Necromancer
Ravenna, MI -> Richville, MI
2 days
143 miles
Tonight I'm sleeping with dead people. Just to my left, we've got Benjie and Hildie Loeffler, and beyond them the Stranges and the Studers. To my right about 20 feet away is Ethan; his heart, however, like mine, has yet to quit. We met on the ferry from Milwaukee to Muskegon and, turns out, are both riding solo Portland to New York. Though I'd been hoping for most of the trip to find a buddy on my same path, at that point on the ferry I was still riding high from Drew's visit and knew that any new person by comparison would fall short. But in the two days we've paired up on this unchartered 150-mile stretch across Michigan, we've got a decent non-intrusive symbiosis going. Tonight, we're camping at the cemetery in Richville, MI, at the junction of highways 15 and 46.
"Why are you coming out here?" the minister asked when I called this morning to see if he could offer a place to sleep for the night, "this is a real one-stop-light town." (pro tip from Josh back in Portland: "if you're ever in a pinch, just find a Lutheran church.") After I explained the particulars of the route to him, lamenting the lack of bike-friendly options out here, the minister offered up the cemetery across the street from his church. No bathroom, no electricity, and no earthly creatures to bother us. It was a welcome sanctuary at the end of a 78-mile day -- the first third through lush, pristine bike-pathed forest; the remaining two-thirds through hellish agro industry and suburbia. When the bike path ended, google's beta bike navigation system tried to send me down a series of gravel roads. After growing increasingly disenfranchised, I opted instead for the direct route down highway 46 -- through Saginaw -- to Richville. It was a mistake.
Saginaw is a few dozen miles from Michigan's epicenters of economic collapse. Up to that point, the state had treated me with stoic kindness. When I stopped at a diner in Greenville yesterday to grab lunch and sit out a flash storm, an older couple bought my meal and left before I could thank them (I ran down the street and caught their car at a stop light, bowed to them, expressed all my gratitude; they gave me a casual wave and then drove off). But Saginaw clearly suffered an exodus of manufacturing jobs: UAW signs hang limply from abandoned factories and one of the city's high schools is up for sale. Instead of a bike path, the right shoulder had deep and unrelenting potholes. The roads were in a general state of disrepair, as though fixing them would just be a painful reminder of the industry that had foresaken them. Most cars were considerate but a couple blared their horns at me and one tow truck driver clearly had a deep-seated hatred for cyclists. I acknowledged the rage in me and opted instead for nonreaction -- easy enough to do when just moving forward takes all the concentration I've got. Plus, I wanted to arrive at the cemetery still alive.
Ethan and I got there at about the same time though we'd taken vastly different routes and had lived vastly different days. I had a mini spa session in the gas station bathroom, returned to camp and am now cozy among my new (and fantastically quiet) neighbors.
