Home.
We woke up early, prepared for a leisurely day. I had the day off of work, so all we had to do was ride 60 miles, with a tailwind, through familiar streets. It was Friday of Memorial Day weekend.
The hotel we stayed at in Grand Haven was surprisingly nice -- the owners had obviously invested in it over the winter. The price was cheap -- about $50 with taxes. We grabbed some coffee, and at a modest breakfast before mounting up.
I am not putting another picture of myself mounting my bike. It's just not funny any more.
We hugged the coastline as well as we could from Grand Haven. Don, Vic and I do a ride along this road to Holland, and it was fun to share another ride with Sue. We looked at the sidepath and chose the road. There's a decent shoulder on the road, and the road doesn't wobble up and down the way the sidepath does.
Sue was excited. She was moving about 15 miles and hour, not paying attention to speed. I can't believe how strong and fast she's become -- I work my ass off at the gym and biking regularly, and I can barely keep up. Our average, when we got home, was over 12-- so I did get her to slow down sometimes.
Eventually the road veered inland so we could cross the bridge into downtown Holland. Once we were downtown it was clear the path I mapped was not going to be any fun, and we decided to take South Shore to Myrtle/62nd street. This turned out to be a lovely, quiet ride.
In no time we found Blue Star, and we stayed on it until Saugatuck, where we wanted to get lunch. Unfortunately, the roads were completely torn up all around the city and we never got there. We were back on Blue Star through Douglas, and stopped at a cafe for lunch.
We started talking with the people at the table next to us. The were very impressed with how far we'd come that day, but it took some explaining for them to realize we were almost home after 1000 miles. As they left, one of the men told me he couldn't ride his bike more than 10 miles any more -- "It's just what happens when you reach 80". I didn't tell him about Don, 82, who does 50 mile rides regularly.
We decided to take a detour along the coast. Sue remembers a spectacular ride along the coast between Douglas and Glen, so we headed that way. About this time we began getting calls from various children "When are you coming home?"
The houses and view were spectacular, but about a mile south of Wiley road, the road ended. Google maps did not show this. Nor did the routing system of the Garmin GPS. There's about 100 feet of road gone, and the property owners are very territorial. We backtracked to Wiley, followed Blue Star to Glen, then went back to the coast for a while.
Eventually we got to South Haven on Blue Star. The afternoon traffic was picking up, and you could tell that tourist season was in full swing. We gawked at the changes since we left -- it was now spring and every tree had thick leaves.
We got home, took some triumphant photos and a shower. Then...
- we picked up the grandkids
- found Lyss' broken down car to arrange towing. It was parked in a man's driveway, and he agreed to take the title.
- replaced Sue's laptop
- Grocery shopped
- put the kids to bed.
- etc, etc.
The next day (Saturday) at 10am the house was full of people, and we had lots to do. On Sunday there was a family reunion for us, and a birthday party for the grandkids that we didn't attend.
On Monday I rode 50 miles with Vic and Don.
On Tuesday I went back to work.
It's been hard to say goodbye to this trip, and to find time to finish, but here it is.
Maybe we'll bike around another lake this year.
61 miles, 835 miles TOTAL.
