Marine City, MI

Right now, the SPS cyclists are sitting on the border between the United States and Canada. It is crazy to think we have come this far; we have made it to another country.
But I guess I am getting ahead of myself...
This morning, while trying to wake up over a bowl of oatmeal, the girls challenged the guys to a duel - kind of. In other words, we just tricked them into getting ready on time by questioning their ability of getting ready before us. They boys, denying everything, fell for our scheme and raced around trying to get ready. Even though we still did not get out on time, I will give them the credit of getting ready before us.
Another change that occurred today was the maps. Until now, my dad always carried a map just in case the kid carrying the map got us lost. However, today, two kids had maps... we got lost, two or three times but we survived only adding on one mile or so. Overall, it worked out very well and we are planning to continue the kids having the maps.
I think every other road sign we passed had a St. Paul's connection. Carter, Wheeler, Wagner, Darbey, Callahan, Dixon, Mary, Lowell, Van Dyke, Sullivan, Sterling, Kinney - once we started looking for them, they popped up everywhere.
About three miles form Brown City, our snack spot, a car drove by honking at us. No one took much notice until Parker started to yell "It's Biddle!" and proceeded to bike as fast as he could to catch up - wihtout much success.
After a lovely lunch in Memphis (shout out to an awesome song - Walking in Memphis by Marc Cohn) we continued our way via rail trail to Marine City. As we pulled into the St. Mark's Episcopal Church, three reporters and some of the church members came out to greet us. After a delicious chili dinner, Scott drove us to some nearby showers. On top of that, he took our laundry to his house - he was amazing.
Tomorrow, we are looking forward to crossing the border into Canada which is thankfully really flat.

By Ellen