Skip to main content

Day 24 - August 12

Waking up with 2,200 feet of kinetic energy in the bank justs makes a body feel good all over. It would be hard to piss me off right now. Thanks to yesterday's slog up hill, I will be able to mostly coast to Marquette 35 miles away. Whee!  I left at 7:15 and arrive in Marquette at 10:00a.m. without breaking a sweat.

The one disappointment in this otherwise uplifting experience is that I arrived in Marquette too early to sample Asian food at Jasmine. I have yet to disclose that any and every opportunity to dine at an Asian restaurant gets my attention. Vietnamese, Chinese or Thai - it doesn't matter - I'm all in. Now I fear my next opportunity will be Nina's kitchen in Zimmyville. Not that I don't appreciate that venue, it's just that it is a whole week away.

I rode by the cabins where I spent a week's vacation with daughter Heather and my neighbors from Farmington Hills in the mid-70's.  The contrast was striking. In those days of yore, this stretch of road was desolate. I remember coming back to the cabins after a day of fly fishing on the Chocolay river. A Michigan State Trooper pulled me over for 90 in a 55. My aforementioned neighbor was a Novi policeman and talked the trooper out of a ticket. Today, you could never get it up to 90. It just too congested for that.  So, the observation of the day is that in 30 years this formerly obscure stretch of beach is now populated by hundreds of 1,000 SqFt RV's. Some of the romantic quality has been lost. I fear that I may have to go to Alaska for a nostalgic northern perimeter fix - right Donna Leigh?!?

Today's ride was 74 miles for a total of 1,282. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

First Post - Written February, 2018

Hi, and welcome to the first installment of A Superior Bike Adventure!   It is an adventure that has not yet begun, other than initial stage planning.   As much as I hope it will be the best adventure ever, the superlative “Superior” refers to the lake, not my riding skills.   My intent, you see, is to circumnavigate Lake Superior on a bike – the pedal kind, not the Harley kind. My first flirtation with this adventure was the idea of completing the great loop in a trawler.   The great loop is a term that refers to boating a complete circle from the Intercontinental waterway, to the St. Lawrence seaway, the Great Lakes, the Mississippi river and the Gulf of Mexico back to the original starting point on the eastern seaboard.   The plan was a two-year live-aboard experience interrupted only by a winter layover in Lake Michigan during which we would return to our home.   I studied the loop and read several accounts written by “loopers” to prepare for this...
8 comments
Read more

Day 5 - 7/23/18

Day 5 begins in the company of a half-dozen bikers all camped in the town square in Hooverville style. I'm the first to break camp and make my way to the road. About an hour later, Gordon catches up to me and, being the slowest bike on the Trans-Canada highway, I waved him through. He says he prefers company and although ahead of me, he is matching my speed. We stop for lunch at the only restaurant between our White River starting point and the destination of Marathon. The restaurant is only a few months old and, based on the number of failed businesses along the route, I question the probability of success but hope for the best. Nice people trying hard to make a go of it. Over lunch, we share some of our personal history and discuss world politics. Gordon is a Canaduan originally from Vancouver. He moved to Europe 25 years ago and ended up as a banker in Edinburgh.  Now married to a Scot with two kids in college, he became a British subject by way of his heritage. He also aban...
4 comments
Read more

Week 2

Days 13 & 14 were fairly uneventful.  Just over 50 miles each day.  Day 13 still had a south wind in the face. It is discouraging to crest a hill and still have to pedal hard on the downslope. Today's special treat was a tail wind courtesy of a storm front. So, while rainy, it was fast. That is until I rounded the southwest corner of lake Superior in Duluth and headed up the ramp of the bridge over the St. Louis River to Wisconsin. This is a three mile bridge soaring hundreds of feet above the water with wind and rain now in my face at 15 mph gusting to 25. Once on the ramp I was committed but if I had it to do all over again I would have become a permanent resident of Minnesota rather than ride the bridge. Bridge notwithstanding, I'm happy to be in Wisconsin where billboards are legal. There is a tavern on every corner and midwest hospitality should be evident once again. The People's Republic of Minnesota controls all of those things because the government knows wha...
2 comments
Read more