A grueling ride today! Seven whole miles (at least 1 of which was walking).

We crossed over into Canada around 10am (more on this below!), and spent the remainder of the morning at a laundromat a couple miles south of downtown.

For lunch, we went to an awesome/ridiculous Italian social club. A big tacky building with a big tacky fountain/statue out front. They had a pizza bar in their basement which is open to the general public, and the pizza was really good!

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We had another day off today in Detroit.

Downtown Detroit is kinda awesome. Lots of great architecture. I think this was a silver lining to Detroit's decline between the 60s and 00s -- they still have lots of handsome large masonry buildings from before WW2 that have not been replaced by larger steel-and-glass buildings.

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Another beautiful day today!

We got breakfast at a 24/7 diner in Ann Arbor before leaving town this morning, and followed a bunch of nice trails about halfway to Plymouth, our lunch stop. We were on-road for the second half. The road was largely decent, without a lot of traffic.

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We had two days off here in Ann Arbor. Daily mileages are going up over the next week, and we wanted to make sure we had plenty of rest time before that. On top of that, there's a lot to see and do here.

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Another great day today. Sunny and warm all day. I think this is the first time we got above 80F on the trip. The near-term forecast looks like we're going back to the 60s and 70s for the next week or so, I have no problem with that at all. The longer we can avoid super-hot 90F days, the better.

We stayed at a very old-school roadside motel last night. No breakfast, and no place nearby to get food. So, we had planned on going back into Stockbridge to the diner. But, they were closed (signs on the door indicated they should be open, but the doors were locked). Luckily, there was also a small market that served breakfast sandwiches and pie.

We started the day headed eastbound on an unpaved rail trail. The surface was in quite good condition, so we made decent time on this stretch.

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Today was a day off in Lansing. This was a combo tourism/chores day.

For chores, we once again did bathroom sink laundry (no laundromats near our hotel). I also fixed my malfunctioning bike computer. Somehow the spoke magnet had slipped, even though the attachment screw was still very tight.

We also did some shopping to replenish our snacks, sunblocks, and medicine.

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Today was... not good!

We are at our hotel in Lansing, with no injuries, so there is a happy ending to the day. But, today was the toughest day of the trip, and the toughest ride I've had in many years.

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Looking at the stats for today, it seems like an easy ride: 40 miles, half of it on a bike trail. But, it was actually a bit of a slog, mainly because we were fighting against a 15mph headwind all day. Winds generally blow west-to-east here, and along our entire route, but there's always going to be an exception here or there.

This was also our hilliest ride to date (you have to climb out of a valley to leave Grand Rapids), and our bike trail was unpaved and not in great condition. So, this was our slowest day since the first few days of the trip.

There aren't many good biking roads out of Grand Rapids. So, when I was planning this trip, I routed us through lots of shenanigans: Cut across a college dorm parking lot here, use a middle-school access path there, take advantage of a shortcut path through the woods, etc. It's actually really fun when this all works out in real life -- you can't be sure what these will be like when planning them on a computer monitor.

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We took a day off here in Grand Rapids today. This wasn't for resting (we've only done 50 miles or so over the last 3 days), this was for exploring the city. We've never been here before, and we probably will not be getting back anytime soon.

As an overall impression, I guess I would say this city feels like a midwestern version of Hartford. They both feel like they're trying to be big cities with modern glass towers downtown, and so on. They both have a good amount of cultural institutions: museums, live performance, sports teams, etc. They also both feel a little sterile and corporate, not a lot of character/charm.

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Today was a beautiful day for riding. Mostly sunny and in the low 60s. Warm enough to be comfortable, cool enough so you don't get sweaty. We've now gone 500 miles, which is farther than we've ever done in one trip before (previous longest was about 450 between Québec City and Boston).

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