Ride Report: Pontiac Trail to South Lyon

Saturday’s ride was a 60-kilometer round trip from Ann Arbor to South Lyon. I rode most of it with a huge grin on my face. The road was mostly flat with some mild undulations. It took me past farm fields, red barns, rural mansion ranchettes and plenty of funky signs and street art. There was some mechanical drama and nasty weather on the later half of the ride. Overall, it was just the kind of mellow, mind-clearing outing that I needed.

I wanted to stop at the German Park to fill my bottles with hefeweizen and grab a brat or two for the road. It’s just a few kilometers from my home, and on Saturdays they have a German-style picnic. Admission is $5. I plan to take the family next weekend.

The German Park’s gates are guarded by these jolly axe-wielding German gnomes. I wonder if they could beat a Belgian gnome in a bike race.

Last week, I went for an after-work ride and passed this place just after they had fired up the BBQ pit. The air was full of the sugary, smokey, savory smell of BBQ that drove me insane and nearly knocked me off my bike. It appeals to our most primal tastes and appetites. There’s an outdoor dining section, and a bunch of people were already digging into an early dinner. If I had any money on me, I would have ditched the ride and ordered some food.

I’m a huge sucker for painted plywood sides on country roads. Nice detail: the eyelashes on the pig. I also liked the way they painted the flames. They almost look real!

Barbecue. Weddings. Toy soldiers. China. Much more! I can’t figure out the name of the “chef de cuisine.” Where might he be from? I’m also not an expert on scary-looking bird logos. Is this German or Russian or something else?

Michiganers love big barns. They take good care of them, too. I guess the winters are so harsh that the barns have to be big enough to house every head of livestock.

Homegrown fast-food joints are cool, especially ones that are more famous for their root beer than anything else.

Welcome to quaint little downtown South Lyon, near the turnaround point of my ride.

Tuscan food in southern Michigan. I’ll probably stop here for a cup of coffee on chilly autumn rides.

Another cool manhole for my collection.

The Spiderman motif seemed unusually popular. There was a pawn shop that used it, too. They didn’t use Bob the Builder, though.

The shopowner offered to sell me the Pee Wee Herman-style cruiser bike for $60.

A great country allows its citizens to take to the skies. Not possible in China for most folks.

Cider and donuts – two important building blocks of the food pyramid. Fruits and breads.

If you can’t think of a cute or clever name for a road, just call it what it is. I like this no nonsense rural approach.

When life looks like easy street there is danger at your door. My bike tire goes flat just after the turnaround point. Luckily, I have a nice place to fix it as rain starts falling.

A fragment that looks like piano wire pierces my Specialized Armadillo Roubaix tire. They’re fantastic tires, but they’re no match for something like this. A simple repair becomes complex when I realize my spare tubes are the crappy tubes I bought at Decathlon in Guangzhou. The stems are ridiculously short, and my Topeak hand pump can’t grab onto them tight enough to inflate the tube. I spend 20 minutes wrestling with them before I walk the bike two blocks down the road to South Lyon Cycle & Sports.

A friendly mechanic let me borrow a Shrader valve stem that screwed on to my Presta stem, extending it so a pump could inflate the tube.

A monster truck! God bless America. It’s always great to see someone who has a hobby that’s 100 times more expensive and ridiculous than mine.

The skies were overcast the entire ride and a hard rain fell for the last 30 minutes of the outing. It was my first rain ride of the summer and I welcomed the change.