Everything and Opposite Days

That's the Mackinac Bridge! I'm just going to come right out and say it: It's prettier than the Golden Gate Bridge, and Lake Michigan is better than the ocean, too.

I'm writing this from a laundromat in Traverse City, Michigan as the sun is going down, hoping I can find my campsite in the dark 3.5 miles away from here... (I have a light but it's going to be pretty dark out there on the bike trail!)

I want to write about Sunday, which was Everything Day... and then Monday & today, which were the opposite of each other...

Sunday started off gloomy - a combination of rain and feeling sad about the news that my friend Stuart Colthard died on Saturday after a few years of fighting cancer, and then a shockingly quick descent over the past couple of weeks. I thought I'd see her in the fall, but... anyhow, I was thinking about her riding along in the grey along the coast, listening to music she liked too.

And then the sun came out... and I started feeling happier again, because that's what biking in the sun along the shore of Lake Michigan can do for a person. I remembered the tasks my brother and sisters had set me - all the things our parents didn't let us do on family vacations. First I ate a pasty for lunch (meat & potatoes in pastry dough, sort of a Cornish burrito) - really really tasty if you get a good one, which I did, in the Hog Island Country Store;
then I saw a sandy beach along the road (it's in the far distance in this photo) and got off my bike and went swimming there!! (actually our parents let us wade in the water off the highway, but then our clothes always ended up getting wet - I had my suit this time.) Then I went to the MYSTERY SPOT!!! It was dumb but, duh, that's why you go, right?

And finally, I camped in the state park by the bridge (at the Straits of Mackinac) - and I took the picture of the bridge from the picnic table at my site! Way. On Sunday it seemed like I did, and felt, everything... and ended up happy. Tired, but in a good way.

But Monday pretty much sucked. It poured rain in the morning and then turned hot & muggy - so my stuff and myself were just a steaming mess all day. A day which lasted forever... it felt like the Adventure Cycling route took every long-cut imaginable rather than the shorter way, and took me over every hill in the NW lower peninsula. Against the wind, naturally. It was a really long day - 80 miles - and then the last 10 miles included some of the hardest hills of the day. It was awful.

And then I saw the sign - horrified, like What, it could get WORSE? Only to find that in fact it was a steep down-hill, which took me pretty much into the town where I stayed. So the crappy day ended well, but it still really knocked me out.

And luckily today was the opposite of yesterday: I got up & out early, was on rolling hills by 8:30am - which at that time of day are fun, I have to say. It was really hot again, but I got to swim TWICE - yay - in a little lake called Torch Lake, and then in Lake Michigan at Grand Traverse Bay. I'm camping in the state park there, and the beach is fantastic - it's sandy and the water is shallow for a long ways out, so the water is warm... I also rode less than 60 miles today (after 80 yesterday and nearly 90 on Sunday), which helped. AND, using the handy guide I found in Escanba, I had dinner in a local brewery - so I really feel like I got to do all the fun things today. (Well, most of them.)

And special bonus: an old friend found my blog & wrote to me - her family moved away when we were in 11th grade and I never could find her. What a great thing - and it's the opposite of losing Stuart, it just occurs to me...

One of the reasons Monday felt so hard was I got a late start, because I stayed up late Sunday evening hanging out with the people next to me in the campground (I shared my six-pack with them and they shared their dessert & a nice chair by their fire). That meant I didn't get all my routes written out & my stuff organized that night and had to do it in the morning, plus get a shuttle across the Bridge (they don't let you ride a bike on it & there's no sidewalk)... so I didn't get riding until 11am. In the rain, etc.

It's a tension I'm feeling - the need to be focused on getting my stuff ready for the next day, vs. taking the time to talk to people... which is a strong impulse, and really fun. And one of the point of traveling, really. I don't want to just be in my tent scribbling out cue sheets... I've learned that it all goes better if I get up at the crack of dawn even if it means I don't get enough sleep. But I'm trying to get more sleep, too...

So, that's my week. I might not have internet access again until Thursday or even the weekend - but then again, maybe I will.