65 miles, 1342′ of climbing – to read from the beginning, click here.
Today’s ride took us through the outskirts of Toledo — from inner city blight to ‘burbs to farmland on the way to Ann Arbor. After arriving at David’s & Christa’s, we got both a warm welcome and a warm shower. David, it turns out, went to Penn State for his advanced degree in acoustics and works for Ford. Christa is a retired schoolteacher who spent three years at the JFK school in Berlin where Aaron & Sarah went when we lived there. But before we had an evening of story swapping with them, we headed into Ann Arbor for a quick tour of this Big10 town.
Our impression was that Ann Arbor is State College on steroids. Much bigger and spread out with a vibrant downtown that’s a few blocks away from campus. We walked around both and then took a short tour of a trail by the Huron river, then returned to a freshly made feast and hours of exchanging touring and life stories with them and their son Andreas. I could go on, but I’m writing this late and need to get some sleep. Tomorrow’s a shorter and still flat ride to an inland lake campground near Concord.
Anecdote of the day: In the morning, Dana mentioned she wished she had some more Biofreeze for those little aches & pains we get from being on the bike all day. On our way through Ann Arbor, we almost ran over a canvas bag sitting in the middle of the bike trail. We stopped to check it out and all that was in it was a pack of Biofreeze.
On the AT they would call that trail magic🪄
Hah! Ask and the universe shall deliver!