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The portable toilet at the park in Grand Rapids was being service by a man holding a thick hose which was connected to a big tank mounted on a truck.  He was a big fellow wearing suspenders and he moved around like he was trying to set a speed record for porta-john cleaning.  He was fast, but not fast enough for me to sit around and wait.  Instead, I employed some of the stealth-urination skills I bragged about in a previous post.

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I recalled a scene in the great documentary "Woodstock" in which the film maker interviewed the guy who maintained the porta-johns at the famous 60's rock festival.  With apologies to Hendrix, Santana, Ten Years After, et al., that was my favorite scene in the movie.  As I recall, the toilet cleaner was of the older generation and he was proud of what he was doing.  And he was surprisingly tolerant toward what was going on with the hippies, the drugs, the loud music, etc.  It was a charming and heartwarming scene.

I continued on the rather fetching country roads through the nice little towns of Grand Rapids, Pemberville, and Gibsonburg.  Not having a bike computer with it's mileage indicator required me to be extra attentive in watching for the many turns shown on the ACA maps.  I missed a couple of those turns.  Fortunately, I have a good sense of direction and was pretty confident that as long as I was trending eastward I'd be OK.

I knew before I left MN that this year's route would involve more cornfields, more traffic, and more cities than the route on the left side of the Mississippi River.  I am enjoying the change of pace and I am having fun.  Yet, I must say, I do miss the miles of mountains and forests and wildlife and fast-moving streams and slow-moving people of the west.  I'm going to end that thought now.  It sounds a little too much like whining.

I made it to the city of Fremont, population 16,000.  I am not a fan.  Perhaps the reason is that I cannot stop perspiring as I sit in a city park writing in my notebook.  The humidity is casting a big, sweaty aura over the entire city.  Thunder is in the distance.  I think I need to find a motel room.