In Memory of Warmer Summers

August 5th through 10th

Petosky State Park, MI; Whitewater Township, MI; Suttons Bay, MI; Elberta, MI; and Manistee, MI

We hit a bit of a snag that’s cost us a couple of days and some miles, but resolutions are forthcoming.  We’ve had some compounding medical issues that resulted in a trip to an emergency room and a subsequent follow-up to a walk-in clinic.  I won’t go into details here as that’s not appropriate for the internet, but as stated, we are confident resolutions are forthcoming, and basically both of us are fine…well that is a subjective opinion, isn’t it?

2 Months and 3,000+ Miles

For those who are interested in such things, I have some stats for from this ride.  August 9th marked two months that we’ve been eastbound on the Northern Tier (remember we are doing the North Lakes option as well as the Erie Connector).  As of the 9th, we have completed 3,179 miles total. 160 miles of that was associated with our riding the San Juan Islands, so on the NT itself, we topped over 3,000 miles.

When we started the ride, we estimated mileage at something close to 4,500, but that did not include miles in the San Juan Islands.  We have no deadlines so we are quite flexible with our mileage and not having to estimate averages and ETAs is a bonus.  We’ll finish when we get there, so if you ask in the comments, we don’t really know.

We’ve had no flat tires due to punctures (knocking on some wood here as I say that) to date. I experienced one flat tire that was actually a tube failure at the neck of the valve, so that hardly counts.I rotated tires on both bikes at about 2,500 miles as the rear tires were wearing a lot more rapidly than the front.  That is normal and expected. 

By the way for those interested in tires, Sallie is running the ever popular bombproof Schwalbe Marathon Plus (700×32) and I have on a set of Schwalbe Marathon Supremes for the first time (700×35).  I had expected I might be more prone to flats and greater wear than using the Plus, but so far I am impressed with how they are holding up and I find them to be very comfortable, more so than the Marathon Plus.

This is how hops are grown. They must be heavy.

We lost one tent due to that windstorm in North Dakota that shredded Sallie’s fly, and had one tent die on us as my old and trusted REI Quarter Dome finally gave out and was sent home for major repairs.  That tent has been replaced by a marvelous Mountain Safety Research MSR Hubba Hubba, two nights in that and I’m spoiled for life.

A maple leaf canopy as seen looking up through my tent fabric

I broke a kickstand plate, had a compass, a bite valve and a tail light fail me, but all of those things were quite old and the miles are starting to take their toll.  Most importantly we’ve sent nothing home that we packed but didn’t need, and with the exception so far of a spare tire, we’ve used everything we packed at one point or another, so that’s worked out well for us. 

As I’ve said many times, we are not fast, but we are steady.