You rode 1000 miles to get to Freeland?

07/23/09 - Freeland at last! After another long day of 85 miles, give or take, we rolled into Freeland at around 4:30 this afternoon and were greeted by my Dad and Grandmother standing at the end of her driveway. We’re still not sure how they knew when we’d arrive, but there they were. Marc and I had some wet riding for a few hours today but knowing that we were going to have a warm dry bed, good food, and family around us at days end made it more than tolerable. We stopped at McDonalds, not once but twice, today. The first time it was for coffee and the town we were in didn’t have any other options. So we bought coffees and sat outside and ate some leftover pizza and other stuff we had with us. The second time was for ice cream. It was about 3:00 and we had been battling an increasing headwind for a while and I said “it sounds crazy but I’m hungry again.” Marc suggested that we stop for one last ice cream before the trip came to an end. We went to two stores in the town of Hemlock looking for ice cream and found none. The proprietor of the second one said that there was an ice cream parlor on the other side of town, in the wrong direction. We were kind of stunned. All I wanted was an ice cream sandwich, man. What kind of a place was this? Reluctantly, we rode across the street to McDonalds and ordered two ridiculously expensive mocha McFrappes or whatever they call those things. I do have to admit that they were delicious. Really delicious. And then, sweet tooth satisfied, we tapped out the last hour of our 14 day journey from Rutland VT to Freeland MI. The last couple of miles we had a headwind and it felt kind of sad to know that it was coming to an end as we rolled effortlessly along. Except for the chafing that was occurring from too many hours of wearing wet shorts. And the heavy legs. And the near constant hunger. Okay, I guess we were ready to get of f the bikes for a couple of days. Other notable things from the last day: At one point we were riding along in the pouring rain and gentleman was walking out to his mailbox and saw us and flagged us down. He invited us to come in and dry off and have a cup of coffee. We probably should have taken him up on it but we kind of just wanted to get home so we thanked him and continued on. This is the sort of thing that happens most every day when you are touring and one of the most special things about this mode of transportation. A woman came out of McDonalds and saw us sitting there drinking coffee and asked where we had come from. We replied that we had started in Vermont and she was like “wow, that’s great, where are you headed to?” We said Freeland and she looked completely puzzled and said “that’s not very exciting.” Marc and I just looked at each other. I suppose it does seem rather anti-climactic to ride a thousand miles and end up in Freeland. Unless you are Marc and I, and you have your reasons. Plus, the exciting part is along the way. Lastly, about two miles from home I had a yellow jacket fly into my helmet. I could feel it trapped against my head, wings beating frantically, and I knew that I needed to get my helmet off ASAP or I was going to get stung, but I didn’t think I had time to stop my bike so I managed to remove my sunglasses and helmet, while riding in traffic on a fairly narrow road, and liberate the dazed creature. I absolutely could not believe I didn’t get stung. Just lucky I guess.

One More Day

Today we were lucky. When we checked the weather before leaving the motel this morning in Bowling Green the radar showed a giant green blob of heavy rain marching north. We thought it would envelop us just as we were hitting the road, so we battened the hatches and set off with our raingear on. Half an hour later we stopped and took off our rain gear because it wasn’t raining and we were sweating to death. The storm never caught us and we rode the whole day with nothing more than a few sprinkles. We made our goal of Howell Michigan fairly easily, thanks mostly to a nice tail wind. We estimate that it was about 90 miles, which would make it easily our highest mileage day yet. Tomorrow we have to do roughly the same to get to our final destination, and we’re pretty sure we’ll manage it. It’s like a bike race now, in that once you can sense that finish line, you have super-strength. Plus we’ve been staying in motels so we have extra energy from not having to set up camp and make dinner and breakfast. Tonight is our fourth night in a motel out of thirteen nights so it seems like we stayed pretty close to our plan. We spent a bit of time searching for detail maps today to try and figure out a good safe route through Michigan. Not an easy task. There are lots of busy roads with no shoulder. And people here love their cars. I thought every one in Michigan was out of work these days. Where are all these cars going? We definitely had some stressful riding today, with cars constantly zinging past us uncomfortably close at hand. But we also had some really secluded roads and some horrendously bumpy roads. So overall it was a great day, as usual. We had one memorable conversation with an older farmer, somewhere in rural southern Michigan. One of my water bottles bounced out as we were riding by his house and I turned around in the road to grab it. As I did so, this guy yelled “where are you going, California?” So we rode over and told him what we were up to and he told us all about his farm (300 acres,) his barn renovations, his family, and the fact that he held off selling some corn and soybeans and the price fell and he lost thousands of dollars. He didn’t seem too broken up about that last bit either. It was a really fun interaction of the type that we seem to get almost every day. I think that is the thing that impresses me the most about touring, the fact that people are really interested and want to talk to you about it wherever you go. Tomorrow will probably be the end of the trip, but I’ll keep adding more posts. I have some equipment reviews that I’m working on and some other observations about the whole experience. I’m also going to caption and post all of the photos as soon as I can. Thanks for reading.

Leaving Ohio Behind

07/21/09 - Another day of favorable wind. We got about 65 miles in today and are now in a motel in Bowling Green Ohio. It was pretty hot today and I don’t know if that was the problem, or not drinking enough water yesterday, or possibly not eating enough today, but for some reason we both hit the wall at about 3:00 this afternoon. I felt pretty wrung out and didn’t really want to deal with camping, and Marc wasn’t arguing with me so we got a room. We were lucky to get a room, and we may not have been able to get a campsite anyway because there is a huge RV exhibition going on in Bowling Green. We got the last room at the Knights Inn. Then we immediately went next door to Subway and ate a huge sandwich. I feel pretty normal now. We are spending the night tonight trying to find a route from here to Freeland MI. Tomorrow morning we leave the Adventure Cycling Association route and start heading north. We don’t really have a map, so we’re not exactly sure where we are going , but we know we’re going north. And we know that it will take at least two days. So that means that, best case scenario, we will finish up on Thursday afternoon. It could be Friday though, but even that is better than what we though we’d manage a few days ago. We were kind of thinking we might have to ride right to the memorial on Saturday, which would have saved us the better part of a days riding. But now I’m pretty sure we’ll get to Freeland, our ultimate goal. Not much exciting happened today. Rural Ohio, much like rural Michigan, features a lot of roads so straight and flat that even mini-vans can drive too fast. We did stop at a really nice coffee shop in Fremont Ohio called DaVinci’s. Good coffee, good pastry and free wifi. Loved it. Tonight for dinner I think we are going to hit the Big Boy next door. I used to love Big Boy and I haven’t eaten at one in probably 15 years. Yumm.