Sunday, October 6, 1996
The last few days have been real tough. On September 28, my trusty PowerBook 5300c laptop computer decided to show the effects of riding several thousand miles on the back of my bicycle. The disk drive crashed real hard. Since the breakdown occurred on a weekend, I tried all the fixes I could think of and used Norton Utilities for Macintosh to back up what files I could locate and recover. Then I waited til Monday to call Apple's 800# hotline (1-800-SOS-APPL). Apple dispatched a box to me via Airborne Express and the computer departed for Apple's Rochester, New York PowerBook repair facility at about noon on Tuesday. Meanwhile, I cooled my heels and dealt with preparations to depart and other matters (see below). The computer returned on Friday about 3:00 PM with a new hard drive, main logic board, keyboard and part of the case (in other words, except for the monitor, it was a new computer). The new hard drive was blank. I spent the rest of the day Friday and all day Saturday reinstalling all my operating software: about 290 Mb, making sure the modem and camera worked with the "new" computer, and repacking everything.
My friend Ritt (whom I met on the Alaska Highway portion of the trip) flew into Detroit on Thursday evening to ride with me on this leg of the trip and I picked him up at the airport. In an ominous portent of things to come, Ritt and I waited about 1-1/2 hours completely stopped on US-23 near Ann Arbor for an accident attended by 2 helicopters and about 20 emergency vehicles. Then on Friday afternoon my daughter called from Interstate 96 to say she'd had a blowout on her car, so I went to help her, but had to call a tow truck because we didn't have a key to unlock the wheel cover. Gosh I hope my luck is better on the trip.
Ritt shipped his bicycle from Tucson, Arizona via UPS. He had it broken down and packed for shipping by a Tucson bike mechanic. When it arrived in Williamston, I took it to Central Park Bicycles in Okemos for mechanic-extraordinaire Al to rebuild. Al did a good job.
We departed from Williamston today at 9:53 AM.
It was cold: 57° (about 42° when I got up) but clear and sunny.
We took a few photos around Williamston before heading South.
 house in Williamston |
 Water Tower |
 Universal Map |
 historical Beeman house |
 Waldo Road house & pumkins |
We had a nice ride south. We stopped for lunch at the Wooden Nickle in Dansville at around 11:30, but they were still serving breakfast so we had french toast.
We passed a lot of dry unharvested field corn as we rode south.
 Ritt |
 Ed |
As we rode along, I was shocked at the number of dead opossums on the road. I counted 17 for the day.
We also found ourselves avoiding walnuts in the road. They're almost as big as baseballs and could be quite deadly to a bicyclist.
The day warmed up quite a bit. By 1:15 PM, it was 74° (f) (though overcast). As the day wore along and we passed through Munith, Grass Lake and Napoleon, it became apparent that we weren't seeing motels. Since the days are short this time of year and we are riding through "civilization", we had decided not to bring our tents and sleeping bags and stay in motels. This plan was starting to seem like a big mistake.
 Portage Lake |
 Grass Lake's 1880's Michigan Central Railroad depot |
We got to Grass Lake around 2:30 and snacked at Frank's Shop-Rite (good deli pasta salad and a drink for about $2.75), then decided to head further south before quitting for the night. Near Napoleon we asked a Napoleon Township police officer where we might find a motel. He indicated that there were none in Napoleon, but a B&B in Brooklyn (about 9 miles past Napoleon). When we got to Napoleon, we stopped at a convenience store and I called the B&B (Chicago Street Inn) to inquire about rates and availability. I was shocked at $80 night for a room in the middle of nowhere. The convenience store owner suggested a motel about 4 miles northwest toward Jackson. We rode there. It was closed and apparently converted to long term rental. We rode on toward Jackson another 4 or 5 miles and inquired at another convenience store. All that store owner or a customer could suggest to us was a motel on Interstate 94 --the Rodeway Inn--a few miles further north. What horrible progress; we'd crossed I-94 before 2:00 and backtracked to it, arriving around 7:00. There was no restaurant, so we called in an order for pizza delivery.
Total distance traveled today: 62 miles.
 Michigan |
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© Ed Noonan 1996, 1997