Introduction

In Michigan, you don't often get blue skies with fresh show. The tulips weren't happy at all about it. They turned wilty after it melted.

Woke up to a beautiful morning a few days before I was supposed to leave.

The deer don't mind the snow, not when there's fresh grass just under it.

Before I ever decided to ride to DC, my plan was to go to Utah and Arizona, to see the canyons before the heat and before the crowds. I would have left in early April, but my great friend, Max, asked me to watch her house for several weeks. The place is an exact replica of William Bradford's house, with a sprawled out property, clustered with black walnut trees. It's at the very top of a glacial moraine with a small pond and waterfall. An albino wild turkey sometimes comes to the yard, and evey year, the Eastern Bluebirds return. So I delayed my trip and enjoyed watching the redbuds and daffodils come into bloom.

Where should I go? I kept asking myself. It was too early to go north. That I learned from hard experience. It seemed like every spring, a polar vortex would break away and lodge itself over Eastern Canada and bring record cold and high winds to Michigan. No, I wouldn't make that mistake again.

Evey day while I was at my Max's, I saw an article about the Cicadas, how they emerge every seventeen years in numbers that astonish, reminiscent of giant locust plaques, only they're loud. The articles made them seem impossibly loud. "Louder than lawnmowers and jet engines!" one article boasted. I studied the map of where brood x was (there's ten broods of cicadas, but the one this particular year was a large one close to various population centers), and saw that to covered almost all of Indiana and much of Ohio, but a few spots in Michigan, including Ann Arbor, where I lived for much of my life, where Max's is.

Eight years ago was my first tour. In the years that followed, I always think about that time on Lake Superior, when the water very low and warm, and the beech forest was very alive. I went back five years later and they were gone. Just ghostly shells were left. A Japanese beetle wiped them all out. Every last beech tree. What's next?! I screamed to myself, just as I were that man in the Monet painting. I'd seen the elms disappear; heard about how the American Chestnut vanished. What's next? I thought the rest of that tour, and ever since.f

If I didn't see the Cicadas then, I'd never see them at all, that was my mindset. Just like the beeches and ash trees, I wondered if the cicadas would also perish. Cicadas need trees to survive and they're all dying. Weather by bug or bulldozer, or the implacable warming of the planet, it didn't matter. They weren't going to make it. At first, I planned on going to Cleveland, to ride the Ohio to Erie trail to Cincinnati, then explore Indiana, since that's where the main thrust of the brood was; however, when I looked at the cicada map in greater detail, I noticed a large concentration of brood X around where I knew the C&O Trail was, in Maryland. Finally, I knew just where to go.

My new plan was to ride to Toledo, take a train to Cleveland, and from there make my way to Pittsburgh so I could take the GAP trail, then on to the C&O. Only, all of the trains were sold out for weeks. Covid-19 decimated public transportation and Amtrak. Virtually all of their long distance routes when from running daily to three days a week. So, as a predictable consequence, the few that do run fill-up quickly. So, I made my final plan, I'd leave the first week in May and ride the whole way, and with luck, the Cicadas would emerge around the time I got to Maryland.

It was a good thing I didn't buy that ticket. A week before I was to leave, I checked the weather. I was sure the worst was behind me. It wasn't. The cold was coming. So was the rain. Each day I checked, and each time the outlook was worse. I set myself up to suffer and, because of the cold, I could arrive too early for the cicadas. The high temperatures were supposed to be in the 4os. Rain and headwinds almost every day. Doubt crept in. I began think that maybe I'd go west after all. Began to browse for tickets to Flagstaff and San Francisco. Camping in the 20s was untenable, I already learned learned that lesson. I was without a destination. Again.

Most of the problem was my living situation. I'd recently put all my stuff in storage as to lower my overhead. Tickets on Amtrak, however, were sold out in every direction. There was no escaping the cold. Then, another great friend of mine, Melissa, was in a pinch and needed me to watch her dog and guinea pigs for five days. With luck, I thought, those few days would allow the worst of it to pass. Maybe I wouldn't suffer after all.

Things started very bad. This great big old bulldog, Bailey, who I've been watched and loved so very much since she was a puppy, who was now 13, dripped blood when she tried to poop. He behavior was normal, however. She ate dinner and still acted goofy while we played. We decided to wait until the next day to figure out getting her to the vet. The next morning came and and she pooped more blood. Nothing else. I filled with dread. My thoughts for her turned morbid. Then she tried to go one more time. At first it was in shock, because it looked like part of her intestines in a bloody pile of poop and bile. She's a goner, I thought. Then as I examined it, I could see that she'd eaten a plastic shopping bag. Relief flooded through my chest. I poked it with a stick, and somehow it was hard. I wondered if her stomach acids somehow altered it. It was clear, the bag had simply cut her on the way out.

A couple of days into my stay at Melissa's, things were looking up. Fizz, the guinea pig who had been very ill and was only just getting better when I arrived, seemed great. So did Bailey. No more blood. She was a happy girl, but missed her mom. The weather forecast showed warming temperatures, no rain, and a tailwind out of the north for my first day which would make the cold temperatures to start quite bearable.

It was Sunday and I was to leave towards Cleveland in morning. I went on a quick ride to pick some lush grass and fresh dandelions to feed the guinea pigs. They squeak and dance whenever I feed them anything good, only when I returned, Fizz's cage mate, Bubbles, seemed very lethargic. No squeaks. No climbing up to see if the ones below got better grass. It was late afternoon. By early evening, Bubbles was had gotten worse. Melissa was due home that night. By the time she got there, Bubbles was curled up in a lump. Then he had a series of convulsions. He died in Melissa's arms within an hour of her return.

I didn't leave that next cold morning, but instead spent the day with Melissa. We went to Max's and buried bubbles under a giant black walnut tree and marked it with a rock that was in the spot I dug. It had flakes if jasper in, just like you see in puddingstone, a speckled conglomerate you find on Lake Michigan's beaches. Max offered loving, kind words to Melissa and plunked some daffodil bulbs into the fresh dirt.

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