Rainy Day Troubles

Saturday, August 29, 2015         Port Huron, Michigan     trip odometer 7,425 miles

            Another slow day due mostly to rain and construction. This adds a day to my expected arrival home: Monday, considering that I’m too tired to push for miles tomorrow. First thing that will happen is I’ll enter Canada. Things will be pretty straightforward until I get close to Toronto/Niagara.

            The roads in Michigan are awful. There is also the phenomenon that was conspicuously absent out West, where posted speed limits are 80 MPH. The people here pay no attention to the posted limits and go 75 to 80 anyway. In dry weather on decently maintained roads I’d have gone the posted 70; in rain with crappy roads and/or ones torn up for construction, 65 was the most I was willing to risk. Cars were whizzing past with dubbed in zo-o-o-om sound effects. At one point this became a serious problem, and I (and many other former speed demons) were stuck for nearly two hours because of an accident that spanned all three lanes of the road, the entrance ramp at that spot, and both the median grass area and roadside grass area. Rescue personnel had more urgent priorities than getting traffic moving, and even when I finally crept past, they had only the entrance ramp open as a by-pass and I had to stop to let some rescue people cross. I thought I recognized the burned 2/3 of a car on the road verge by the intact bicycle on the rear rack. Idiots or not, I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.

            I stopped for four caches, which I’d pre-downloaded spaced at just the right intervals for a needed leg-stretch. Except for the last one, they didn’t take much extra time. That one required brush-busting through seventy yards of shrubs, brambles, high grass, mud, and vines. With no geotrail. Worse yet, getting back out, with no trail of any kind. In the rain. In sandals. When I got back to the car, I had to pick burrs off my socks. Later I threw them out because they were totally wrecked. Heck, I later found a burr in my underwear. I was soaked from the neck, down, too. Had I known what this smiley was going to cost me I would have passed it by, but by the time I was in deep trouble, I was less than 100 feet from the cache. Two-and-a-half terrain rating, my maiden aunt!

            But, the good news? I’m back in my normal time zone. Even, better, I’ll be home and greeting my cats the day after tomorrow!