Things To Do In Michigan When You're Tired

Smell that? That smell is the absence of hot greasy road kill baking on the asphalt. That is my goal for today, the seemingly simple goal of not smelling any well-dead raccoon carcasses. I plan to accomplish it by not riding my bicycle today, for the first time in 14 days. Another goal for today is to begin moderating my food intake. Now that I won’t be riding an average of 65-70 miles everyday, presumably, I won’t need to consume 5000 calories a day. Preliminary estimates indicate that I lost four or five pounds over the course of the trip. I wouldn’t mind keeping those pounds off. It looks like the total distance was closer to 1000 miles than the 900 I initially reported. What’s an extra hundred miles in the grand scheme of things? Now that I’m in Michigan for a few days I plan to take it a little bit easy and rest up. Tomorrow we have plans.

As some of you know, the main reason for Christine and myself to travel to Michigan (Christine drove here and arrived last night and her willingness to drive 12 hours by herself was instrumental in Marc and I being able to make our trip. Thanks Christine) this July is to attend a memorial, a celebration of the life of my Grandfather, Robert O. Young, who passed away 30 years ago. And while I can’t claim that it was the prime motivator in my decision to ride my bike to Freeland, I realized early on that there would be no more appropriate way for me to honor the life of my Grandfather than to ride my bike to Freeland; He taught me to ride on two wheels. My most vivid memory of the man, in fact, is of a particular early Sunday morning, perhaps 7:00, that found the two of us on River road in front of his house. I was astride my brand new Huffy, a gift for my sixth birthday. He was holding onto the seat of the bike. “You just have to pedal” he said, “I’ll hold the bike up.” We picked up speed, the two of us, and he was yelling “pump! pump! Pump!” as he ran along behind me. In fact he was still yelling “pump” moments later when I turned around to see that he was no longer there, no longer holding my saddle. Easy as that I was riding that great big scary Huffy. And I’ve logged quite a few more miles on two wheels since.

Marc and I also have an appointment on Monday at 11:00 am for a phone interview with Dennis Jenson of the Rutland Herald. He called me the other night to check on our progress and set up a time when we could all talk. I’m excited about this because I’ve never been interviewed by a daily newspaper before and now I can check it off my list before all of the daily newspapers go out of business. The story should run on the following Sunday, which I believe is August 2nd.