Today we rode 59 miles from Benton Harbor, MI to Holland, MI. Not many pictures since the route was through some very familiar territory and I had the "been there, done that" syndrome.
Two things of note, first the night spent in a tent on the church lawn in the heart of Benton Harbor. After walking to a "Canadian Bible Study" with three other adventurous Sea to Sea riders, I settled into my tent at about 10pm. I could hear the sound of two or three men yelling at each other coming from a neighboring house. This continued until about 2am, interspersed with groups of men walking by talking loudly, most of which I could make out word for word. Some of the conversation had to do with us in our tents-I'll leave it that we were the butt of many jokes. Fortunately everyone passing by kept moving and the yelling match did not escalate to gunfire. I spent much of the night praying that we would be "passed over" like the Israelites in Egypt. One of the first things I did when I got up in the morning (5am) was to circle the trucks to see if they got tagged. They were clean. Maybe I was over-reacting, but it sure felt like we were in an evil place. What a difference from the very high-end properties we saw along Lake Michigan surrounding Benton Harbor. We had a praise service-here are the musicians warming up
prior to our nightly Peleton meeting and heard about the various efforts Christians are making in this city to improve the situation. One thing I heard is that by many economic measures, Benton Harbor is the worst place in the country. And so very close to us.
The second topic was the weather for today. This picture of Donald sums it up:
I was wringing him out again. I rained rather heavily most of the way to Holland. I'll spare you the gory details but riding in the rain is not something I would choose to do but the tour must go on! Eventually we happened upon This sight in Holland.
We never thought dorm life would be such a luxury. Actual hot showers! More than one toilet for all the men of the tour! A dry place to sleep! And Ruth is coming out to treat me to dinner tonight!
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