Michael's Excellent Adventure

Day 20, 7-7-2002

No Bed

As feared, we both slept very little on the boat, though I do carry with me the indelible image of waking up in my deck chair on the bow of the ship to see the glittering stars in a clear sky over the middle of Lake Michigan. We had a bleary-eyed breakfast in Luddington with one of the annoying bike tourists, who had stuck himself to us like a piece of gum that your leg brushes against in a movie theater. Fortunately, he was going north from Luddington, and we, south. After our repast, John and I hit the road and found ourselves on lovely Lakeshore road, gliding through the woods around Bass Lake. We hit some more pretty good back roads in the regions where I had map coverage, but Michigan bike maps are a county by county proposition, and I had a gap in Newaygo county, which was out of print. With no reference to guide us, John and I had no choice but to hit the highways, which were the smallest things on my statewide map, and which (those said highways) completely sucked. Michigan has more square feet of pulverized wildlife per road-mile than any other civilization in history. We finally got a motel room in the town of Newaygo at 2:30 PM after riding 85 miles. The fun moment for the day: telling John that he'd misread a sign earlier and that he shouldn't get his hopes up that a motel was just around the corner, then rounding the corner and bam, there's the town. That's the kind of irony I can use more of, thank you very much.