Tuesday, October 8, 1996
Time out 8:30 AM, 47°
It was a gloomy overcast day all day today, but we actually made good progress. We plotted a course through Jackson using the Ameritech telephone book Jackson street maps [these local maps turned out to be a great resource available in most phone books], then plotted a course on my Michigan DOT county bicycle maps [see below] south to Cement City, putting us back on our original route (as we would have taken after Napoleon a couple of days ago if we hadn't been forced to Jackson by lack of lodging).
We rode a short distance on M-50 then headed south on Clark
Lake Road through Ocean Beach, a resort area. Though the road had a double
yellow line and was obviously heavily traveled, the resort season was over
and there was almost no traffic at all. We saw some sandhill cranes, a blue
heron and some ducks.
Despite On-2-Wheels' advice to the contrary, we did use US-127
to head south from US-12. We didn't regret our decision. The Michigan 
Department
of Transportation (MDOT) low volume traffic maps for bicyclists (available
for each of Michigan's counties), showed both US-127 and US-12 as having
paved shoulders. The shoulders were great (8' to 10") on US-12 and
good (2') on US-127. The traffic was pretty heavy until we got to US-223,
where most of it turned off.
We stopped for lunch at around 11:30 in Addison with about 30 miles under our belts in a light drizzle. From there we picked up tailwinds for a while and reached speeds of 17-20 mph.
A few years ago, I represented an Addison farmer in a lawsuit against a Michigan bank. The farmer had gotten behind on paying a loan secured by some of his cows. The banks elected to repossess 17 cows. The took 17 cows at random from a large herd of dairy cows. In the modern world, cows have serial numbers tattood on their ears. The security agreement recorded by the bank identified the 17 cows comprising security for the loan. The 17 cows that were actually repossessed were not those cows, but instead were cows leased from another company and didn't even belong to my client. When the bank realized its error, it sought to undo everything, but in doing so created a disaster. On repossession, the bank had hauled the 17 cows to a livestock auction firm for sale. It picked them back up from the auction yard and returned them to my client's farm where they were placed back in my client's herd. The problem was that at the auction yard (where cows are often diseased), they had picked up a highly contagious paratuberculosis disease. By the time it was all over, 80 cows died from the disease. My suit against the bank resulted in a substantial recovery for my client.
Exciting sights today included a giant rooster and some interesting civil war era architecture. We saw several really old, but not particularly well restored or preserved houses.
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We finally crossed over into Ohio and I looked back at Michigan.
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I was concerned about what sort of shoulders and traffic we might encounter in Ohio. I was pleasantly surprised; the shoulders were even better (3') than US-127 in Michigan. The traffic stayed relatively light. Just north of Bryan, Ohio, the road widened and signs on the fence posts proclaimed it to be a "limited access highway." There was no bicycle prohibition, so riding was excellent.
We made it to Bryan, Ohio by about 4:30 PM and stayed at the very nice Colonial Manor on the east side of town ($53). There are some simple motels out there that are immaculate and really well maintained. The Colonial was one of the best.
Total distance traveled today: 73 miles.
SPECIAL NOTE 10/9/96: I AM NOW AT CELINA, OHIO. I EXPERIENCED SERIOUS DIFFICULTY UPLOADING GRAPHIC IMAGES TO THE WEBSITE YESTERDAY AND TODAY. STRUGGLING TO MAKE THE PICTURES WORK, I DIDN'T HAVE TIME TO GET A WEB PAGE DONE TODAY. I'LL TRY TO GET IT UP TOMORROW. WE MADE IT ANOTHER 72 MILES TODAY.
10/10/96: All rectified; see 10/9 and 10/10 pages.
Note 1/97: Voyager was experiencing temporary difficulty with FTP transfers. The graphic images I was uploading were loading very slowly (as low as 38 bytes per second) and then disappearing. It was quite disconcerting but remedied.
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© Ed Noonan 1996, 1997
