Tales from the back of the bike

On Saturday, I went with Steve on a motorcycle trip (Gold Wing) with our Riders Redeemed motorcycle church group. A bunch of Baptists on motorcycles? Yep. And our Pastor Dave is among them. It's great for outreach, and what I hope will someday be a link to draw Steve back to church. In the meantime, he does love a good ride, we both do, so agrees to come with the church group from time to time.

Our destination was Clare, Michigan, home of Jay's Sporting Goods. Our four bikes left the church parking lot about 8:45 a.m., with the air temps hovering around 50 degrees. It was brisk! Four guys plus me on the back of Steve's bike. Had I known there would not be any other ladies coming this time, I might have opted out so that Steve could get to know the guys more. But there I was, so enjoy the ride!

What does one do on the back of the bike? It is somewhat passive, of course. You don't have to do anything to make the bike go except lean in the right direction from time to time. So lots of time for looking and thinking and praying.

Looking at the scenery passing by, lots of thoughts come to mind:

• That's an interesting car (bicycle, motorcycle, truck, etc.)
• Nice house! Wouldn't that look good at home?
• Wow, that house has seen better days.
• The morning light would make that a great picture. Just not while we're moving though.
• Look at those (horses, cows, etc.)
• Here we are in (insert name of small town - we were taking the back roads.) Never heard of this place before. Don't blink or you'll miss it.
• Wow, I can see my reflection in the back of Steve's helmet.
• and, of course, the proverbial "that would be a great place to hide a cache" and "wonder if there's a cache hidden there already?"

Caching is usually not an option on group rides. Steve is reluctant enough to stop occasionally when we're on the bike by ourselves. When we're with a group, the stop decision is usually not in our hands. And you never know for sure just where we're going to stop, except for the final destination. Luck would have it that there were no caches within walking distance of Jay's. So I was out of luck. I still bring the GPSr anyway. I can entertain myself by knowing how far we've gone, how close we are to our destination, how fast we're going, how long we've been going, what road we're on, and other such valuable information. I think I can also play a game or two on it, just never have, other than the great game of geocaching.

I did take some time to count just how many waypoints I have entered into the GPSr. 384 to be exact. I needed to know because I need to load waypoints for my upcoming Mackinac trip and I only have room in the GPSr for 500. What's in there now are mostly local caches. By local I mean about 30 miles out in every direction.

Yesterday, I was able to load in the caches for the first day of my trip. Home to Traverse City. I have a room reserved for Wednesday night at the Knights Inn there, and will go the rest of the way to Mackinaw City on Thursday. Friday is check in for the scouts, that's those of us on physical arrangements staff are working. Saturday we don't have much to do so are free to roam the island at our leisure. Read geocaching into this. Sunday we work again, checking out the scouts, then head for home. If all goes well, I will add 14 counties to the "found" list and only have 7 lower peninsula counties left, and about the same in the UP.

I'm really looking forward to this last blast for the year!