Beach and Baseball Dugouts

It’s been a while since the last time I posted. I’ll try to remember the details and will probably take a few detours along the way.

I remember writing my logs in Benton Harbor that morning way back when I last wrote. I remember talking to the guys about my bad sexual experience from the past semester over a bowl of oatmeal and trail mix. I went up to the roof overlooking Benton Harbor before packing up my stuff. It was a beautiful summer’s day. Candice came in to chat with us before heading out again.

I brought my stuff downstairs before bringing down my bike. I packed it outside the apartment while a black fella talked to me from the Pig roast next to Candice’s apartment. I must have been rude to him, since I wasn’t saying much and focused on packing up my bike. I don’t remember what we talked about.

I rode over to the bike shop behind the gas station. Larry from the other night wasn’t around, but Paul was. He helped me open up my crank as well as clean and grease the crank arm and seat post. We ended up riding over to Paul’s house to do the finishing touches on tightening up the crank. He was very kind and the ride was very nice. He told me he worked for a renewable energy company. I was pleased to exchange business cards with him.

I rode back to my friends outside the apartment. I thought we’d be hitting the road, but it turned out that Candice had invited us to go with her to the beach. We were all still enamored with her, and the beach sounded nice, so we followed the directions left us and ended up walking along the beach for a while until we ran into her. Our meeting was short and sweet with a little bit of swimming and Frisbee and a little bit of chatting with Candice and her friends.

We left, riding our bikes along the coast. I took a slight fall riding on a bit of dirt path, but other than that, it was a smooth journey. We stopped at Warren dunes, which had the most enormous dunes you have ever seen. Lenny raced me to the top, but it was so long and sandy that we both got too exhausted to go any further once we were about half way up. We walked the rest of the way and stared out over the expanse. It was quite contemplative. Lenny climbed a tree and then we raced down the dunes. Before leaving, Lee bought a pool floatee, we ate the rest of the cookies we got from the plus sized women’s store in Benton Harbor during the art walk, and some nice store owner gave us some Gatorades for the road.

We finished up the day by riding into New Buffalo. Our plan was to hit up a place called Redamaks, which we had heard about from our radical hosts in Kalamazoo. We arrived just as it was getting a bit dark and didn’t need table reservations. I ate a nice triple swiss burger that came out within minutes of ordering – like a classy fast food joint. The joint was quite big and noisy and I wasn’t really impressed with the price or the presentation, but none of that really mattered – I had a pound of beef in my belly.

We rode over to the nearby high school and scouted around for a good place to stay. We first found a nice little pavilion, but decided it wasn’t secluded enough for us. I found the lights to the place though, which I was very proud of. We went over to the baseball dugouts nearby and got set up for sleeping. It was quite the experience.

Before heading in, I remember talking with my cousin over the phone. Thank god, we had a place to stay in Chicago. Too bad it was a Saturday night and Joe was having the time of his life seeing a Yo La Tengo concert. And I was sleeping in a baseball dugout. In our own way, I think we were each having our own pretty awesome and unique experiences.

Michael