Distance covered today: 166 miles
Distance covered total: 1064 miles
Estimated mileage remaining: 2,436 miles (70% left to go)
“Moisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.”
-Derek Zoolander
As the above quote suggests, today featured more than its share of wetness and moisture, thanks to poundings from a couple of fierce rain storms. While those dampened me physically, they couldn’t totally dampen my morale, as I was still able to wring some beauty out of the day thanks to my long-awaited reunion with the sun and my discovery of the inner beauty of South Bend, IN.
I should explain that today I would be deviating from my originally planned route, as I had decided that rather than following through with the impossibly long 242-mile leg from Ann Arbor to Chicago, I would stop in South Bend for the night instead. In South Bend I had arranged to stay with a family that was friends of some friends back home, with the father of the household just so happening to be a Carleton alum. I had briefly considered camping out at Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, but staying in South Bend sounded more comfortable, would make for a shorter drive, and as an added bonus, would provide an opportunity to meet a fellow Carl. Hey, it never hurts to network, and in general, Carls are pretty interesting people.
Additionally, the prospect of driving from Ann Arbor to South Bend on the eve of Michigan and Notre Dame’s clash in college football was pretty enticing. An otherwise ordinary drive suddenly became a brazen mission behind enemy lines that might allow for heckling Irish fans headed in the opposite direction, as the game was being played in Ann Arbor.
But, getting to South Bend first required that I leave Ann Arbor, something I found to be much easier said than done. The weather forecast for the day only reported a 10% chance of precipitation and had shown a radar almost entirely devoid of green, which came as welcome news after I had nervously scooted beneath ominous clouds the past two days, when the chance of rain had been at 80 or 90 percent. But lo and behold, my luck had expired, as it was raining during my morning in Ann Arbor, delaying my departure and bringing me to a brief tangential tirade regarding the ineptitude of the Weather Channel (specifically their website, weather.com). I readily acknowledge that predicting the weather is by nature a hard thing to do (uh-oh, looks like a Punderstorm Warning has been issued), but at this point these guys have about as much credibility as The Boy Who Cried Wolf. It was as if their online forecasts for Buffalo and Cleveland had accidentally linked to Mumbai during the rainy season, when in actuality, I had hit more bugs than raindrops the past two days. Lastly, I further challenge their legitimacy since they can’t even attract reputable advertisers. All they have are those scam ads on their website about get-rich-quick schemes to whiten your teeth, lower your car insurance, etc. But I digress...
So, to kill time while waiting for this supposedly minor storm cell to dissipate, I enjoyed a leisurely morning in downtown Ann Arbor, even shedding some cargo by mailing my newly acquired trophies from Spiegel Grove ahead to a friend in California. As time ticked by, a light drizzle persisted, but I decided that I should finally hit the road even if it meant enduring a few miles of light rain before bursting through the languishing front and into more favorable scooting conditions.
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| Does that big M stand for Michigan or monsoon? |
That was the plan, anyway, but it would go about as well as Rich Rodriguez’s tenure as head coach just up the street. On the bright side, the light rain finally gave me a chance to break out my emergency plastic poncho, one of those clear garbage-bag-looking things that I had deemed a worthwhile investment at a dollar store in Buffalo given the rough weather expected in the days ahead. Wearing this giant poncho over my clothes and backpack must’ve made me look even more ridiculous on the scooter than I already appeared (no small feat), and while it didn’t quite instill an air of invincibility within me, it made me feel a lot better about embarking on the road to South Bend (even if it was just a placebo effect feeling of assurance). But again, the Weather Channel said I should be fine. Besides the last two days, when were they ever wrong?
Well as it turns out, I pulled out of Geoff’s driveway at the worst possible instant. Within seconds of hitting the pavement, the innocent drizzle that had lured me out into the streets crescendoed into the all-out monsoon that was a couple days overdue. Much the way precipitation had foiled my navigational abilities last night, today’s downpour led me into an inevitable wrong turn. As if cursed by Poseidon, when I pulled over into the mouth of a driveway and was waiting patiently to pull a U-turn, the lakes that had formed at the edges of the curb were churned into whitecapped tidal waves by the cars that came speeding within a few feet of where I sat. Practically left gasping for air in the wake of each successive blast of water, I finally rejoined the flow of traffic, where I was still victimized by spray flung from the tires of cars whizzing past.
My dollar store poncho miserably failed its first test. Far from being the impermeable shield I had naively envisioned back in Buffalo, it wilted in the heat of battle, billowing up in the wind like a tattered flag and exposing my sides to the elements. It was quickly reduced to a pitiful, wrinkled mass, totally incapable of keeping me dry. About the only thing it did effectively was allow pools of water to puddle up in my lap.
And so I drove, with my face contorted into a grimace against the slings and arrows of my outrageous meteorological misfortune, profanity streaming through my mind like water through the streets, and every inch of my clothing and backpack saturated. Even with Ann Arbor still nearly visible in my rearview mirror, I refused to retreat to the safety of Geoff’s apartment. The thought occurred to me for a fleeting instant (about the same amount of time as I stayed dry) but was quickly dismissed. I would hate to surrender an inch of forward progress, especially such hard fought miles as these. Determined to literally ride out the storm, I pushed as far as the town of Clinton, only about 20 miles from whence I came. The rain had finally tapered off a bit, but shivering at the wheel (or handlebars, I suppose) and with at least five hours of driving ahead of me, I desperately needed to change into some dry clothes.
In Clinton I would make the first of several unexpected friends that day. I stopped at the town park to change, and ended up befriending the janitor, who was goin’ around and cleaning the various pavilions. I knew we had special chemistry from the start, when I emerged from the bathroom confused about how to turn the lights on and he yelled over from the distance that I just had to wave my arms around to trip a sensor. Even from afar, he could tell I wasn’t your average visitor to the park, as my beleaguered appearance must have piqued his interest (and I guess there aren’t too many park-goers on rainy days such as this). After getting the lights to turn on, changing into some dry clothes, and then eating lunch in a distant pavilion, the janitor guy finally cornered me on my way back to the scooter and asked “So where exactly are you coming from?” prompting me to tell my story.
He told me that his name was David, and quite frankly, David was a pretty scaring looking guy. He had really sharp features, such as spiky silver hair and a matching goatee, but his most distinguishing trait were his laser blue eyes. They looked like devil eyes.
But they say not to judge books or park janitors by their cover, and Devil-Eyed Dave turned out to be a pretty cool guy. He told me that when he was a young buck, he rode a motorcycle all the way out to Montana and back. Looking back on it, he said that his best memories were of the times much like the predicament that I found myself in now. It’s those moments of misery and desperation that if they don’t kill you, you reflect on most happily (but it's worth reinforcing the fact that they almost kill you).
Thanking David for the pep talk, I set out for South Bend with dry clothes, clearer skies, and a renewed perspective of life on the road. He was right. It just isn’t an adventure without ample doses of hardship and it would be fun to look back at the times when I was most miserable and craft them into tall tales and “back in my day” stories. Even so, I felt as though I’d had enough adventure for one day, and passed the time worrying that more rain lurked ahead after every turn.
Meeting David made me aware that the people were becoming noticeably nicer ‘round these parts. Strangers back east didn’t interact with me much, but in the Midwest I would routinely exchange nods of acknowledgement with other bikers and cyclists and at one point even garnered cheers from a small group of people at the side of the road. Other than these intermittent waves, southern Michigan crept along without incident, save for one major development. After more than six days and 700 miles of being smothered under an oppressive gray blanket of Tropical Storms and other rain clouds, the sun finally decided to grace me with its glorious presence once again.
Normally I’m pretty tolerant of overcast weather, but I can’t overstate the morale boost provided by this curious and unfamiliar thing called sunshine. At times, riding on the scooter is something of a chore, and at other times it’s a joyous and liberating experience. Depending on a long list of variables, my days tend to oscillate between these two states of scooting, but after the sun came out and brightened my mood, it made for a fun afternoon of riding.
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| Finally a sunny picture! |
Zipping happily through the sunny countryside, I finally came to a Crossroads. The Crossroads of America, that is. At least that’s one of the names Indiana answers to, or as its state sign proudly proclaimed it, “Abraham Lincoln’s Boyhood Home”. (It’s pretty amazing how many states try marketing themselves based on their ties with Abe. Illinois also lays claim to Abe’s roots, declaring themselves to be The Land of Lincoln, but he was actually born in Kentucky, which keeps relatively mum on the subject. I guess bourbon and mint juleps do enough wonders for tourism down in the Bluegrass State so that they don’t need to flaunt their status as Abe’s rightful birthplace.)
With another state crossed off the list, I motored onward, reaching South Bend as the sun was setting. Though most of the day’s miles were behind me, the last handful would be some of the toughest, as I ran into a few different kinds of trouble. First, I got lost and spent about a half hour running pretzels around the city, searching in vain for streets that simply were not marked. After three or four frustrating and fruitless swoops through town, I had to resort to asking for directions at a gas station, where a police officer who overheard the neighborhood where I was headed chimed in half-jokingly, “Have you got a gun with you?” I thought it was an odd thing to say, since I wasn’t really expecting a Carleton alum to live in a rough part of town and in my correspondence with my soon-to-be hosts, they hadn’t hinted that entry into their neighborhood would necessitate use of my nine.
I shrugged off the officer’s comment, hopped back on the Metro and continued life as a scooting vagrant. Amidst my unsuccessful search for street signs, I hadn’t noticed that the sunny skies had soured and given way to a fresh batch of storm clouds. I took note though when for the second time that day, I found myself riding in the middle of an intense downpour (and after sunset, no less).
Stopped at a red light with rain cascading down, a pickup truck pulled up alongside me and a country-sounding voice yelled, “Did you really ride that thing from New York?” When I answered in the affirmative, he let out a “DAYAMN” that was pretty satisfying, but it would’ve felt a lot better had it not been for the second dose of punishment being administered by rain that day.
My first set of directions hadn’t actually helped much, so pretty soon I stopped at another gas station to ask for help yet again. Based on the skin color of most people at the station, it looked as though I was approaching the ‘hood that the officer had warned me about, but as I suspected, his claims about safety were grossly exaggerated and perhaps racially motivated. I didn’t sense that a firefight was about to break out, and when I asked my fellow storm refugees where to find my destination of Cottage Grove Ave., I was given better directions than at the gas station with the cop. It was just blocks away, and I headed out right away, figuring I was already as soaked as could be, so waiting for the downpour to ebb made little sense.
Or maybe waiting wouldn’t have been such a bad idea. Driving those last few blocks from the gas station was a Herculean feat. It combined the same difficulties as last night’s nighttime drive through the drizzle in Ann Arbor (having to critically analyze street signs and generally stave off death while immersed in darkness with no eye protection and driving 30 mph in hurricane conditions) but amplified them to the umpteenth degree given the ferocity of tonight’s storm.
Somehow I made it though, and parked victoriously in front of the right house. Saturated, I trudged through the rain up to the door of these total strangers, thinking that my long day had come to an end. But, just like the Weather Channel, I was wrong. Unbeknownst to me, my hosts would provide a much more complete South Bend experience than I had bargained for, making for one of my more interesting stops on the journey thus far.
I was greeted by my hostess Regina, who welcomed me into their home and treated me to some food. She explained that her husband Jeff (the Carleton guy) would be home soon, but she also informed me that thanks to some miraculous twist of fate, there was a meeting of scooter enthusiast friends of theirs (known as the Moped Army) happening just a couple blocks away! She encouraged me to drop in on the scooter club if I could summon the energy, which I most certainly could.
As I shoveled down some groceries and prepared to leave for this scooter summit, Jeff arrived home. I wish I could’ve hung out with Jeff for longer, but even in our limited interaction he reinforced the notion that Carls are cool people. Evidently he too owned a motorbike, but his was a heavy-duty, classic-looking Triumph motorcycle, which like most other two-wheeled vehicles, put the Metro to shame. Since life at Carleton, Jeff had gone off and earned a law degree, but nowadays was working professionally to pursue his passion in massage therapy. If you’d have told me at the beginning of my trip that I would be staying with a massage therapist, I undoubtedly would’ve expected to beg for some work on my then-ailing back, but already my body was starting to get acclimated to life on the scooter and I felt as though I could forego massage therapy for the time being.
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| My humble home for a happy night in South Bend. |
Conversation eventually shifted to my sleeping quarters for the night. Jeff explained that I would have my choice between staying in a conventional guest room or this awesome self-described “Man Cave” of a cabin that occupied the far corner of their backyard. Well, he didn’t make such of a pointed question out of it, but to me it was a no-brainer.
Excitedly accepting my invitation to the cabin, Jeff offered to show me my digs for the night. Although it was dark outside, the backyard was still impressively beautiful. Filled with a healthy lookin’ garden, Jeff explained that he was very proud of having converted it from an ordinary inner city backyard to a tranquil backdrop for their home. (This attitude was consistent with his overarching pride in this “bad” neighborhood, a connection that he nicely articulates in a passage that was featured as part of NPR’s “This I Believe” essay series, which I’ve linked to at the bottom of this post.)
And there, nestled in the corner of the backyard was the space’s crown jewel- Jeff’s cabin (or perhaps one-room shed is a better term) that he had built himself. He showed me the inside, which was filled with interesting books and decorations, a kerosene lamp, a couple chairs, and a surprisingly comfortable cot. What a great hangout spot. I was gonna feel like a modern Henry David Thoreau camping out in there for a night.
But before I could kick back in the cabin, I had a scooter meeting to look forward to. My time with Regina and Jeff was cut short when a guy named Dave showed up to ferry me over to this mysterious scooter pow-wow. I was mostly intrigued, but also pretty excited, as I had encountered only a small handful of fellow scooterists on the road, and had yet to sit down and talk to another in earnest.
Much of my conversation with Dave centered on the city of South Bend itself. Like many other cities throughout the Rust Belt region, South Bend had seen better days. Apparently the old car company Studebaker had been based here, and ever since the now-defunct carmaker left town in 1963, things have more or less gone downhill in the formerly mighty manufacturing hub of South Bend. Dave commented that the other day he chuckled about seeing a “Bailout Studebaker” bumper sticker, but that wasn’t yet the American way back in 1963.
Hearing both Dave and Jeff talk about South Bend reminded me of the way many people talk about Cleveland. Throughout the so-called Rust Belt, it seems that people share the same love-hate relationship with their hometowns. They’re proud of their city’s history and its character, but at the same time are cognizant of the problems that have contributed to its decline and prefer working to make things better rather than bailing for greener pastures.
While it might be fun to imagine my visit to the Moped Army gathering as an infiltration of a society veiled in secrecy, it turned out to be just a meeting of some cool dudes with an appreciation for motorcycles, scooters, mopeds, and homemade mead (I’m pretty sure in that order). In actuality, it wasn’t an officially chartered meeting of the Moped Army, even though Aaron, the host of the evening’s festivities and the most knowledgeable guy about scooters/mopeds, was an official member of the Army.
Clearly, they knew a lot more about scooters than I did. I mean, really all I did was buy a scooter mere weeks ago, hop on it, and set off with the borderline ludicrous destination of California. I figured that most of my education in scooting would come in crash-courses along the way while hunkering down in desperation, attempting to perform roadside repairs. After hearing Car Talk’s grim outlook, I was thrilled to have a chance to pick the collective brain of some authorities on the do’s and don’ts of scooting.
I asked them if they foresaw any major problems looming for the Metro, fearing that they would just echo Click and Clack’s sentiments. To my delight, however, they swore by the engine’s reliability, saying with supreme confidence that I’d reach my destination 2,500 miles distant. Their optimism was tempered only by one slight catch, as they surmised that I would get a flat rear tire at some point, compliments of a stray nail littered on a roadway somewhere, waiting to pounce.
I hadn’t really known what to expect of my visit in South Bend, but the quality of my time there would’ve exceeded even the wildest of expectations. Getting to meet another interesting Carl and several nice people who share my love of the Rust Belt, staying in a fully-loaded Man Cave of a cabin, and stumbling across a hive of scooter enthusiasts while getting some free scooting advice and supplies combined to make for a phenomenal all-around experience. I would’ve been thrilled enough just to emerge from my visit with some dry clothes, but ended up with a stay that was enjoyable on so many different levels. My newfound admiration for the town almost made me feel slightly guilty that in a few short hours I would be cheering for Michigan to throttle Notre Dame. Almost.
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| Interior of Jeff's cabin. |
Shout-Outs:
-David at the town park in Clinton, MI.
-The scooter guys, Dave, Aaron, and Michael (among others) for the scooter-care advice, help picking a route to Chicago, the emergency “fix-a-flat” tire spray and an all-around good time. I can’t stress my appreciation enough.
-Jeff, Regina, and family. Thanks for making my abbreviated stay so comfortable. I wish I could’ve stuck around for longer.
Town(s) of the Day: White Pigeon, MI; Elkhart, IN; South Bend, IN
