Leg 3, Interlude 3: Ann Arbor

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.

On our first night, we took showers and cooled down in the hotel AC for a while, and then figured we'd make it an early night, so we just walked to a nearby chain restaurant for dinner (Buffalo Wild Wings, and the wings were mid). But, we pepped up a bit while eating, and decided to take the bus downtown.

It's not easy to figure out how to catch a bus here! There are tons of street closures, and so there are lots of bus detours. But, the transit authority is not particularly good about telling you about them. So, it's hard to figure out if/when/where a bus will actually show up.

Anyhow, we went to a showing of "Grey Gardens" (1975) , and let's just say we may have found this year's Halloween costumes! This was at the magnificent Michigan Theater, and I enjoyed it so much, I went back tonight (without Marna) to see "Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai".

I went to a couple of different outdoor gear stores and replaced my failing rain jacket. I had to compromise based on what was in stock, but not too much. Hopefully, this will mean that it doesn't rain again the whole rest of the trip?

We also went to the library to print out some more cue sheets. This trip is so long that we have 78 pages of cue sheets! And, we didn't want to lug all of them around for the whole trip, so we're stopping at libraries along the way to print a few pages at a time. We now have enough to get us to Toronto.

I also took some time to tune up both bikes. Gave them a decent cleaning, lubed the chains, fiddled with Marna's derailleur for a while, etc. A number of years ago, I bought a (pricy!) internal gear hub, and it's awesome for many reasons. One of the very nice things about it is that there's never anything to adjust, even over long trips. The other nice thing is that it lets you build a symmetrical, and therefore stronger, rear wheel (usually they are off-center to account for all the cogs). It used to be that a bike trip would mean a 50% chance of a broken spoke, which is a gigantic pain. Not anymore!

For sightseeing, we took in a couple of UofM museums: one on dentistry, and one on archaeology. We also checked out the amazing reading room at the UofM Law Library. They don't allow you to take pictures in there, but you can just do a web search for "michigan law reading room" to see.

We also ate at a few local favorites: The Brown Jug (pub), Union Rec (pub), Detroit Street Filling Station (vegan), and Washtenaw Dairy (ice cream and donuts). All very good. Hot tip for omnivores like me who maybe have an inclination that vegan food is likely to be bland -- that's probably true if you just go to a regular restaurant and order the one vegan thing they have. But, if you go to a vegan-specific restaurant, the food is likely to be very good. My "cheese" "burger" was delicious.

I've got no reason to have anything for or against either Michigan or Michigan State as schools... but, I can tell you that Ann Arbor beats the pants off of East Lansing in terms of what the cities have to offer. Ann Arbor is a great town, and it's worth a special trip if you ever find yourself in the general Detroit area.