July 13 2023 Day Thirty Seven

 July 13 – Muskegon MI – Day 37

 

Sitting in a Travel lodge hotel room chugging on a 24-ounce Pabst since that’s the closest bar to the hotel that I’m in. It’s surrounded by liquor stores so after a ride to a bar that had food, I figured I should pick up a beer for the room. I would’ve loved to stay at the bar I was at, but when I have a drive like I did thru construction in an area I don’t know, Muskegon Michigan, it’s better I don’t do a lot of drinking and driving. I made pretty good time today and figured I might as well go for it and get to Muskegon to make sure I don’t miss my 4:45 PM ferry for tomorrow. Ok, I could’ve stay somewhere much closer to where I started the day, Lake Geneva in NY, but I am going to see if I can get on the early ferry tomorrow at 11:00 AM as a standby. I did call the ferry service, but they said the cruise is already full of bikes that the only thing I can try is standby. If I don’t get on the early one, then I’ll ride the area and do a little site seeing before my scheduled time.

 

So once again there was rain in New York and on my way shortly after leaving Lake Geneva toward Buffalo. I didn’t expect the rain to come this early, but fortunately my timing wasn’t too bad that I was able to pull into one of the service areas in a quick manner to stay dry and only had to wait about 15 minutes for the rain to move thru. I did check the forecast and since it was only in my immediate location it was moving away pretty quick that I just had a little road spray to deal with. It did look like I was going to hit more rain most of the way to Muskegon, but it was about the last 150 miles that I had the best weather of the day. Sun out and it warmed up a little bit since I did have to ride most of the day with a coat on to keep myself warm. 

 

So as long as I’m going thru Buffalo, there’s my usual stop I just have to make, the Anchor bar, the original Buffalo Wing place. It may be a little early, since they just opened at 11:00, that I figured an order is a no brainer. There weren’t a lot of parking spots take, but one of the workers suggested a place for me to park so he could personally watch my bike for me. Not sure what kind of neighborhood that it is in, but as long as I don’t have to worry about everything strapped to it and he’ll watch it, I figured it was worth a trip to him after my meal. Of course, it was the original, medium sauce and a since order is 10 wings, that it’ll be more than I normally eat during the day when I have a ride in front of me. It took only about an hour to get to Buffalo from Lake Geneva, so I still had a few more hours in front of me. 

 

I did have to cross the border into Canada since I was taking the same way I took to get out East that all I had to do is find the Peace bridge which took me into Canada on my way toward Niagara Falls. I did skip doing the site seeing since I had places to be, here, but I did at least stop at the Niagara Harley shop to at least see what it was all about. It might have been early or that it’s a Thursday because there weren’t many bikers there when I got there. A few more showed up as I had to leave, but I guess I’ll have to stop some other time when it’s not in the middle of the work week. 

 

No problems with the ride thru Canada and it only takes about 2 hours to ride from one end, Buffalo end to Port Huron end at 90 mph, that I have no problems pushing it as well as most of the Canadians driving their freeways. I suppose when you have 100 to 110 that you can drive in Canada, the faster the better even though 100 in Canada is about 60 mph in the US, which reminded me, I don’t think I could buy a bike form a Canadian H-D dealership since they sell theirs with Kilometers and I don’t know I’d be able to do the calculation while I’m riding from one to the other. 

 

Getting back into the US at the Port Huron bridge, the Blue Water bridge wasn’t so easy today. No, I didn’t get sent to the inspection booth, but apparently because of the construction work on the bridge and since they are only using one bridge, there was a problem on the bridge that both sides were backed up for some time. Not only a problem on the bridge, but people don’t know how to wait in line. It soon got to people moving up anywhere they could even if there wasn’t a lane to use to get out of Canada and into the US. Eventually once the lines started moving, I did like many had already done and made my own moving into a lane work. More narrow and better handling moving in and out of places that I just picked my way thru to the front of the line. Ok, but into the US, that according to my directions can make Muskegon by 8:00 that I might as well go for it and remember the last 150 miles were the best weather of the day.

 

Once in town it was time to find a hotel and my Aroundme app showed me the travel lodge for a cheap price and once I pulled into the lot there were a number of bikes already parked. I guess there are others with the same idea as me to take a ferry to Milwaukee’s’ 120^th celebration of Harley Davidson. Once settled in and finding there wasn’t a bar close, I figured I’d at least ride to the ferry to make sure there wasn’t something going on around there. There was, some bars with a number of bikes that are getting on the late ferry, but none of them were serving food that I had to find something closer to the hotel to eat and drink without too far a ride. I did find a place, the Old Homestead Tavern and again a biker friendly bar to visit. They were just wrapping up food service, but I was able to order a Sandie’s World-famous green olive burger. You might be asking how they serve Sandie’s World-Famous Green olive burger, but I did notice their special burger had green olives on it and they served sour cream with their Mexican items that I put in a special order of a burger with cheese, green olives and sour cream that it was almost as good as Sandie’s true World-famous Green Olive burger. 

 

24-ounce Pabst gone, that I should try to get some sleep since I will have to make an early start if I want to try the make the early ferry as standby. Hopefully I get on the early, so you’ll just have to stay tune to see what does happen.