The first was a June vacation to Drummond Island. On that one I rode 610 miles in 6 days of riding. But it wasn’t six consecutive days of riding. It was an eleven day vacation. On some of those days we did things that didn’t have anything to do with my bicycle.

Day one was a 114 mile ride to Central Michigan University at Midland, where we attended a two-day history/mapping conference called, “Mapping in Michigan and the Great Lakes Region.”

It was wet and drizzly when I left home. I didn’t get my camera out until I was 20 miles from home, where I took the above photo at the gas station at the intersection of MI-79 and Charlton Park Road near the Thornapple River. For history purposes, I usually like to ride south to the good farm country that was being settled at the time of the Black Hawk war. But once in a while I like to ride north, too. I often stop at that place (marked “Tractor” on the map below) when I go out for rides in this direction.

I also stopped there on my way back, ten days later. That time it was sunny and warm. I had got some gas-station junk food and was sitting outside on a bench on the grass to take a break. I was feeling a bit tired by then, but was fairly satisfied with how I was doing, having ridden 124 miles the day before. A young woman on a bicycle stopped, with the same intention. She saw me so before going inside came over and asked how far I had ridden. I checked my bicycle odometer — “About 89 miles,” I told her. “That’s not too bad,” she replied.

So I asked her how far she had gone. She was about at the 200 mile mark for the day. She and her husband had been taking part in some 24-hour event, and he had told her she could finish if she wanted to. I was impressed. If she lived in Battle Creek or Kalamazoo, she was even further from home than I was. When she went inside to get a snack, I looked at her bike more closely. It was very different from mine with its panniers and fenders. Hers was definitely a go-fast bicycle.

Just the same, it was discouraging to think someone could ride 200 miles and not look as tired as I felt. When I got home I weighed myself and my bike. Sure, she was a lot younger than I was, but it couldn’t be age that slowed me down, could it? It had to be the weight of my bicycle, I figured. (I don’t remember just what the weight was, though.)

Each year I concern myself less with distances and speed. It’s too discouraging, and besides, I enjoy stopping to take photos and just take in the countryside. But once in a while I like to see how much I can do.

This week was my first week of riding for the year 2008, and after the first commute home from work, I started pushing a little harder each day. I was glad to see that my average speed for the week got higher each day (not that it’s high enough that I care to say what it was). But I probably should credit favorable winds more than my ability to get in shape quickly. I feel ready to try a 60-mile ride tomorrow afternoon, which would give my first 100 for the year. The winds look like they might be favorable for it. I hope the weather forecast holds.

This is not a scene from one of my bike rides. It’s from the 1986 Russian science-fiction/comedy/satire Kin-Dza-Dza. I happened upon it at YouTube last night while looking for Russian clips with English subtitles that would be useful for learning the language. I think I could become one of the cult fans for this movie — I may already have. (I’ve also blogged about it at The Reticulator.)

The large object is an interplanetary space vehicle on the planet Pluk in some other galaxy. It’s a creaky rustbucket, but it seemed to do the job.

It reminded me of an interplanetary space vehicle I came across on one of our tours to Black Hawk sites.

No, the space vehicle is not in this photo, but if I remember right, it was just a block or two to the left. This location is where we were waiting for the ferry to take us across the strait from Detour village to Drummond Island, in Michigan’s upper peninsula.

It was near the end of the fourth day of a ride to that destination in June 2004. Black Hawk also used to go to the same destination, though I am not sure how often. During the 1820s he often made the trip from his home at present-day Rock Island, Illinois to Fort Malden to get presents from the British, on whose side he had fought during the War of 1812. Fort Malden is across the Detroit River from Detroit. His trips there are fairly well documented.

But some years he probably went to Fort Drummond, instead. The British had a fort almost in sight of where I was standing to take the above photo, if it wasn’t for the buildings on the right blocking the view. Then a boundary commission determined that Drummond Island belonged to the United States, and the British vacated it.

I’ve often wondered how Black Hawk got across. It was no small matter — because he usually travelled with a large party of men, women, and children. My best guess, based on knowledge of how he got across the Detroit River, is that some of his Odawa or Ojibwe friends ferried his party across on canoes. But there are other details I wish I knew. There are descriptions of how other Native groups would make a grand spectacle out of their arrival. It would be interesting to know how that would be done when one had to depend on others for a borrowed ride.

I had to borrow a ride, too. I rode the entire distance to the Mackinac bridge, then Myra met me to take me across on the car. (Bicycles aren’t allowed on the bridge.) Then after a lunch I resumed my ride to Detour Village, where Myra waited for me. The ferry took us across, and we stayed a couple of nights at a bed and breakfast on the other side, at the site of the old fort.

I took this photo in Detour village on the way back. The strait is in the background.

I can’t seem to find any written description of what it was all about, so I’m going by hazy memory. It was something that Myra had learned about in the local museum while waiting for me. If I remember correctly, it was a story of a cult that built the vehicle, but when it didn’t work out the group kind of fell apart and abandoned it. Or something like that.

Maybe it would have worked better if they had got together to compare notes with the builders of that space vehicle on planet Pluk.

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