As before, I brought two cameras on this trip: the iPhone, primarily for taking pictures for the blog, and my “real” camera, an Olympus with an optical zoom lens, etc. for the better pictures: the nature shots, the ones that require zooming in, and so on. Only one of cameras worked properly: the iPhone.

The Olympus glitched yesterday afternoon and briefly showed the memory card as blank. I restarted the camera, and the pictures were back, but I switched memory cards, just to be safe. Well, now I can’t read the first memory card at all, either in the camera, or with my computer. Looks like those pictures are gone. This isn’t as heartbreaking as it would have been to lose my “good” pictures from the previous years’ two trips. Those trips were more about going to scenic and photogenic places, where I took hundreds of pictures instead of the maybe 100 that I lost on this trip. But it’s still really frustrating. At least I still have the few dozen photos I took with the iPhone, and a handful that I took on the second memory card, today.

Perhaps what’s saddest is the fact that this sort of thing just doesn’t surprise me any more. I never expect it to happen, I hope for things to work out. But they don’t.

UPDATE: I’ve managed to recover some of the files from the zapped memory card. Most of them have errors/garbage in the recovered files, so they aren’t very usable, except for reminding me of what they were images of.

And I’m home. A bit of construction/rush hour mess in the last few miles into home, and the gas tank is sitting at E again, but I made it. The house is as it was. Which might be a good project for the next couple days.

I left M50 at Lake Odessa. It had served me well as an easy to follow, good condition, fairly low-traffic route homeward, but I no longer needed it. I consulted my map software one last time, and a made a mental note of the handful of county-level roads I’d need to get me to Saranac.

I know my way home from Saranac. I’ve been here several times, just on bored weekend afternoon rides. I’m not home just yet; I have another 25 miles to go. But from a scootering perspective, it’s in my neighborhood. It’s like arriving at your city’s airport; all that’s left is the familiar route to your house.

I wonder what’s for supper?

This section of M50 has made the SE Michigan section look like an LA highway at rush hour by comparison. It hasn’t quite been deserted, but aside from lacking the country-road charm of Springport Drive, it’s been fine. (It also lacks the will-it-run-into-a-dirt-road “charm” of those country roads too.)

I neglected to fill up before leaving Jackson, which led to a little anxiety as the road stretched on. I didn’t have to tap into the reserve fuel, but I managed to put a record 1.294 gallons in the tank when I got to Eaton Rapids.

I also neglected to go potty after lunch, which is the primary reason I’ve stopped at a public park in Charlotte. 🙂

I made the mistake of going into downtown Jackson, since it was more direct than going around, and it seemed a reasonably good place to get lunch. It’s not that kind of downtown: too big a city. Just lots of one-way streets and traffic and frustration. At least half an hour wasted.

I finally just figured out which way was northwest, got myself on a road heading that way (stop and go traffic) and finally made it past the airport and over I-94. And there was a good place for lunch: Hudson’s Classic Grill, kind of a slightly upscale burger joint with car parts, a stuffed deer, and a tractor hanging from the ceiling.

Google Maps puts me 90 miles from home by the most direct route. That includes a long stretch on M50, which I have doubts about. That’s what I took out of Monroe, and it wasn’t bad, but… as a rule: beware of roads whose name starts with a letter and ends with a number. They’re fine as long as traffic is light enough that there aren’t cars and trucks pulling up behind you every couple minutes, and those that do pull up have a chance to pass quickly. But if not, you wind up with a bunch of angry drivers – some of whom are also complete morons – piled up behind you. Fortunately there are some other roads with better names that branch off M50 for long stretches in that direction, so I think they’ll work. I won’t be home before supper, but still plenty of time before dark.

Stopped at a stop sign. “Skiff Lake” sounds very familiar. I just figured out why. I remember this sign for Skiff Lake Bible Church, congratulating Tim and Josie on their wedding. Just the other day I passed this same intersection going east (not north) and with the right of way (not stopping). I saw the same sign, thinking “I wonder if they’d be as happy if it were Tim and José “becoming one”…?

Even though I was already stopped, and got off the bike to snap a picture, I didn’t change the sign. It was locked.

Not that I checked. 😉