Day 3, Alma, Riverside Park to Okemos, 59 miles

I’d camped here before and really enjoyed the leisurely packing up and getting going—by 7:30 I was off.

Very slow. I kept stopping to adjust. It was chilly and again drizzly. In Itasca I got a chance to use my immersion stick to heat up water and make a hot tea. I ate a bar and tried to knock some of the built up yukka on my bike that accumulated due to rain and being on a gravel and broken asphalt path. It was more than a baby wipe could handle.

I was on mostly roads. Dewitt turned into a long gravel segment, but again the rain made it a hard-packed surface.

My butt and thighs were sore and I had to keep stretching while in the saddle. It was a lot of miles for a spring ride, first of the year, without a lot of training. Again, ate lunch in St. Johns and purchased a Gatorade for the last push home. There is the gravel path to Krepps, a mile or two of hard surface, then 2.5 miles of gravel, then maybe 5 more miles on asphalt with rollers, ups and downs. By the time I turned off for one mile more of gravel to my next road I noticed my bike performing weirdly. I stopped and squeezed my rear tire. Soft! No! It was maybe only 10 or 11 miles til home, no time for patching or replacing an inner tube. I pumped it up and hoped it would hold.

Needless to say, I made few stops and great time. With the sky darkening I also didn’t want to get caught in a storm. The weather called for isolated thunderstorms. All around me were dark clouds and in the distance I saw sheets of rain. Just another reason to keep going.

I made it home by 3:45 bushed. But, of course, I didn’t stop, I had to get my stuff inside and get ready for a shower and laundry. My Memorial Weekend now a Memory.