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Following a hearty breakfast in the school cafeteria, we began to ride eastward. Cycling along a quiet country road, we could see a large smokestack in the distance. Knowing that we started the day twelve miles from the St. Clair River, which marks the US-Canada border, we assumed that the smokestack marked a factory on the river. It was fun to see the distant smokestack gradually become larger, until the road ended at a highway that followed the river. A bicycle path paralleled the road, at first resembling a sidewalk. As we rode on this path, we found a mailbox so that Fr. Jim could mail his postcards before we crossed the border.
The path passed the huge Belle River power plant, where a large conveyor belt stretched above the road. The conveyor started at a dock along the river, where large ships unloaded coal. The coal was transferred to the conveyor, which carried it over the road and the bike path before ending in a "hill of coal". From there, heavy equipment would spread it out, making a ridge that was hundreds of feet long.
Leaving the conveyor belt behind, the trail began to wind through a park, at times nearly doubling back on itself. We crossed an arching wooden bridge and headed away from the St. Clair River. I became convinced that we were going the wrong way, but after a few minutes the path crossed the Belle River and turned south through a wooded area. As we rode along, we chatted with Lori from Minnesota. Lori was an accountant with a sense of adventure, as she quit her job to spend three weeks on the bike tour. She joined the tour in South Dakota and was riding to Niagara Falls. After Lori had chatted with Corky for a while, I asked her how old she thought he was. She guessed 14 years too low, which was a tribute to Corky's playfulness and enthusiasm.
Soon the bike path ended and we rode into the aptly named town of Marine City. As we passed through the city we again crossed the Belle River, this time within a mile of where it ended in the St. Clair River. The banks of the Belle River were lined with docks, and many pleasure boats were tied up. A few blocks down the road we came to the St. Clair River. Smiling, we realized that we had bicycled across Michigan. We stopped to take a picture of a pretty lighthouse, and then asked Lori to take our picture in a park by the river.
We soon headed for the ferry landing, which was 50 yards to the south. A friendly US customs agent stood outside a duty-free shop, chatting with some of the riders. Within a few minutes, the ferry arrived and about ten of us walked our bikes aboard, joining a lonely pickup truck. The riders who were with us on the ferry included some of the friends that we had made along the way, including Deb and Jim from St. Louis, and Tom and Shirley from Ann Arbor, Michigan. The ferry resembled a large, white floating carport, with metal ramps at each end and a pilothouse perched on the roof. It appeared to be large enough to hold about six cars at a time.
After a short voyage across the smooth blue river, we walked our bikes into Canada. I was anticipating a few questions from the Canadian Customs inspector, but he gave each of us a brief glance before waving us on. We rode through a cute town, followed the St Clair River for a short time, and headed east through the Canadian farmland. The terrain looked much like my home state of Ohio, but the speed limit signs were in kilometers per hour. As we rode along, I chatted with a friendly family and found that they live in Dublin, Ohio, only two miles from my Dad's house.
There was a brisk crosswind from the north, which made riding tough. Although there was not much traffic, most of it seemed to consist of large trucks. Each time a truck passed us from the opposite direction, the crosswind seemed to make the truck's air blast especially strong. We joked that 50 miles an hour may be the same as 80 kilometers per hour, but trucks that are going 80 kilometers per hour seem to deliver a much bigger blast of air. Next page
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