Back to the future

Iron River to L’Anse, Michigan. Friday, May 28, 2021

Another 55 miles into a headwind today, with no towns in between, so I took the motel breakfast for all it was worth, ordering eggs, cereal, yogurt, toast, sausage, and one of those waffles. Trey, the guy behind the counter, was very accommodating, he was a big Cubs fan and we talked about the crazy baseball play yesterday.

Despite the headwind, it was one of those beautiful days today, with the sky a cerulean blue and little around me but acres of pristine forest. There was a grocery store about 20 miles in, and I had a dish of ice cream, Snickers bar, and a quart of milk. I can’t figure out why I’m not losing weight faster.

Came back out to the bike to find another broken spoke. Sigh. I’m getting better, this time I replaced it in about 45 minutes, but of course there was no one to re-true the wheel. I did the best I could by plucking the spoke until it had the same tone as those adjacent.

10 miles further down the road, I came upon a weird quirk of geography, I was re-entering the eastern time zone.

Astute blog readers will recall that I crossed into central time on May 14, a full two weeks ago. Since then, my progress has admittedly been more north than west, but I have not significantly backtracked to the east. So what gives? This felt like I was losing ground. Indeed, I had “lost” an hour, had to move my clock ahead.

That unsettled feeling was not helped by another “ping” from my rear wheel; sure enough I had broken another spoke, two in the same day, my fifth overall. By this point it was just 8 miles downhill to my destination, so I held off on fixing it. As the picture shows, the shoulder was in good shape.

My destination was L’Anse, a resort town on Keweenaw Bay of Lake Superior. A couple of days ago I was dismayed not to find any Priceline-able motels here, and it suddenly occurred to me: this was Memorial Day weekend, and a resort town. Quite possibly, everything was booked up, the papers are full of stories about people desperate to travel again, after being cooped up for a year. Camping was not an option, it was supposed to go down to 28° tonight. I started frantically calling the motels directly, nobody answered until I reached Motel 41, where the owner Scott said he had a room available. I snatched it up, paying in advance for two days.

I needn’t have worried. There was only one other room booked, to a couple of motorcyclists. Scott said because the weather was so cold, nobody was booking anything. This motel I had committed to was very bare-bones, but adequate and quite inexpensive.

Since I’d lost an hour with the time zone, I didn’t get there till after eight, and all the restaurants were closed except for a Subway. I had another lovely FaceTime call with Jane and my friends, but then had to rush to get a shower in before that restaurant closed.

Even though everything was closed, the town’s location at the westernmost extremity of the eastern time zone meant the sun didn’t set until 9:46 PM. Weird.

Tomorrow is Mount Arvon, the notoriously difficult-to-find Michigan highpoint. I researched it as much as I could, people said don’t trust your GPS, follow the route recommended at the visitor center. That center was closed, but the brochures were outside; the instructions were a bit byzantine, but I loaded them carefully into RideWith GPS. I can trust the app if I scrutinize the route beforehand. I loaded up with groceries for the 56-mile trip, fixed that broken spoke, stripped down the bicycle to just what I need for tomorrow, and didn’t get to sleep until 2AM. Good thing I slept eight hours the night before.

Distance 55 miles, 1,916 total. Time 9 hours with stops. Elevation gain 2,021 feet