Summer Shape-up

I wouldn’t say Cindy and I were preoccupied with getting fit every summer. Far from it. Even laughable. Instead, getting fit was little more than an occasional thought, usually when we were bored. And any sort of exercise was far from a regular occurrence.

When I was growing up, my parents owned a cabin in northern Michigan. And for at least a couple of weeks every August, I had an opportunity to pal around with my friend, Cindy, whose parents also owned a cabin, just down the dirt and gravel road from ours.

When Cindy and I were teenagers, there were at least a few summers when we attempted (and failed) to get a jogging routine established. Our goal was to be able to run from our cabins to the paved county road and back, without stopping. Just over two miles up and back. Really ambitious, right? We gave ourselves until the end of August when we both went back to our real-life homes. Cindy to Lansing, Michigan; me to Columbus, Ohio.

We knew we’d have to pace ourselves. Neither one of us could run even close to half a mile. We decided to run in the evening, sometime after dinner. Later, if we had nothing going on that night. On the first evening, we would start at her cabin (closer to the county road) and make it to the middle of the third group of rental cabins, less than a quarter of a mile away. We walked for another probably half mile, stopped, turned around, walked back. Same the next day. It was usually a little too cold the next day, so we would skip (as in, pass, bail, didn’t do it). The next evening, either Cindy or I would maybe get a stitch in our side after just passing the closer fourth group of rental cabins, but we would persevere and continue walking to the third set of cabins before we would turn around. Not a lot of progress. Typically, on the fifth day, we would decide that a commitment to running every day was too much. Maybe every other day. We would agree to start the new schedule the following day. And that would be it. We wouldn’t run again. The end of our running initiative for that summer.

We followed this routine for probably two years, maybe three. The two of us were never really committed. And, to look at us, you probably wouldn’t have thought we were out of shape or that we couldn’t run a mile without a multitude of walking breaks. Cindy, especially, was teeny-tiny, as light as a feather.

Because we had failed in maintaining a running regimen, one summer Cindy and I thought we might have better success riding bicycles. We decided to ride bikes to the nearest town, Engadine, about three miles away. To be clear, there is literally nothing for two underaged girls with no desire to go to church, to do in Engadine, Michigan. It was merely a destination. Somewhere to go. Our plan was to ride there, rest a bit, ride back.

We had a real dilemma, though. I didn’t have a bike to ride.

As an aside, I remember my parents’ attempting to bring my black three-speed and two of my brothers’ banana-seat bikes up to the cabin one year, on a carrier attached to the back of our Country Squire station wagon. Unfortunately, as the overloaded car reversed out of the driveway to begin our journey, the bicycles all got smooshed into the road, and the frame of my bike was bent. And that was the first and last time my parents tried to bring bicycles up to the cabin. End of side story.

Cindy suggested we use her and Terry’s bikes. Every August, Cindy’s oldest brother, Terry, and his buddies would ride their bikes from Lansing to their cabin in the Upper Peninsula, about sixty miles west of the Mackinac Bridge. Of course, for such a trek, Terry had invested a bit more money into his bicycle than my parents had paid for my Huffy. (I’ll digress here a bit. My parents didn’t actually pay anything for my Huffy. My cousin, Sara, had both a ten-speed Schwinn and a ten-speed Huffy and gifted me her Huffy. Thank you, Sara. By the way, the Huffy is not the same bike that got smooshed, though the bike that got smooshed, I believe, was also a hand-me-down from Sara. Again, thank you, Sara.)

For some reason, Terry’s bicycle was up at the cabin, but he was not. Terry’s bike, therefore, was available — as long as we didn’t ask, and he didn’t find out.

Cindy suggested that I be the one to ride Terry’s expensive bike and she would ride her own. She figured that if Terry found out we had ridden his bicycle, he would be livid enough to kill one of us and he was far less likely to kill me than to kill her. Decision made.

I was cautioned to not adjust the seat height on Terry’s bike. We didn’t want to worry about putting the seat back exactly as it had been before we borrowed it. Terry apparently had longer legs than me because even my tippy toes couldn’t reach the ground when I was sitting on his bike. Some might say that this made riding Terry’s bike unsafe. Cindy and I chose not to discuss it.

I loved Terry’s touring bike! What a difference from the ten-speeds I was used to riding! The wheels were so skinny, and it seemed like they went super-fast with little to no effort on my part. I was gliding on air. This was no physical workout for me. I was a riding the wind! Like a dog sticking its head out of a car’s open window. Woohoo!

Terry’s bike was obviously made for riding ease when biking long distances. Cindy’s was not. I had to slow down regularly so Cindy could catch up as we rode west on the two-lane Old Route 2. Her bicycle may have been slower, but Cindy was the only one of us who got some exercise that day.

Cindy had clearly chosen the wrong bicycle to ride.

Finally, we reached our destination. Cindy was a bit breathless. I was breathing just fine.

And we did what most people do when they arrive in Engadine with no need to visit the hardware store. We dismounted our bikes and ambled into the grocery store. (We did have some concern about leaving Terry’s bike unattended and unlocked just outside the doorway, so we made a cursory look at the street and surrounding buildings. Besides the dirty man with a giant spider tattoo gracing the top of his shaved head who sat on the curb, cleaning his fingernails with a hunting knife and giving us a menacing grin, there was not another living soul nearby. We agreed that the bike would be safe. (Just kidding about the man.)

We didn’t have much money to spend. By combining our funds, we had enough to buy a pint-sized carton of chocolate milk to share and a box of Vanilla Wafers. A reward for Cindy’s workout. With our purchases, we rode our bikes over to the high school football stands and had a picnic. It was important for us to devour everything because neither one of us wanted to have to carry any leftovers on the ride back home. Nothing like getting in shape, is there?

I should have offered to switch bikes with Cindy, and maybe I did. I confess, that if I did make the offer it was half-hearted and insincere. After eating all those cookies, I hardly wanted to have to actually peddle back home. We rode our same bikes back without incident and returned Terry’s bicycle to Cindy’s garage, exactly as we had found it.

We could not have burned more calories than we consumed that day. Well, Cindy probably did. For me, our little bike trip was the first time exercise had actually been fun. And I developed a new appreciation for expensive touring bikes. That’s the way to exercise!

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The Mackinac Bridge connects the upper and lower peninsulas of Michigan. The bridge acts as an imaginary dividing line, separating Lake Michigan on the west and Lake Huron on the east. The “Big Mac” connects the city of St. Ignace on the north end with the village of Mackinaw City on the south. Until 1998, it was the longest suspension bridge in the world. With a suspension of 8,614 feet (the bridge itself is 26,372 feet), the Mackinac Bridge remains the longest suspension bridge in the western hemisphere.

In the 2010 census, Engadine boasted a population of 1,146. That’s pretty small. Engadine, I’m sure, has a number of summer cottages whose owners would not have been counted in the census. I looked at tripadvisor.com for “Things to do in Engadine.” Maybe some exciting new things have happened in the small town over the past forty years. Nope. Of the eighteen items the site listed, not one of them is in actually in Engadine. Even when I looked up the history of Engadine on wikipedia.org, I was given the history of Naubinway, Michigan instead. It seems that Engadine’s only real claim to fame is that it’s about forty miles east of Manistique.

I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that my family’s cabin, which is now owned by my sister Julie and her husband Tom, is part of the Hiawatha Sportman’s Club, which happens to have a mailing address of Engadine, Michigan. So, there’s plenty of stuff to see and do in Engadine, it’s just not immediately apparent, at least to tripadvisor.com.