This past weekend Nancy and I did an overnight bike trip to test our gear and get a sense of what it’s like to go for a bike ride and have it not end back at home. We also got to learn whether what we’re hauling on our bikes is what we’ll need when we make the trip from St. Louis to Dundee in three weeks.
Our trip was from Nancy’s house in Washington Twp., MI, to our dad’s place north of Davison, MI, and then to Nancy’s friend Sheryl’s house on the south side of town. Then back to Nancy’s house the next day. We had essentially perfect weather for both legs of the ride.
During our ride, I made the discovery that there appears to be not one flat mile of road in the entire southeast quadrant of Michigan. To my credit, I made Nancy wait until the final 10 miles before I treated her with a complaint about the terrain. Up and down, up and down, it never ended. Time for more hill repeats for me, though I have to say I was getting used to (not necessarily enjoying) the hills toward the end of the round trip.
Friday’s ride involved an excellent lunch at the High Street Eatery in Metamora. We ate terrific food sitting out side on a perfect day. The lunch stop came at a perfect time, i.e., after a rather challenging stretch of hills on Dwyer Rd.
A nice visit with our dad, a short visit with our Aunt Sophie, and we were off to Sheryl’s house. Sheryl had cold drinks, a washing machine to clean our gross cycling clothes, and a car to take us to a Mexican restaurant for dinner.
The Mexican food tasted good going down, but, for me, was a big mistake. For the first half of the ride home the next day that Mexican food sat in my stomach like a bowling ball and I would have given a good deal of anything to have vomited. I really struggled for about 30 miles. It was ugly.
We made a couple of “we got lost” excursions that, ultimately, didn’t cost us any miles. One stop for desperately needed water was at a pizzeria/sandwich shop/general store. My request for water was met with, “You don’t want our water. You can have it, but you don’t want it.” I immediately concluded that I also didn’t want any of their food. Bottled water was purchased and we headed on our way in quest of breakfast. We had planned to return to the High Street Eatery for bacon and eggs, but discovered that there wasn’t one restaurant open for breakfast in downtown Metamorah.
Ten miles from Nancy’s house, we found a restaurant that made great food and we needed it. After breakfast, the our tanks were full and the final leg home was a lot easier than the previous miles.
It was a great ride, a good workout, and we learned some things:
- Don’t eat Mexican food if you’re riding the next day.
- My touring bag isn’t nearly big enough to carry everything I’ll need on Rt. 66.
- Even though we’re eating at restaurants on our trip, having more food with us will be important.
- I need to do a lot of hill repeats between now and July 15.
- When setting up routes on my Garmin, I need to make separate files for the outbound and in bound trips.
- Traveling Rt. 66 on bikes with Nancy is going to be a great deal of fun.
