The day to say goodbye to family and get back on the road was hard. And it was also hard to believe I only had 29 days of riding left! By the end of the day I would be 2/3rds of the way done my tour.
I had been through South Haven on my way to Long Beach, where I spent a week off the bike so when Amy and Bob offered to drive me and my bike there to start, it didn’t take me long to convince myself it wouldn’t be cheating and say yes. Thanks!
I took advantage of the 35 mile Kal-Haven rail trail that runs from South Haven to Kalamazoo. On the way I stopped in a nice park picnic shelter to eat my lunch in Bloomingdale, Michigan. While I was packing up, I met a young guy who was local, he was riding an E-bike but had taken a bike tour with his brother a few years ago.
The Kal-Haven trail was in great shape compared to some of the other trails I took (and chose not to take) in Michigan. A gravel or crushed stone rail trail that is in good shape is wondrous. Even though it is a bit slower than pavement, it usually makes up for that with it’s lack of cars, it’s direct routing, it’s easy grade and the string of small, former “railroad towns” that are usually along it.
When I made it to the edge of Kalamazoo, I had to head 10 miles South to my Warmshowers host. That riding was not as idyllic but it brought me to Tom’s house which made it worth it. Tom works in the field of synthetic chemistry, figuring out how to make molecules for clients (mostly pharmaceutical companies). I got cleaned up and we went to a Lebanese shawarma restaurant and a great local ice cream shop on the way home. I discovered Tom had done organized bike rides across many states, goes backpacking, canoe camping and does an annual white water raft trip with a group of friends. He also has a freeze drying machine in his basement that he uses to dehydrate meals for some of his trips.
Tom let me know he needed to get on the road in the morning to South Haven, he was going to gather signatures on a petition for rank choice voting in Michigan. Then he told me a personal story about rank choice voting. One year he was organizing his annual rafting trip with his friends and he sent out an email asking if they would like to raft on a different river this year since they had rafted on the same river the two years prior. So he took a poll with three choices:
1. Raft the same river again.
2. Raft River A
3. Raft river B
“Raft the same river again” won the poll but on the trip that year he discovered that the majority of people wanted to raft a different river than the one they had been rafting on. The “different river” vote was split and lost even though it was the majority. If the poll had employed rank choice voting, this wouldn’t have happened. Something to think about folks.
Slow and Steady 
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