We’re at the edge of reliable weather forecasting for the beginning of the ride north, and the outlook is… mixed. 50% chance of rain on Day 1 (Saturday), mostly sunny and temps in the 90s on Day 2, 30% chance of rain on Day 3, and partly cloudy on Day 4. (And yes, this is looking at forecasts for each part of the state where I’ll be that day.)

About the only conclusion I can draw from this is that I will be using Frogg Toggs at some point. Of course I was hoping not to. (Stranger things have happened. I spent over a month bicycling in soggy Great Britain, and barely got sprinkled on.) But I can deal with it. It certainly isn’t going to cancel or delay the trip.

My plan for dealing with rain depends on the kind of rain. For just a front moving through, I’ll try to wait it out some place dry. If it’s going to be off and on, I’ll keep the rain gear handy as I ride (or sight-see) and wear it as needed. If it’s an all-day monsoon, I’ll cross that bridge if I come to it. Probably just gear up and muddle on.

(At least – unlike backpacking in the wilderness – I’ll have some options for getting out of the rain besides my tent… and the occasional outhouse. During one particular day of unrelenting rain on Isle Royale, with the nearest shelter miles away, I took refuge for half an hour in a tiny outhouse at a campsite along the trail. I wasn’t able to dry out much, but it was a good mental-health break.)

I just picked up Flash from the scooter shop, and they gave him a clean bill of health. The transmission’s a little worn, according to the mechanic, but nothing out of the ordinary. He gave the carburetor a cleaning and changed the gearbox oil, and I’m good to go. It cost $60 total for not a lot of “work” done on it, but that seems reasonable for the actual work put into the inspection, and worth it for the peace of mind.

The preparations for the big trip have been a bit quiet lately. Rest assured, this does not mean that the trip is off, or anything like that. It just means I don’t have much left to do between now and launch day. The time off has been scheduled, the camp sites have all been booked, the gear has all been purchased. About the only major outstanding task is to get the scooter checked out and declared seaworthy by a mechanic… which I have scheduled for Friday.

I know this is getting ahead of myself, but I’ve been thinking about where I might go after riding around Lake Michigan to Wisconsin. I have a few ideas.

Michigan also has an east coast, along Lake Huron. Unless you count right at the Straits of Mackinac, I’ve never even seen Lake Huron, which is a bit wrong, I’d say. To remedy that, I could ride up the middle of the Lower Peninsula, down the Huron coast to Lake St Clair, then back home across the palm.

Although I’ve driven through some of it on the way to Isle Royale, there’s a big chunk of the western UP I’m missing on a scooter. I could take the Badger back to Wisconsin, then head north and west to explore the Porcupine mountains and environs, then take the Badger back.

There’s a whole stretch of territory in the “wrist” of the state, along the borders with Ohio and Indiana. That would be more about the travel than the scenery or destinations, but I could see that being worth it, working in a detour to Amish country in northern Indiana.

I’ve quickly mapped these routes and they leave out only about a dozen counties, which I could easily pick up on a ride up the fingers to the eastern UP and back down, also places worth going.

Any one of these trips would take me about a week, the same amount of time as the trip I currently have planned. They’d involve fairly little duplication of places visited. And the notion of visiting every county in the state over the next several years is kinda neat. Sounds like a goal.