Ain't it good to be back home again?

That's if you make it in one piece!

While the mate and team were at the point the tire went flat on the trailer again, you'll remember. This is one of those things that appear to be bad. We were going to have to leave it behind this morning and the mate would come back with the truck to fetch it. Unplanned expense, ick!

We put what we could on the bikes and in our pockets that we felt had to be taken with us and stuffed the rest into the crippled trailer and tucked it under the trees by the 5th wheel to wait for rescue the next day.

The kids helped us double carefully police the cabin, trailer and grounds. We wanted to be invited back and allowed to use it unsupervised so we wiped down, picked up, burnt and polished it up sweet for our hosts. Then we took a last look around, shrugged into our jackets, stuffed our heads into our helmets and got ready to ride.

We went on the, by now, traditional breakfast ride, our last trip to town, and then headed out for the bridge. The weather was a little cool but dry and partly sunny. The bikes were running great. We saw some huge sand hill cranes right beside the road but no moose and no bears.

Traffic started to pick up as we got closer to the bottle neck at the Mackinaw Bridge. You had to start paying attention, not just enjoying the ride and views of granite and pine soaring over you. Then I saw the sign. "Construction on bridge - Lane Closures" Oh, man, bad words and stomp my feet! We were going to have to ride the grate! If you check out the link you will see the view of the bridge from below. The dark edges are the lovely concrete roadways. The part you can see the sky through is the grate.

It's uneven heights of steel grating to keep ice from forming on the bridges. In biker talk it's called "the cheese grater". It grabs a tire and puts it anywhere it wants, then you hit a lower spot in the pattern and it moves you somewhere else unless you muscle your handle bars to stay inside the lines. It feels like trying to walk on an icy escalator or conveyor belt that is moving sideways as well as forward. We avoid it like the Scarecrow avoids fire!

It had even come up in the converstations that weekend. I hadn't road the bridge grate although I have rode other bridges and other grating. I tried to describe it to the nephew and fumbled around to oily, squirrely, but do-able.

I thought about slowing down to warn the kids but I decided I would just transmit my fear and they were better off facing it cold with no negative input. We paid our tolls and started off. When we had to shift to the grating it was like going from carpet to waxed wood floors at full speed. I saw the mate was really wrestling his bike and then didn't get to worry about him except to make sure I was far enough back to not crowd him. My bike wanted to polka and I can barely two step! I was almost standing up on the pegs to keep the front end pointed where I wanted to go.

In my rear view I watched as the kids hit the new texture and saw they were holding steady and I couldn't watch them, either. It was the dance of avoiding the worlds worst road rash and I was doing the twist hoping the rear end would stay in line nicely while I leaned, lifted and lashed the front end into minding me.

You had to go just a certain speed. Too fast and she skated like a car hydroplaning, too slow and she started to drift sideways. It's the ultimate in crappy surfaces to ride on. I rather ride up a gravel pile!

For a lot of biker it isn't the grate that bothers them, it's the view. You can see down to the water and it's a llloooonnnnnnngggggg way down. I don't mind the height, I worry about the hamburger effect sliding down the grate will have on me and the bike.

We all made it! The plan had been to go on to a favorite stop for lunch but I signaled the mate to hit the exit for the gas station tourist trap so I could stop shaking. We let the kids look through the store while we had a beverage and a smoke by the bikes and congradulated ourselves on making it in one piece. The Nephew said it "wasn't that bad." KIDS! But then I looked at his tread pattern and ours and we had the slashing V shapes while he had a mostly straight in line with the tire pattern. It might make a difference.

The next run was about 90 miles and the traffic was messing with us. The kids signaled for a pull over and we found out that a screw had fallen out of the boy's windshield. He and Mate fixed it up to get him home and we rolled again.

Now it was RV's, 5th Wheels, and big boats on tiny trailers doing 85 past us then an itsy bitsy car doing 45 in front of us. By the time we made the lunch stop we were all really ready for a break.

After a light lunch and filling the bikes up we had a fairly easy trip home. We stopped by M and Ma's to drop off the key and then I treated to ice cream about 30 miles further down the road because I needed to stretch my maximus. I had biker butt with dislocated tail bone complications.

40 miles later the kids swung off for home and we beat feet for the house. It was still there! The daughter had come out and stayed with the dogs, she left her dad some cold pizza, his favorite and the dogs were going nuts in the pen. We dropped our gear, went back out to unload the bikes and put them away then came in and collapsed.

I love my little house in Tiny town! As we say, "jiggety, jig"!