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