Lake Michigan Cycling Trip Day 4: Daisy Chain of Transcendence

Today was a good day.

I awoke in Charlevoix (in my roadside room for those following along) and helped myself to the foam cup coffee, white bread bagels, and weather channel in the lobby. Apparently, lawyers are giving the news now, because they said Petoskey would see thunder showers mid day, some of which would be severe, then that there was a 40 percent chance of rain.

There was, unbeknownst to the lawyers, including this one, actually a 100 percent chance of rain. I evaded it for 15 miles along the lovely Little Traverse Wheelway, then got caught for an hour-long downpour in a pavilion with a fortunate view of Lake Michigan. For a couple hours after that, I cycled in an intermittent drizzle.

In the gas station where I stopped for lunch (you do what you gotta do), I ate before I paid. The cashier remarked, “You must’ve been hungry!” I looked down at the wrapper remains of my 650 calorie burrito and fig bar lunch, and looked back up at her bewildered. At that moment, I saw her realize that she didn’t just cycle for hours in the rain, and that she should probably pipe down.

The next cashier in a remote gas station was similarly chatty. I’d just come out of some gorgeous rolling hills and she asked, “Remind me again how cycling on a day like today is fun?” It had cleared up by this time, but was 86 degrees and muggy. I just chuckled and asked, “How far to Mackinaw City?”

“Thirteen miles,” she answered.

“Oh, that’s not bad,” I said.

She shook her head and replied, “Just goes to show how you and I look at things very differently.”

Truth was I’d had some beautiful moments in the hills, and hadn’t come off that high. I was thinking about how, in running, once you see you can run a mile at a certain speed, you can then try to run two at that speed. Then three, four, etc., until you build a daisy chain of the faster speed.

I was wondering if happiness is much the same. If we can just find a moment, a feeling, that we want more of, why can’t we work to daisy chain moments like that together, until we are experiencing truly functional, consistent, and sustainable improvement?

I enjoyed those thirteen (ahem: sixteen) miles up to Mackinaw City. I caught a ferry to Mackinac Island, expecting to stay there for the night. Who would have guessed that on a car-free island, the hotels would be so unsympathetic as to ban bikes from the premises, requiring you to leave them on the public street overnight? Not bloody likely! I was willing to pay for an expensive room, but not while losing sleep over the security of my only transportation (and not a paltry investment, to be fair). So I was on the island for all of 18 minutes before I was giving those taffy-pulling, pantaloon-wearing fascists the finger from the aft of the ferry to St. Ignace.

Not fifty yards off the ferry I was able to find a place where no one cares what I do with or without a bicycle in my $50 room. I enjoyed a turkey rueben at the nearby pub (even with the golden raisins in the coleslaw that replaced the standard kraut), and got to bed early.

I had some trouble with my chain today and an hoping I didn’t permanently damage it in The Bungee Incident (which still puzzles me). It’ll have to hold for the rest of the trip, or I’ll have a lot of walking to get off the Upper Peninsula.

Tomorrow: a non-negotiable 80-odd miles to Manistique.

Today’s cycling mileage: 56.5
Avg speed: 11.0
Fastest speed: 36.3 mph

Gain: 942 feet

Expenditures:
$1.00 two bananas
$2.47 Burrito, fig bars, diet Mello Yellow
$0.99 popcorn
$30.00 two ferries
$13.00 turkey rueben, pint of Bell’s
$54.50 Thunderbird Inn
TOTAL: $101.96