Journey Notes

This morning, John gave me a great lead out of the Detroit suburbs and onto a paved railway path. At the path's end, it was just a short distance to a very straight road that took me all the way to Port Huron and our border crossing to Canada. I had a nice tailwind for most of the ride so it went very quickly with long stretches running at 32 to 35 km/h (20 - 22 mph). I did miss one odd turn on the path and ended up on a long dirt road before I managed to find the path again.

When John got back home, he took my old mangled rear wheel back to American Cycle & Fitness in Sterling Heights where their master mechanic, Antoon, not only fixed a couple of problem spokes but also trued and made round the wheel (yes, the wheel wasn't even round anymore) and got the spoke tension correct. The spokes were under too much tension and that may have been part of the problem with broken spokes. So now I have what should be a reasonably reliable backup rear wheel!

With lots of things going on and my speedy arrival at Port Huron, Rochelle was in a hurry to get going and in the rush forgot to unplug VanGo. The plug came out of the receptacle but got caught under a door and pulled the molded end off. So there was a mad dash to Lowes to find a replacement end and fix the cable. Luckily, the end within VanGo was ok.

So while I was waiting for Rochelle, I checked out the beginnings of a big weekend sailing festival in Port Huron. The Port Huron to Mackinac Boat Race runs tomorrow. They had many of the downtown streets blocked off and there were a huge number of sail boats around. Many done up with lots of flags. There were a couple of stages but they were only doing mike checks while I was there.

Rochelle and I met at our meeting point and I hopped into VanGo. The board crossing is the Bluewater Bridge and it did not look very cycle friendly. That and it seemed like a better idea if I crossed with all of my stuff. Less questions to answer at the border.

After Canadian customs, I hopped out and got back on my bicycle and crossed Sarnia to tonight's campsite, yet another Walmart. We could not find any campgrounds anywhere near Sarnia so we went to Plan B, a Walmart parking lot.

Tomorrow, I will attempt to reach a campground near Salford, Ontario, 138km away. That might be difficult as I will likely have a bit of a headwind.