July 5, 2012
Day 20: Lowell, MI to Morley, MI
(By Jeff)
Joy was already up, dressed, and back from a walk to a nearby coffee shop by the time I dragged myself out of bed this morning – and this was after I'd spent most of yesterday sleeping in our comfortable bed at the Main Street Inn. I prefer to blame my somnolence on the extreme heat of the last several days. But maybe I'm just old and lazy now.
We had been in touch yesterday with Suzanne, a friendly local cyclist who had kindly provided routing advice and a bike shop recommendation, and had even offered to drive us the seven or eight miles to the bike shop in Ada this morning. My bike was rideable with its broken front derailleur, but it was reduced to only a handful of working gears, and was annoyingly noisy. We took Suzanne up on her offer of a ride to the bike shop – this was very helpful, since otherwise we would have been forced to ride on a busy road – and she was even happy to do the drive twice, since my bike and Joy's bike would not both fit into Suzanne's vehicle at the same time. Thanks, Suzanne!
Ada, like Lowell, was a charming little town, and the bike shop proved to be excellent. When I explained that we had experienced a mechanical problem while on tour, they looked at my bike immediately, and were able to get it fixed in a few minutes. Then, they refused any payment for fixing it. While I waited for Suzanne and Joy to arrive with Joy's bike, I talked to Melody, another of the friendly employees at the shop.
We didn't ride out of Ada until 11:30, by far our latest start of the tour, and of course we had missed the brief “cool” part of the day. We followed Suzanne's directions from the bike shop with no problems, and then reached the super-busy intersection near a river crossing we had been warned of. We ducked into a Wendy's first, and it proved to be the best Wendy's ever – I'm usually not a fan of the chain, but the young, with-it female manager seemed to have successfully imprinted her personal stamp on the place.
We had about a mile of unpleasant riding to get through, and this time we worked together better than in the past, and I was able to avoid one of my heavy-traffic-induced freakouts. A few miles on relatively quiet roads, and then we reached the White Pine Trail, on which we planned to ride the next few days. There was an ice cream shop conveniently located near the trail, so obviously we stopped there first. Joy was feeling hot by this time, so the girl allowed Joy to use their water hose to drench herself.
The White Pine Trail was paved for the first several miles, and was shaded for much of the way, so of course that was pleasant. It turned to gravel and dirt at the town of Sand Lake, unfortunately, although we found it easier to ride on than we had feared (we had been told that mountain bikes were required, but that's not what found at all. Maybe we weren't that bothered by the surface because of our earlier experiences on the horrible gravel roads in Illinois...) Full disclosure: There was one very short section of sandy dirt that caused Joy to fall, after which she complained of “sand in my underpants”, which expression I decided to file away for future reference.
Later, it grew increasingly hot, and flies started bothering us (mostly Joy, since I was able to outrun them for extended periods.) Joy inexplicably began referring to the flies as “my friends”, as in “Oh, my friends are back!” I wanted nothing to do with her “friends”, and became impatient as the day wore on. I wanted to be inside in a dark room, lying approximately three inches from a powerful air conditioner. To achieve this goal, I had earlier phoned a motel in the tiny town of Morley. The place accepted cash only, was cheap, and had absolutely no internet presence at all. I didn't know what to expect, but I extracted a promise from the guy on the phone that the air conditioner DID work.
After what seemed like forever, we arrived in Morley, which seemed to consist solely of a general store in which fishing supplies were prominently featured, a restaurant/bar, a school, and the motel, which was actually about a mile out of town. The motel was pretty decrepit, and after talking to the guy there I immediately went to the room to check out the air conditioner, which appeared to be staying a half step ahead of the 100F+ heat. The room proved to be the worst-smelling place I've in which I've ever slept. I worked in the mobile-home business for several years, and the room smelled like a 1970s-era trade-in. A few of you will know exactly what I mean. (We thought the motel was the kind of place in which registered sex offenders are forced to reside, but Joy later pointed out that it was probably too close to the school for that to be likely.)
Dinner at the restaurant in town was surprisingly good (although Joy the beer aficionado was disappointed that the “best” beer available was Pabst Blue Ribbon.) We received an email from our Realtor in Utah informing us that the closing on the house we were selling in Utah was happening tomorrow, so we would need to somehow get our part of the paperwork completed, signed, and overnighted tomorrow. After trying to read the documents on the tiny screen on Joy's phone (no WiFi at the motel of course), we decided to figure it all out tomorrow, then went to bed.
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Today's ride: 46 miles (74 km)
Total: 851 miles (1,370 km)
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