Day10: A very varied Gmaps route gets me to Ann Arbor

Sunday June 23, 2019

I planned to do an easy ride on a beautiful day and take a much needed rest day the next day when the weather forecast included possible hazardous weather. As usual, things didn't quite work out the way I planned.

Much of yesterday was nice, and easy, riding. However, six miles of increasingly more challenging to ride dirt farm roads didn't fit my expectations. These are roads on a one mile grid and every time I crossed a crossroad, the width narrowed and surface of the next mile of road was worse. At the end of those six miles, I was riding roads with puddles covering half the road width and having to dodge both potholes and large puddles by riding on narrow strips of rough dirt between them.

I was concerned that I would be walking before I got to the end of those roads. I also expected that the final crossroad would be paved. Neither of these things was true, but at least the crossroad the route turned east on was better, instead of worse and, when the route turned north again, there was a major increase in dirt road quality and width. That four miles still had lots of potholes, but most of the time I was able to avoid them and ride on hard smooth dirt. I still hit a lot of potholes. Once again I was thankful for my big front tire!

My lower back, which I injured a week ago, has been slowly getting better, but the beating it took on those rough dirt roads made it much worse. I had trouble walking across the road for supper last night and spasms in my buttock muscles when I got up this morning made it painful to stand. I took a long walk before eating breakfast this morning at my motel and that helped. Speaking of motels, I checked in at this Days Inn for two nights. The room is OK, but three of the four (?) lamps in the room don't work. I'm not sure why this small room needs four lamps, but two would be useful and how can they not notice when 75% of the light don't light? The room has an un-openable french door to the outside and I'm sitting by it using outside light as I type this. I moved the one usable lamp to the desk when I was working on this text last night. I only was able to work till about 8 PM - sundown was about 9 PM, but I couldn't stay awake that late!

The route from Maumee to Petersburg MI was a good mix of trails and small roads. The route from Petersburg to Milan was not good and playing with Gmaps I see a route which would have avoided the really bad dirt roads but included the last 4 miles of much better dirt road. It goes through Dundee instead of Petersburg and is also a little shorter. After Milan, Carpenter Rd is fine.

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