Mackinaw, baby.  446 miles on the bike this week.  Too cool.

The fourth, final day was by far the toughest and fastest.  Last ten miles we averaged better than 24 mph. 

There’s much, much more I have to share about one of the most amazing rides in our State, but my wife and I are giving one of my friends and ride home and I need to be a friend, I’ll write more tomorrow.

Day One:  106 miles in some truly nasty weather.  Thankfully it was hot out so riding in six inches of rain only sucked mildly.  At least we didn’t freeze too.  19.5 mph average.

Day Two:  90 miles and 16 bonus miles… We cut the route short, from a little more than a century because it was most definitely not warm.  The rain stopped but everything was wet and the morning fog lasted till 2 pm.  I was cold enough to need a rain jacket or risk hypothermia.  I was freezing.   Then came the rain jacket and I sweated buckets.  It was not cool. 

Ditched the rain jacket in the afternoon and felt better.  Once I dried out.  Kind of.  The clouds never lifted though the temperature did rebound a bit. 90 miles, 19 mph average.  Our bikes were absolutely trashed.

Matt had mentioned wanting to ride over to an adjacent town  that had some significance from his childhood so I asked if Mrs. Bgddy and I could tag along. He said he’d enjoy the company, so we did. It was an eight mile out, over, and eight back. Bonus 16 miles. Average was slow, 16 for messing around in Jennings but the pace, for the three of us, was well over 21 mph.

Day Three: Day three started out messy but the cloud cover kept it mercifully cool. That roads were finally mostly dry too. The second day gave us the most vertical gain of all four but that was because the whole 90 mile route was slightly uphill… Just not enough to tell. Well, that is not entirely true. Friday hurt. That said, Saturday was the hard climbs, including The Wall… A three mile climb in the single digits with an 18% monster on the very end. Oh, and that was in the last six miles. Somebody in the planning of this ride needs a better sense of humor.
100.6 miles, 18.5 mph pace.

Today is supposed to be warm and sunny, finally. I spent a couple of hours cleaning my bike and drivetrain last night so I’m good to go. 80 miles in to the finish. More on that tomorrow – and on the good stuff. Mileage, speed and weather are the simple stuff. I went this far, this fast, yada, yada, yada… While I absolutely did come here to ride my bike, the time spent with my wife, kids and friends, the laughs we’ll have over the next decade because of this weekend, that’s the best part of a four-day tour of Michigan.