June 20, 2015. PALM day 0. 5 miles.

We have 7 people on this trip and only 6 seatbelts in our truck. This could have been an issue, but Dianne and Malorie volunteered to ride the bus. We left home a little after 8 AM.  The first time Dianne thought she forgot something I humored her and went back in the house and looked. As I suspected, she had not left her vitamins on the counter. We hadn't moved 3 feet in the truck when she asked me to go in again and see if she forgot her toiletries bag. I refused to go back in, and of course she did not forget the bag.

We dropped Dianne and Malorie at Sterling State Park in Monroe. There were five full size buses to take riders from Monroe to Bridgman, the start of this year's Pedal Across Lower Michigan ride. Because we have our trailer with us, they did not have to wait in the long line to load their bikes on the trucks.

We picked up Martha (she lives near Sterling State Park) and headed out. We thought sure we would get there well ahead of the buses, so we took our time, including having a long lunch at Cracker Barrel. Dianne called me right after lunch and told me they were already at Bridgman and a lot of people were setting up their tents. Oh well.

We found a nice spot where we could set up all 6 tents together. It's pretty far from the parking lot, but we brought my little red wagon. We put all the baggage without wheels in the wagon, and rolled everything out there in one trip.

After we all registered and got our ride packets and T-shirts we decided to ride to the beach. Bill stayed back with the truck to map routes (SAGs are not allowed to ride the same route as the cyclists). We rode toward the beach, and when we were almost there a policeman at a guard shack stopped us from going any farther! There was a wine festival at the beach, and he said there were no wheeled vehicles allowed.







We tied up our bikes and walked down to the beach, where of course there were many cars and bicycles. Oh well. We took photos by this strange structure that had a sign on it that it was a federal offense to climb on it. Instead of dipping our wheels in Lake Michigan we dipped our feet!

 

 

It was downhill to the beach and uphill coming back and my bike did not shift correctly. I stopped at the bike lady's shop; she adjusted the shifting cable for me and showed me the sheared hub from the tandem that Erika and Laura rode on the PALM 2 years ago--it made it into the bike part hall of fame!

We found out much later that Dianne and Malorie, who were behind us on the way to the beach, got stopped by the police sooner than we did. They went instead to a beach a little farther away that had better access, dipped their wheels in the lake and had a bystander take their photo.