The Spokesrider

When Black Hawk came through here in the 1820s, on his way to Fort Malden, there was no Moscow. On his last trip, in 1830, there would have been a new, log-cabin tavern. When the militias from Lenawee County and the Detroit area came through here in 1832, on their way to defend the territory [...]

Saturday on my way to Moscow I stopped here, across the road from the Convis township hall. It’s a place where I had stopped once before, on a Thanksgiving Day ride in 2006. I couldn’t remember the name of the person, a militia veteran of the Black Hawk war, who had farmed here years afterward, [...]

Moscow is at the bottom of a valley formed by the Kalamazoo River, which is just a small stream here. I don’t think I’m the only person to have thought of the village as a Sleepy Hollow sort of place. Sundown comes early down at the bottom.

On my Sunday ride back home, I passed through a small Amish settlement in in the southeast-most township of Calhoun County, Michigan. I took this photo of what I take to be an Amish business as one to use when I try to explain that the Amish people are not anti-technology. They’re constantly adopting new [...]

I got back tonight from an overnight bike trip, the first one of 2008, and the first self-contained trip since July 2006. My destination was Moscow, 65 miles from home, along Black Hawk’s old road in Hillsdale County. Yesterday I had a stiff wind at my back, but even so I didn’t go very fast. [...]