To Hell … and Back

I’m sure many (most?) people reading this believe this is my destiny regardless, but I can honestly say I had no intention of going there today. The day started off brightly. I met my awesome niece, Isabella, for a late breakfast in Ann Arbor. Our families normally get together at Thanksgiving time, but now that she’s at school, we don’t have the bonus visits like we used to. I headed out for my ride afterwards. Unlike the recent past, it was a beautiful day with a 0% chance of rain. I planned to ride the Lakelands rail-trail, but at the last minute, I decided to do a loop instead of an out and back on the trail. I incorporated about 15 miles of the trail but the rest was on roads. Some were dirt and some were paved. Often the paved ones were worse than the dirt because of seams, expansion joints and potholes and a general lack of a shoulder, but it felt good to be off the trail for a change. Trails have their place. They’re usually flat and well-maintained and there’s no traffic. There’s also usually nothing to see. In these past few days while I’m getting caught back up to my plan, they’ve been useful to log some miles and check off a few states, but after tomorrow, I’ll be glad to be done with them as my primary conduit.

I left AA and wound my way up to Hamburg - my second Hamburg of the week and definitely a bit of a different vibe than the one in Germany. I picked up the trail there and followed it for awhile, sharing it with many other bikers and walkers out enjoying the weather. There was even a miniature horse being walked like a dog. (Ok, so sometimes you see things on the trail). After I hit 30 miles, I peeled off and figured I would head back. Since I got a late start and still had a 300 mile drive ahead of me, 60 miles was pretty much my max for the day. I stopped for lunch in a tavern in Gregory, MI, where I got to hear this kid at the bar explain his list of step and half-siblings to the waitress. The list was probably as long as his arm and he finished by explaining that his mother was old when she had the youngest child. Old is apparently 38. I’m guessing he was 21 since he was in the bar and he was not the oldest. At least she’s keeping her Ob-Gyn in business.

I hadn’t gone 100 yards from the tavern after lunch when I saw the road sign pointing to Hell. Not really having a plan for getting back to AA and this sign being in the general direction I needed to go, I thought I should go to Hell (ok, that was too easy). Sure enough, about 7-8 miles down the road, there is a bar, a park with a creek, and then another bar on the other side of the creek. Welcome to Hell. Of course, what else would you expect to find there, but easily 100 motorcycles parked out front of the bars, with riders of every shape and size (but not color), sitting out by picnic tables, probably swapping stories about the sad sack bicyclists that they’ve run off the road over the years. From there, it was a pretty easy and uneventful ride back to AA, being passed by many of those same motorcycles along the way. Before leaving town, a quick stop at the MDen was in order to grab another shirt. Alas, I could not bring myself to do this in either Columbus or South Bend. The logistics of wearing school clothing for a team that you are actively rooting against is too complicated, so my college shirt collection remains only schools to which I (or my brother) have paid tuition. That will change tomorrow.

Me and Isabella after breakfast. Of course she’s much taller than I am but she still made me take the selfie, so my fat, scrunched up face is much too close to the camera for anyone’s liking.

Hamburg, Germany

Hamburg, Michigan. A slightly different vibe

Yes. A woman walking her horse. Like a dog.

Hell

This deer was also in Hell

They didn’t even pay me to take pics