Disclaimer: Couldn’t decide which song title to use since they are both so spot on for today…so I’m using both of them. I gave myself persmission to change my rules. 😏
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We decided
to bust for home today. Getting home a
day early will give us time to get ready to head back to the U.P. on Friday for
a family camp work weekend. There were a
couple of route options…chose to go through Marquette instead of Escanaba. Either way it would be over a 300 mile day
and we’d already been through Escanaba on this trip.
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It
was just after 9 when I woke up this morning...funny but last night I’d imaged
that we’d be on the road by that time.
It doesn’t take long to get packed when we’re in a hotel room since just
the T-bags and technology come in the room with us. But last night there were a couple of items
we needed out of the trailer and unexpectedly the lid had a malfunction when it
was opened…the hinge let loose and caused some damage which then wouldn’t allow
it to close properly. Kim was able to do a temporary fix but the camp chairs
that were strapped to the top of the trailer came in the room until it was time
to pack this morning. So we had a little
extra to take care of before checking out but we were on the road by 11 a.m.
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Today
was all about making miles…Rapunzel said it was 336 miles to home and would
take 5 hours and 58 minutes. No Roadside
America stops allowed. Stopped for gas,
used the bathroom and got back on the road.
On one of our gas stops we had lunch at their café. We made it home in just over 7 hours, which
is amazing considering how the day played out.
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Weather woes: At the time we left the
hotel it looked like we were going to avoid the minor green clouds showing on
the weather radar. No such luck. We rode through bands of rain for the entire
ride. Thankfully the rain spurts didn’t
last long but they came on very quickly and oh, how painful that rain was when
it hit. It was the sharp stinging kind again. So it wasn’t necessarily the amount of rain
that made it hard to see, it was the type of rain.
Had
to stop twice after going through a rain spurt…I couldn’t get my visor down quick
enough and the rain came in over top of my goggles. The inside of the lenses was getting rain
spattered right along with the outside and needed to be wiped off. The second time it happened my eyes were
being hit by the rain also. Very hard to
keep your eyes open when it feels like they’re being stabbed by water.
Kim uses
his visor a lot and kept it down all the time today; my goggles don’t fit so
well under my visor so I typically don’t use it at all. Not using it was a
mistake I made early on but I’m a fast learner so eventually I kept it down.
When
the rain was coming down especially hard I would slow down and the gap between
Kim and I would widen. More than once he came on the radio to let me know that
I was almost out of the rain or that it was slacking off…giving me
encouragement.
And
the wind was an issue in places also.
Like when crossing the Mackinac Bridge.
Both of us have crossed the bridge many times and it’s always some
degree of windy. But neither of us have
ridden in the type of wind we encountered today. It was lean into it or be blown over. And I mean lean into it hard. As if that wasn’t stressful enough the needle
rain started when we were about a third of the way across. Very thankful that there was no construction
in the southbound lanes so we weren’t forced to ride the grate.
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I
didn’t realize it until Kim mentioned it but we rode from the Holiday Station
in Wetmore (near Munising) to home without stopping, which Rapunzel says would
be 178 miles and about 3 hours. Add that
to the stress of riding across the bridge and it’s no wonder the muscles in my
right shoulder and neck were unbelievably tensed up and painful when I stopped in the
driveway. I was in the shower about 15
minutes after arriving home.
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Despite today’s weather this time away on the bikes was a good break
from real life. Now we’re home,
refreshed and ready to wade back into it.
 |
| And we're home!! |
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