Traverse City Adventure: Apple picking time is nigh

DAY 31 • 11 SEPTEMBER 2017 • PENTWATER

Thirty-eight miles we rode on this mid-September day after leaving Pentwater and the Charles Mears State Park.  Before flipping on our flashing lights, the tall engineer from the campsite next door wandered over to say goodbye.  He asked how we liked Battle Creek, his home town   That’s where we encountered the amazing Underground Railroad statue on the manicured grounds of the Kellogg House and Kellogg Foundation.

We rode into Battle Creek on a trail, crossed the center of town and its parks on a trail and rode out on another along the Kalamazoo River toward Kalamazoo..  It looked good to me. But he said we saw the best of Battle Creek.  

“It’s losing its industries and jobs.  There’s not a single decent restaurant.”  Basically a town on the skids, he said.  Not a happy few years for him or Battle Creek.  He lost his wife to cancer two years back and then quit his job after the company he was working for was sold and came under new management.  “When they started lying about jobs and changed reports that I had my name on, I’d had enough.”  Barb is a woman he met when he and his wife took ballroom dancing lessons.  She lost her husband too.  They both retired on the same day two years ago and have been traveling, playing golf, and basically going where the wind blows them each day.  They sleep in a tent they carry in the back of their car and cook meals outdoors.  He was happy, but in a melancholy kind of way.

People often pour themselves out to us along the way.  Strangers.  No preconceived notions.  We listen and smile.  After we parted, Becky and I both agreed he was a fine and decent man.  

We ended the day in Manistee after riding many roads and a few more hills than we wanted.  In one stretch we passed great orchards of ripe red apples.  All of Michigan’s cherries and blueberries have been picked but the apple picking has just started.

Robert Frost wrote a great poem called After Apple Picking.  Look it up and read it.  I think you’ll like it.  I think about that poem when I think about all those apples that have to be picked.

Tuesday was a work and rest day.  Back on the bikes Wednesday as we hug the shoreline toward places with names like Elberta, Empire, Frankfort and Platt Lake.  

Today’s miles took us to 1,053 and thinking of those miles makes me think again of Frost’s sentiments in After Apple Picking.