34:18. Hint: I am absolutely positive that the two things I’m counting are actually more numerous in the areas through which we’ve been biking, but we miss a lot of them because we’re on back roads and bike paths. We have been in several of the more numerous ones, but in none of the less numerous ones.

We have been missing our Warm Showers experiences. For some reason the areas in Wisconsin and Michigan where we’ve been biking haven’t had a lot of Warm Showers opportunities — and in Traverse City, MI, the one place that had multiple hosts, none of them were available. So we feel that we’re in Warm Showers withdrawal. We really appreciate the unique aspects of each Warm Showers experience and the conversations we have with our hosts. We hope to be able to organize our ride over the course of the last weeks of our ride so that we’ll end at least some of our days in places with Warm Showers hosts.

But, today and tomorrow we have something even better! We are with two of our very best friends in Birmingham, MI, Marion and William. We got to know them in Brussels, where William was a senior executive with Chrysler. Marion generously offered to lend Brady a cowboy outfit for a costume event (he was 4) when we first moved to Brussels and the rest is history. We are now family and Brady considers the three “kids” as his brothers.

Marion and their youngest son Malcolm picked us up from the ferry in Marine City, where we will be continuing our ride again on Saturday. She immediately said she had some “business” to cover with us, that included whether we wanted the massages they had set up for us today or tomorrow. How did they know that we had been dreaming of massages for weeks? We are so, so lucky to have friends like Marion and William and are so, so happy to be with them and in a building that’s not a restaurant or a motel room! Unfortunately, we have learned from experience that more than one rest day in a row is not good for us, so we will not be staying for as long as we would like to.

We are now about 1,000 miles from the end of our trip. I’ve looked at the remaining maps and am intimidated by the climbs we have coming up in New York, Vermont, NH and Maine. We will be starting with rolling hills — that sounds so poetic, but on a bike even rolling hills can be tough — but then quickly get into real mountains. So, we are lightening our load and mailing back some gear tomorrow. I think I’ll probably be able to carry what I have left in my rear panniers so will send the front ones back. Charles may keep his front panniers and he and I can switch off carrying them.

While I am looking forward to reaching our goal and getting to Bar Harbor, it will be very strange not to get on a bike every morning. We have gotten so efficient every morning with packing, loading up our bikes, putting on sun block, having breakfast, packing lunch and getting on our way by 7 am at the latest, that it will be very strange once we are back home to get out of bed, have a leisurely breakfast, read the papers and not get on a bike. But I know I am getting ahead of myself. We still have three or so weeks to go. Fingers crossed that everything continues to go well, although it doesn’t make for very exciting reading 😉