August 1, 2018 Frankenmuth to Memphis MI

Before I get into today’s ride I want to talk about the plated chicken dinner.  It was absolutely fabulous!  The meal at Ginny’s Cupboard was great but I am giving the chicken dinner first place.  The chicken was so juicy and the breading was nice and crispy.  After the dinner we were shuttled back to the campground.   We were in a campground and so there was no floor flopping.  It was hilarious watching the floor floppers dealing with a tent they had never set up.  Not only that but it was forecast to rain last night.  It rained starting at around 8:00 pm through the night without much let up.  Not heavy but steady. 

This morning just as my alarm was about to go off the rain had slowed to a slow drizzle but the alarm went and the rain started coming down in earnest. I really didn’t want to get going maybe I should just sag the entire day, but I didn’t want to do that either.  I had to shift gears on what I was going to wear and how I was going to pack up.  Packing up in the rain everything is folded up from the inside so that all the bags save for the tent fly is put in the bags then it is quickly rolled up and stuffed into the last bag.  It takes a lot more time to do this but at least stuff gets put away dry. 

The rain let up just as I finished packing and headed off to breakfast which was downtown.  It featured freshly squeezed orange juice and Belgium Waffles with strawberries and whipped cream so I didn’t want to miss that.

After breakfast I rolled out with Ed, and Bob.  With minutes Ed dropped Bob and I so we were on our own.  The road was really wet from last night’s rain but it wasn’t raining so we stopped and pulled off the heavy duty rain gear.  The sky looked really black and threatening but so far so good.   

We rolled along and by mile 42 we turned onto SR 90E. There was no shoulder and the road was rough as anything plus it was really busy with really big trucks and other traffic.  As traffic was busy in both directions a lot of the time the vehicles passing us either could not or did not move over.  There were several occasions where a huge semi-trailer truck went past and I thought I was a goner.   Plus there were several wonderful folks in pickup trucks who thought it fun to come as close as possible. This road lasted all the way down to mile 69.  I was so glad to get off this road.  I will never ride it again.

There wasn’t much to photograph to day so we stopped at a pair of antique tractors which were for sale and pretended to have a tractor race. It would appear that the farmers restore their antique tractors and put them up for sale as we saw quite a few along the road.

Picnic was at mile 48 and Jim had made chicken tortilla soup for lunch.  It was great as there were huge chunks of chicken it the soup.  With a ton of fresh fruit for lunch we had a feast.

As Bob and I were coming into town we saw Ed who was now driving the sweep van and he stopped so we went and had chocolate milk as a treat.  My quart of chocolate milk disappeared so fast I couldn’t believe it. 

So despite the heavy threatening clouds it never did rain and Bob and I cruised in completing the 79.7 mile day with 1250 feet of climb with a rolling average speed of 16.8 mph.   Not a bad day.

Terry hot biker