Day 17: Bay City R&R and IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT

The previous two days have been in the nineties and we've ridden over 60 miles in 20mph headwinds. I guess that was the excuse for shacking up at the Holiday Inn here for clean sheets and internet access and free breakfast. If you've seen the movie Wedding Crashers, breakfast was kind of like that scene where Vince Vaughn piles up his plate and smothers it in syrup: we ate like professionals. Anyhow, we're going to do a half day today, and mostly on the Pere Marquette rail trail, so we look forward to that. Meanwhile, I'm going to use this full-sized keyboard to make some long-overdue acknowledgements and an IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT (below this photograph!).

The IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT is as follows: Bonesy is, as we speak, assembling a picasa album of photos from our trip. It seems like that will be the smoothest way to post & host the large number of images we have accumulated. Find the photos here, and in the future use the link that we'll put on the "Photos" page up top there. And thanks to Bonesy for putting that together -- it's probably more interesting than my blathering here.

OK, so on to acknowledgements. Lots of people have helped us along the way, whether materially or simply by encouraging us. I have been remiss in not thanking them more regularly, so I will here make ammends and endeavour to be more diligent in the future. If you're not on the list and you should be, I'm sorry. Please know that we're incredibly grateful to all of you and probably couldn't be doing this without your support.

Dale, who gave us water a few days ago when it was real hot and we stopped for shade at his store. John, who saw us in the Port Huron paper and then bought us powerade yesterday afternoon when we stopped in Fairgrove. The nameless gentleman at De-J's Store in Fairgrove who not only gave us more bottles of water than we could carry, but also let us use his own private restroom because there were no public ones for miles. The man near Albion, NY who gave us bottles of water and told us not to miss the one spot on the Erie canal where the road goes under the water (woah). Bonnie and her son Simon, who where not only extremely generous but just super cool as well. Mark Rummel, the photographer for the Port Huron Times Herald, who gave us some local advice on M-138 and its hills. Julianne Mattera, the reporter who was interested enough to write about us. The guys at Alpine Cyclery in Port Huron, who replaced Bonesy's derailleur cable housing free and were super friendly and also carried the tubes we needed for her tires. US Customs agents, who after they realized that we weren't a national security threat were very supportive and all came out to look at the bikes and even printed us out directions to Alpine Cyclery. The lady who worked for the Blue Water Bridge Authority who drove us across the bridge in her truck because we weren't allowed to ride over it and would have had to go 20 miles south to the next border crossing. Steve Garufi, who runs bikeacrossamerica.net and was a huge source of inspiration and wisdom in preparing for the trip (we have a picture of Steve taken from his website that encourages us when we're struggling -- what an inpirational guy, and you should all check out his page). The RV-ing couples at Deer Creek and AW Campbell provincial parks who gave us coffee, firewood, conversation, etc. Sean Mahoney, who I think is going to send us a drop somewhere in Minnesota. Also everyone who comments on here. We really like that.

Ride on.