I got a little bit of a scare during supper in Charlevoix last night, when I looked out the window at around 8pm and it was dark. Not nightime dark, but darker than it should be an hour before sunset. It was cloudy too, and the air was hazy. I checked radar on my iPhone and it it showed a small storm possibly headed this way. I didn’t panic, but I finished my meal without stalling and returned to the campground. But other than a nice cloudy sunset with rain way off on the water to the north, nothing happened.

I woke this morning to low but thin overcast clouds. Bits of blue show through from time to time. The forecast says cloudy then partly cloudy, so I’m optimistic. However the surf is up a little and the forecast also says up to 10mph winds… which is about 10 faster than I’d hoped for the Bridge crossing this afternoon.

A few thoughts about the trip so far. I’m starting to get a little saddle sore, which didn’t come up on my two-day practice rides. I probably should have done a 4-day trip first rather than leaping from an overnight to 8 nights. Fortunately it only hurts at first when I sit down; as the feeling goes away it gets better. 🙂 I try to change sitting positions frequently, mostly by moving my feet. I’ve found that sitting with my thighs together, so they’re bearing some of my weight on the seat, helps take some of the pressure off certain spots at the base of my spine.

Yesterday’s equipment failure makes me nervous, because there will be no more Genuine dealers (until Green Bay). If anything further happens I’ll have to rely on Genuine’s roadside assistance (time consuming in the middle of nowhere, I’m sure) and/or the ingenuity of local mechanics.

Whether it was the distance from Traverse City or from rush hour (or both) the traffic on US-31 thinned out a bit as the evening went on. At times I even went several minutes at a time without anyone coming up behind me. I’ve found that it helps not to look in the rear view mirror too much. That’s probably a larger life lesson I should pay more attention to, but in this case it just means that sometimes I’m better off not knowing that there’s someone riding my ass. I’ve been torn between my habit of hugging the shoulder for safety (like on my bike) and sticking myself in the middle of the lane so that the only way to pass me is a full-fledged lane change. What annoys me the most are the people who try to push past me as if I were a bike riding in the gutter. It might be in a no-passing zone with oncoming traffic and they still pass me. I had one asshole honk at me as he passed me in a passing lane (in a MackinacShuttle.com van, I might add).

I got to Fisherman’s Island State Park around 7pm. I had forgotten that like last night’s campground it’s also “rustic” camping, so no shower tonight or tomorrow morning. It’s even more… well, rustic than Leelanau, with actual wooded gaps between sites, which is nice. Ironically you have to go past a huge landraping operation known as St Mary’s Concrete to get to it. I set up camp and headed into town (just past the park on US-31) for supper. The scooter looks a little weird without a tent, sleeping bag, etc. strapped on the back. 🙂

I got lucky and saw the return of the ferry to/from Beaver Island. I had hoped to work that into this trip but couldn’t fit it in. Another time. Really. They had to raise the drawbridge to let it into the harbor, which I had crossed back and forth just a few minutes before. I’m having supper at Great Lakes Whitefish & Chips; I’m eating the broiled whitefish sandwich, which is good.