Dinner in Sagola, Wisconsin Brownies, and Something Terrible on the Way to Star Lake Sagola, Michigan and Star Lake, Wisconsin Day 67-69 - August 7-10, 2002  Back   |   Next

A town somewhere between Escanaba, Michigan and Wisconsin Dinner in Sagola Day 67 - August 7, 2002 I camp just west of Sagola, Michigan. Today a man approached as I prepared my bike for another leg of the day's ride. We were in the bustling market place (i.e. the two buildings in town that comprised of the gas station, grocery, and post office) of Foster City. He asked me the usual. I told him, "...but I spent a month in Michigan, and today is my sixty-seventh day out." He said, "You're still in Michigan." Oh. Ken Mattson, a retired postmaster, bought me dinner. The staff at The Four Friends, the Foster City grocery store, gives me envelopes and paper so I can write some friends. Wisconsin Brownies Day 68 - August 8, 2002 After crossing into Wisconsin I notice that the pines are much older than the ones in Michigan. I peer into the forest like I would a great cavern glimmering green with stalactites and stalagmites. I camp west of Phelps-a lake town. An hour before sundown I meet my first Wisconsonians. I knock at their cabin to ask them for water. They not only allow me to refill my bottles with fresh cold well water but also they give me brownies that drive Mackinac fudge out of my mind. Something Terrible at Star Lake Day 69 - August 10, 2002 I awake exhausted, but I force myself up. It is 5:45 AM and I get out of my tent as the sun begins climbing above the eastern sky. My left knee starts throbbing from pain. I am only a few miles into the day and something is terribly wrong. I get scared. It may be the beginning of those sharp pains I experienced near the end of last summer's Scotland bike trip - the pain that put an end to all my hiking and biking plans. Is this injury now just beginning to resurface? I stop and stretch. The pain doesn't go away. I get worried and I stop again a few miles down the road. Now I am really worried. I pray that this isn't it, that is isn't the end-that I will not have to stop and go back home. I tell myself to stop dwelling on the pain and leave it behind me, lest I psychosomatically recreate the old knee injury. By midmorning the pain is gone and I come to an old logger town called Star Lake. I drink an ice-cold beverage. Two loggers come over when they see my bike. They see my USMC flag and one asks if I am a Marine. I tell him I got out in 1998. Just in time, he says. Yeah. Are we still in Afghanistan? Yeah, he says, maybe Iraq, pretty soon. They both say that we should go and "finish the job." I do not tell them what I think.