Reports from Jamie's latest tour

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day 58

make the wind your ally

Actual Date: 2007-07-01
Uploaded: mon, 2 jul 2007 06:57:08 -0700
Distance: 144.00 km

Otter Lake, Michigan to Loomis, Michigan.

The wind goddess can be a very fickle creature and courting her can be a very tricky preposition. One moment she's in love with you and sends you blissful tailwinds to speed you along. The next moment she catches you staring at a cloud just a touch too long so she cuts you off at the knees with day after day of punishing headwinds.

Luckily there are days in between those two extremes when her fickle focus is upon others. You can use these days to your advantage if your mind is willing. Today was such a day for me. My roughly planned course had me heading in a direction where the wind would have been coming over my right front saddle bag.

On longer tours like this one it is often possible to make a change of course that allows you to turn a potentially slowing wind into a marginally pushing one. This is what I did. Although it meant skipping Bay City and routing through Saginaw instead it was nice to ride that fine line between the wind goddesses extremes.

This course change also provided me with a welcome oportunity to see some more new places and new people.

Visiting Saginaw was interesting. Like many cities it was clear that some areas were doing better economically then others. Strangely enough the people in the poorer looking areas came across as much friendlier. One question I was unable to get answered was the rough population of the city.

Continuing north-west brought me to Midland and the Pere Marquette rail trail. This trail is paved, has very little traffic and conveniently takes me in the exact direction that I want to go. I spent more then 50 km riding it today and tomorrow should see me finish it off. I usually ride a couple of rail trails during each tour and find that they make for a nice change of pace.

I met several interesting people on the trail including one gentleman who was riding an extremely lightweight triathelon bike. For fun we both tried lifting each others bikes. I felt like his could be lifted with one finger while he had to firmly plant both his feet and prepare himself to lift mine (of course it's really not that hard to lift once you know the touring trick - practice - grin ).

Two gentlemen in a subway shop/gas station pointed me towards tonight's camp site.

The last interesting person of the day was one of the camp rangers. She talked about her interest in hiking and kayaking. It's clear that she has a real love of the outdoors!

Tomorrow should be an exciting day with my entry into bear country.

Happy Canada Day! Strangely enough this is the only day of the tour so far when I haven't seen and heard fireworks.

~Jamie N

Interested in bicycle touring? www.bicycletouring101.com

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Tour Statistics

(Based on riding days only)

Number of Riding Days: 34
Overall total so far: 3840.10 km
Daily Average: 112.94 km
Shortest: 53.00 km
Longest: 163.00 km

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