laugh and customers gawk.

At the bike shop, after telling them we just replaced five spokes and now have another broken spoke, the bike tech asks, “Why didn’t you just replace the wheel?—You are just going to keep breaking spokes if they are this fragile.”  We think about it and realize that this is probably the wheel that was put on Wes bike during our last bike trip—in Quebec—in 1998.   So we buy a new wheel two days after getting five spokes replaced.  More fine planning on our part.

We explore downtown Midland, which has a big park where the Tittabawassee and Chippewa Rivers join, and which is crossed by a three-way bridge called the Tridge.  We take pictures and explore the grounds.  As we make our way back to our room, we come across a hill planted with thousands of dahlias.   Wes and I had visited Midland years and years before and remembered it as a chemical factory town.  Now we see it as one garden spot after another, with big trees, lots of open spaces, and very active corporate culture.  Did we not have eyes to see or has it changed that much in 25 years?
 

Leaving Midland the next day, we enter the lea side of Saginaw Bay.  We have left the wonderful environs of the 150 mile Pere Marquette trail.  It is back to farm roads and traffic.  It is fine, but we miss the secret passage across Michigan on its wonderful, beautiful rails to trails conversion.

 

Posted from Rome, NY

 

T+103: A Lucky Break

Mile 3690: Fulton, NY

After a difficult and frustrating day, we find ourselves in a town as least as beat up as Detroit.   Having lost Nestle, Birds Eye, and Miller factories, this small town in upstate New York is full of poverty, degenerating businesses, and people trying to make a way out of no way.  We recognize the signs and will tell this story soon.  In the meantime, our trip across Michigan begins….

After we said good-bye to our friends in Ludington, we began following the Adventure Cycling map through the Manistee National Forest.  It exemplifies everything we both love and hate about these routes.  First of all, it is a beautiful ride, but it is far from efficient.  We ride 50 miles through all sort of back country forest and lakes.  It is a lovely ride.  But at the end of the day, we have only gone 25 miles towards the east.

Throughout the day, we have been on a quest to get a good paper map of Michigan.  This is apparently a rarity, now that many (most?) people use GPS on their phones or in their cars.   In the little town of Wolf Point, after visiting with the resident young Jack Russell and ancient Shepherd/Corgie dogs, we ask the proprietor if she sells maps.  For the fourth time that day, the answer is no.  A few minutes later, a customer who heard our request and denial returns with a high quality laminated map from his car.  He will sell it to us at cost.  We are happy to accept, even though we squirm a bit to see that it comes from Wal-mart.

After Wolf Point, we make our way to the Red Moose Inn, which is south of Baldwin, Michigan on the Pere Marquette River.  We are struck by the level of abandonment and disarray we see along the way.  This part of Michigan is not looking so good.  At the inn, the proprietor tells us that he is full up with salmon fishers, but that we will be housed in a cabin just down the way.   He shows us the way to the cabin in the woods by driving us over in a 2009 Cadillac with leather seats and just 50,000 miles.  He tells us that it is his son’s vehicle, and that it originally cost $54,000, but that his son purchased it for just $2700.   “Some depreciation, huh?”  he asks.

The cabin is deep in the woods.  Wes and I are at first disappointed, because we hoped to be on the river, but once we got inside, it felt so homey, we settled right in.  After a quick trip to a local grocery store, we played “at home” and truly enjoyed the evening.

The next morning, we jounce over sandy roads and make our way back to the highway.  On the highway, Wes immediately experiences difficulties.  His back wheel is not rolling right.  We try several strategies, including realigning the axle and adjusting the brakes, until it finally dawns on us that the reason the wheel is not rolling is because Wes has 3 broken spokes.  We are now dead in the water.  I make a few calls and find out that the closest bike shops are 57 miles away in Clare, 25 miles back to Ludington, or 30 miles the wrong direction to Cadillac.   I call the Clare bike shop.  They can’t help because they are short staffed and cannot come get us.  Sorry.  Maybe the folks in Ludington can assist.

While I wonder if this is how our trip will end, Wes drags his bike across the road, removes the BOB trailer, and turns the bike upside down.  I pull my bike across and watch while Wes begins to hitchhike.  He signals to the first car by, a new truck pulling a big silver ATV trailer.  Wes gives his best “6 second sell” to the passing vehicle.  When he was younger, Wes travelled many thousand miles by hitchhiking, which he says depended upon making a connection within the six seconds a driver sees you on the side of the road.

Sure enough, the truck turns around and comes back to pick us up.  The driver asks us if we need help.  We tell him about our situation and tell him we need to get to a bike shop, or at least on a main highway.   He jumps out, opens his trailer, where a brand new Polaris 4-wheeler is secured, and tell us to load our bikes in the trailer.  Wes and I pile in the jump seat of the truck and meet our saviors.  They are Karl and Nancy Nelson, owners of the Pronto Pup in Grand Haven, out on a rare day off to try out their new four-wheeler.  They saw the upside down bike, knew we were in distress, and thought, “Something is obviously wrong.  We’ve got room, and time.  Why not?”

Nancy gets to work on her I-phone trying to find a bike shop where we can get the spokes repaired.  She calls the shop in Cadillac and finds out they are open and can do the work.   They decide right then and there to drive us the 30 miles to the north to the bike shop in Cadillac.  While driving there, we have a chance to visit.   They were out that day headed to the ATV trails around Baldwin.  It was lucky for us they chose to drive the back way from Grand Haven.  They just purchased this new ATV and wanted to check it out before taking it up to the Upper Peninsula for its maiden backwoods trip.   They are taking their first break after a long summer selling their high quality hot dogs to the resort community.  Throughout the trip north, Karl takes phone calls and makes deals to provide hot dogs at various events.

It is very clear that Karl and Nancy and Wes and I are not people whose lives would normally intersect, but we are glad to tell each other stories of life and work, bills and choices.  We connect around the challenges of running small businesses and how important good employees are to business success.  This leads to a surprisingly frank discussion about many corporations misplaced emphasis on financial success instead of employee success.   Despite our obvious ideological differences, all four of us agree with the principal that secure employees are the cornerstone of a strong economy.  We also agree that such security is no longer the norm.

In Cadillac, Karl and Nancy drop us off, wish us well, and drive off to enjoy the rest of their day.  We take the bike in, and find out that there are FIVE broken spokes.  While the young men in the shop do the repairs, Wes and I head out to get breakfast and explore the town.  We have great handmade food at the Blue Heron, wander a few shops, and are generally amazed at the comeback in this town.   We had visited a few years ago; it is vibrant and exciting by comparison. 

By noon, we are back on the trail.  The bike shop guys recommend the White Pine Trail to us.  This is a Rails to Trails from Cadillac to Reed City, going through forests and small towns in western Michigan.  The first 17 miles are paved.  It is beautiful, full of big trees, small lakes, and wetlands, and we have a blast.  As we discuss the broken spokes, we realize that Wes probably broke his first spoke way back in Wisconsin on that rotten concrete road.   Sheesh. 

We visit outback towns like Leroy, Michigan and buy handmade baked goods.  The trail turns to dirt and it gets rougher and slower.  It is far less fun.  The next 20 miles are much harder work.  We pull into the little town of Reed City, where the White Pine trail intersects with the Pere Marquette trail.  We wander up and down Upton Avenue, stare at the Yoplait factory, and think to stay here.  At the local pub, the waitress is one of those types that drive us crazy.  They don’t know anything about the town, its amenities, or its services. 

We finally determine that the next motel is in Evart, 15 miles down the trail.  We head out on the smooth and lovely trail as the sun starts to sink in the west.   This is the Michigan not seen by the roads, lush and lovely.  We stop to see the Muskegon River and marvel at its pure beauty.  When we finally land at the Osceola Grand Hotel in Evart, Michigan, it is nearly dark.  We have been on the move since early morning.  We have almost seen the end of the trip, travelled 30 miles north, and ridden more than 60 miles on Michigan rails to trails through wonderful beauty.  Like the day before, we have only travelled about 25 miles to the east, but we are incredibly grateful, first to the Nelsons, then to the creators and sustainers of these beautiful trails.