Wednesday, January 16, 2019 // The Statement 
7B
Wednesday, October 23, 2019 // The Statement
7B

D

uring exam season last semester, 
I was chatting with my friends 
Kartik and Nav in a café. We were 
talking about finding time to meet up over 
the summer. Kartik, always up for sponta-
neous plans, joked that he and I could bike 
from Ann Arbor to visit Nav at her house in 
Saginaw. Nav and I gave a passive chuckle 
and nodded to his idea, and I returned to 
my hometown north of Chicago with the 
understanding that no such trip was going to 
happen. I mean, who would bike 103 miles — 
206 miles counting the ride back — in mostly 
unknown, rural areas just to hang out with 
your friends for a day?
After coming back home, I was sitting in 
my basement on a yoga exercise ball starting 
an essay that was due the following morning 
when I got a text from Kartik. It read, “Let 
me know when you’d like to begin planning 
the trip.”
It would be a lie if I said I was totally 
confident in our ability to bike over a hun-
dred miles in one day and do it again a day 
later, but I went along with the plan anyway. 
There was something exhilarating about 
the idea of a bike ride across a state I’d only 
been living in for about a year. It’s easy to 
stay within the comfort that a college town 
like Ann Arbor provides, but a journey like 
this would widen our perspective of Michi-
gan and the Michiganders who live beyond 
Washtenaw County. Besides, there weren’t 
any direct buses, and it would at the very 
least be a killer workout and a great way to 
strengthen my bonds with close friends.
We typed in Nav’s address on Google Maps 
and found a feasible route from Kartik’s 
house to Saginaw. We couldn’t see all of the 
roads on Street View, but since the app had 
a bike route option, we trusted the algorithm 
would direct us to ride on the flattest paved 
roads possible. It was hard to determine how 
much supplies we would need to survive a 
day trip in which we would likely burn thou-
sands of calories, but I figured that a handful 
of energy bars, a couple of Gatorade bottles, 
a half-dozen bagels and a jar of peanut but-
ter would suffice. After two train rides from 
Chicago with Metra and Amtrak conductors 
eyeing me with distaste for taking up seats 
with my bike, I arrived in Ann Arbor on June 
20, ready to bike over a hundred miles. 
We were up at 6 a.m. the next day. We 
wanted to cover as much ground as we could 
in the light, and we estimated we’d be biking 
about 10 to 11 miles an hour, which would 
get us to Saginaw before 7 p.m. The start of 
the journey was slow, as we configured our 
phones to save the route and speak to us 
through our headphones. After passing the 
Diag and the League and taking a few turns, 
we were biking downhill heading west from 

the hospital. I stood up on my 
pedals to enjoy the breeze, and 
as I swung my head around to 
make sure Kartik was follow-
ing, I saw him standing over his 
bike squinting at his phone in 
his hand. I turned around to see 
what was up. 
“I think we missed a turn,” he 
said.
“Where?” I responded. I went 
up to his side and squinted with 
him. If we kept going down 
the hill, we would’ve run into 
a dead end about a mile later. I 
looked west toward where the 
route pointed and saw a small 
paved black trail that led into a 
forest clearing. It seemed a little 
sketchy, but since we had decided 
to trust the minds behind Google 
Maps to keep us on the right 
path, we had no other option. 
Those 
early 
frustrating 
moments served as a micro-
cosm of the entire trip — every 
few miles, we would miss a 
turn and have to pause to check 
where Google wanted us to go. 
At times Kartik would stop in the middle of 
an intersection to check, and I would have to 
gesture for him to come to the side and get 
out of the way of traffic. Soon after our hos-
pital debacle, we biked a few miles alongside 
Argo Cascades, a set of small interconnected 
waterfalls flowing into the Huron River. 
Though I had been to the Nichols Arbore-
tum, I didn’t know Ann Arbor had such a 
calm natural site just beyond Kerrytown. 
We paused to take a few photos before con-
tinuing on our way. 
About six miles later, the serene trail 
opened up onto Whitmore Lake Road, and it 
was here that I learned that all of my elemen-
tary school geography teachers lied to me for 
years about the Midwest being “pancake 
flat.” A more apt name for the road would’ve 
been Whitmore Hills as there was no flat 
pavement at all. Each time we somehow 
pushed ourselves up one steep hill, we would 
spot another five awaiting us with gradual 
downhills in between. Our legs grew heavier 
with each rotation. We stopped to rest at the 
top of one hill, which happened to be next to 
a cemetery. I took out my water bottle and 
lay down on the grass, imagining my fourth-
grade geography teacher, Ms. Pemble, bury-
ing me there under a mound of dirt.
After a few more miles on Whitmore 
Lake, we took our planned stop at a gas sta-
tion to use the bathroom and to learn that we 
were about 30 minutes behind schedule. We 
pushed ourselves to try and catch up, attack-

ing each hill with double the resolve. That 
resolve didn’t matter once we turned the 
corner onto Kearney Road and found our-
selves on a dirt road with our tires caked in 
wet mud from a rain shower the day before. 
While my bike was a hybrid designed for 
both road and off-road situations, Kartik’s 
was a racing bike meant exclusively for pave-
ment, so we pedaled slowly and just walked 
whenever we encountered a hill. He had to 
stop a couple of times to clear up the mud 
that clogged the space between the bike 
frame and his tires.
While we were taking a break on the 
side of the road at one corner, a red pickup 
truck rounding the turn slowed down as it 
approached us. We hadn’t seen a house for at 
least a couple of miles and were surrounded 
by trees. Plenty of cars had passed us, but 
none of the drivers ever stopped to interact 
with us. “Well,” I thought, “I’ve had a good 
life.” We must be trespassing or something. 
There’s no way that an Indian American and 
an Indian are going to be received well in the 
middle of nowhere. 
Once the truck came to our side, the driv-
er pulled down the window and peered out 
at us. “You guys OK? You need anything?” I 
saw concern in his eyes but was too stunned 
to reply, so Kartik thanked him and told him 
we were all good and just taking a break. He 
nodded and drove on, slinging mud back 
with his truck’s tires.
This hospitality was one of the few con-

sistent traits we encountered on our trip. 
Whenever we stopped to take a break or 
reevaluate our route along the side of the 
road, instead of being met with hostility, we 
encountered strangers who shouted friendly 
or supportive remarks at us. One woman in 
Howell asked us if we wanted any water as 
she saw us wheezing after walking up one 
hill. Another parked his car a few hundred 
yards ahead of us and ran over to us, offer-
ing to help us repair our bikes. Every truck 
driver helped me understand that, contrary 
to the popular narrative, those who don’t 
live in cities or suburban communities aren’t 
automatically hateful or ignorant. You’d 
think that being in unfamiliar territory in 
rural Michigan would unsettle me, but the 
longer we spent biking through fields and 
farm territory, the more comfortable I felt as 
Michiganders welcomed us with open arms. 
By six o’clock, we had just passed through 
Howell, then Durand and still had over 
30 miles separating us from Saginaw. We 
invoked the backup plan and called Nav 
to see if she could pick us up. The clouds 
seemed to pop out of the sky when we saw 
her van pull up beside us. Having a friend 
support you is great, but you really feel hum-
bled after she saves your life and her family 
welcomes you into her home after a sweaty 
60-mile bike ride. 

Lessons from a bike ride through 
Michigan

BY ARJUN THAKKAR, STATEMENT COLUMNIST

FILE PHOTO

Read more online at 
michigandaily.com

