Miles Today: 78

Miles to Date: 1,587

June 1, 2015 – Overcast and windy, 55 degrees

Days with 4,000 vertical feet of elevation rise are physically exhausting. Days with 400 feet of vertical elevation rise are just tedious. The trip from Elmore, OH to Dearborn, MI is so flat the only times I downshifted was to climb overpasses.

 The few creeks I crossed were full of muddy water from yesterday’s torrents

Some houses sat only inches above flooded yards.

I chuckled at Brewthrough, the most literal drive-through coffee and beer place I’ve ever seen.

Toledo was the saddest collection of aging industry and neighborhood neglect I’ve passed through to date.

Michigan didn’t offer a welcome sign, just long stretches of wide highway with marginal shoulder, thought I enjoyed the cool machine that turns old concrete into new aggregate and filters fine and course aggregate in one process.

I also had to stop to ponder this sign: would I really get my hair cut there?

Off my bike, of course, the people were terrific. The owner of Fino’s Resaturant on Monroe, MI insisted on buying my lunch. Virginia and Marietta, two elderly women having afternoon coffee at the McDonald’s in Lincoln Park were baffled by my journey. They went outside and studied my bicycle, incredulous that it would carry me so far.

I arrived in leafy Dearborn just after six. My friend Bob Basse was in front of his family home, with his brother Bill and their neighbor, Housalla ElMoussa. I wanted to visit Dearborn to explore the Muslim influx, which was everywhere evident on Middlepointe Street.

Bob took me out to Al Ameer, the best Middle Eastern food I’ve ever had. We ordered all sorts of dishes and brought enough leftovers home for a second meal tomorrow.