Mackinac Island

May 17, 2012.  It has been a good day.  We ferried across the straits to Mackinac Island this morning.  The ferry threw up a roostertail as we left the harbor for the 15-minute trip.  Mackinac was all we remembered.  There were no cars, no trucks, no motorized vehicles of any sort unless you count the two electric scooters we saw some old people riding.  The sounds, other than the voices of visitors, consisted of the clippity-clop of iron horse shoes on the many horse-drawn carriages and wagons.  There are no traffic lights, though bikers are cautioned not to speed.  There are a few stop signs.  I don't know why.  Nothing on the island goes fast enough to require traffic controls.  

There is still fudge.  There are many places for lunch.  There is ice cream and candy.  We partook of three of the four.  Surprisingly, there are no recumbent bikes available to rent.  There are single-speed bikes, three-speed bikes, seven-speed bikes and twenty-one-speed bikes.  There are kids' bikes and giant bikes for giants, I suppose.  But there are no recumbent bikes.  

We got our recumbents because Annie's knees won't flex past 90 degrees.  That means that when the peddle is at the top of its cycle, her foot pops off the peddle.  She tried one of the regular bikes, but was unable to make it work safely.  

The college student on the summer job of a lifetime said, "Well, we do have some tandem bikes.  You - meaning me - could peddle and your girlfriend could just ride along behind."  That was the stupidest idea I've ever heard.  We tried that in college, when Annie's knees worked just fine.  I hauled her all over Columbia while she sat on the rear seat gazing about, singing, whistling, chewing gum and anything else she could think of other than peddling.  I told him that.  

"How long have you been together?" he asked.

"Nearly fifty years," I answered.  

"Well, this isn't something that's going to break up a long-term relationship, is it?"

No, I guessed not.  So we paid twenty dollars to rent a tandem bike for two hours so I could haul Annie around the island.  There was one payback.  She prepared baked beans last night for dinner.  Of course she was on the downwind side as I trucked us both around the island.  If she had it to do again, she might have insisted on a horsedrawn carriage to get about.   

I hope you enjoy the pictures.  The picture of us on the tandem  bike - with just one of us peddling, I might add - took some effort.  The camera has a ten-second timer, so I set it up on a picnic table, pushed the shutter and raced back to the bike where Annie was poised to shove off.  The first try, the camera captured only the front of the bike and me, peddling.  The second try, we were almost out of the frame when the light on the camera began to flash more quickly.  I turned the bike toward the camera to avoid riding out of the picture.  That created an akward picture of us sorta riding toward the camera. 

The third time was the charm.  We timed our - my - peddling just right and the picture shows us in the center of the frame.  Well, after some cropping on the computer, we were in the center of the frame. 

Annie asked me if I wanted to go back tomorrow or go on to Door County.  "What would we do tomorrow?" I asked.

"The same thing we did today, eat lunch, eat fudge, eat ice cream and ride a bike around the island."

We'll leave for Door County in the morning.