A hundy plus

6-24-10 Day 20: Lake City, Michigan to Mackinaw City, Michigan: 115 miles in 8:21 hours. Rt 66 north to Rt 131 north to Rt 31 north to Rt 108 north.

Kind of got up this morning with a bug up my ass – a bit disappointed that I kind of frittered away a decent day of riding the day before. So I awoke at 6 AM and was on the road by 7:15 AM. Got a shot of coffee and 3 doughnuts at the gas station next door for my first round of fuel. Now the illustrious weather people were good enough to call the severe storms last night, but they called for an awesome, sunny day today. Well…when I got rolling it looked like the heavens were going to unleash another round of storms – just totally grey with thick cloud cover. AND the killer nasty northwesterly headwind! Damn. I got it rolling and was working to just maintain 11-12 mph, which immediately led to me doing math in my head to figure out how long it would take me to do the ride to Mackinaw City….let’s see….that’s 12 mph for….oh something like 9.5 hours! Long day, and I didn’t really know if I could keep it jamming for nine plus freaking hours into that cross headwind.

Tried not to think about the time and speed and just enjoy the ride. Let the chips fall where they may, and no use in busting it too hard into the cross headwind, as that would only blow me up by hour number 6. Nope, just took a moderate Z2 pace and used a higher cadence and tried hard not to look at the cyclocomputer’s time and distance settings. I surprised myself by making Kalkaska just 2:10 hrs in. Good deal, and then I did this little jag west to jump on Rt 131 north. And this is a real main road actually and it had a great berm, something like 6 feet wide with a rumble strip next to the lane line. And after a couple of hours my legs warmed up enough to push the pace to about 13-14 mph – and it felt good. By the time I passed Kalkaska I felt I was really entering the north country of Michigan, with many of the trees being coniferous in addition to the birch, aspen and cottonwood. Also noticed that the vast stretches of farm country were essentially replace by endless tracts of woodland.

I’m sure that getting away from the long stretches of open farmland cut down on the cross headwind I had experienced in the first hour of the ride. I mean you ride past these wide open farm tracts and the wind just cuts you down because there’s no wind breaks. And you can feel the difference every time you ride from farmland to forestland – bumps my average up a good 1-2 mph!

So I had that going for me. I had figured that I’d just do Petoskey if the wind destroyed me, but by the time I was rolling down Rt 131 I was totally thinking that I’d shoot for the stars as I had planned and keep jamming to the bridge. Got through Wetzel and Alba with no problem, and just outside of Boyne Falls I stopped for a break at …..Subway. Yep, it came at just the right time, about 4:10 hours into the ride where I was getting that coke craving and gremlin in the belly. Knocked down a footer and probably a liter or so of fountain coke and jumped back on the steed. It was almost like a NASCAR pit stop for God’s sake, where I hammered the sub and cokes and was back on the bike in fifteen minutes!

Through Boyne Falls and then the climbing began. Now not crazy climbing, but climbing nonetheless, where I had to get out of the saddle for long one mile ups in the middle ring. Not killer but certainly taxing with the number of climbs there were. Went right by Boyne Mt ski area and I knew I’d be climbing even more. And I did. Last one took me up above Petoskey for a nice view – but not very appealing from the camera’s perspective what with the still heavy cloud cover.

Petoskey is an upscale place with lots of foo-foo restaurants and coffee shops, along with a gazillion touristy shit shops in the downtown. Pretty much had decided that I’d go for the big dog and ride all the way to Mackinaw City. That rather than hang out in touristy Petoskey the rest of the day. Besides, I’d made it there by 1:30 PM and still had plenty of time to ride. Good thing was that I had bumped my average up to 13.5 mph by the time I reached Petoskey. So I rolled straight through town without a look and kept it going. Got on Rt 31 north and then noticed that the wind was at my back and I was riding in the big ring and rolling along at 18-20 mph – thing was that the road took an easterly jag outside of town for about 8-10 miles. I’ll take it!

As soon as the road straightened out and went due north again, man was I slammed by the cross headwind – HARD! And to add insult to injury the road, Rt 31 was a real mess to ride on. It had that wonderful 6 foot berm, but it was cracked, crevassed and riddled with all kinds of junk – broken asphalt chunks, rocks, gravel, a total mess. So that really slowed me down. And the I saw the sign: 17 miles to Mackinaw City. Now by then I was 98 miles in, I had my hypoglycemia thing going on, the cross headwind was just crazy hard, as the wind had really picked up, and the road was a total piece of &%^#$ to ride on. There were times where I was just creeping along at 9-11 mph, which got the gears turning in my head again trying to figure out how much longer I had to ride. Heck, at that pace it could well take 1:30 hours!

Finally I got off the freaking berm from hell and got on a ribbon of berm next to the outside lane line where the surface was way better. That seemed to help me get the pace back up again. Have to say that that 17-mile stretch was just one long motha, but finally way the heck down the road I saw some signage that I figured signified the place where Rt 31 merges with I-75. From there it would only be about 4 miles into town. Did it!!!

Stopped at the jcn of 108/Rt 31 and downed a couple of Sweet & Salty’s to quench my sugar low, and then got on Rt 108 which parallels I-75 and began riding into town. It went pretty fast and before you know you it I had found a nice little campground in town and a place to buy my Bell’s microbrew and get some food. Got set up, walked into town and ate at this little local pizza shop where I had a full grinder and onion rings. This grinder is as big as 2 Subway footlongs, and the owner kind of thought I was crazy when he brought it to me out on the patio. I mean these things were huge! But I scarfed them down in no time at all. So basically I’ve eaten 3 foot long subs today.

Got the Bell’s Amber Ale and my world is very, very nice indeed, what with 115 miles in my legs, with me totally making up for yesterday’s ride to be back on schedule. Feel pretty good, not maxed out or wasted. Probably because I chose to put more saddle time in rather than fight the cross headwind and knock maybe, just maybe an hour off of that time. Tomorrow I begin my trek west on Rt 2 in the Upper Peninsula. I’ll be on Rt 2 for the rest of the trip. Not doing 115 miles tomorrow, that’s for sure, and I may even sleep a bit later and start a bit later after today’s ride. Well, time to crack a beer. Adios…….pete