Introduction

Consider this blog a diary of the Pedal Across Lower Michigan (PALM) bike ride for 2007. It will be kind of official since I am on staff (Registration) and I'll have other staff members contributing. However we have 20-30 people on staff and they keep reminding me that I don't speak for them. If you go to our web site you'll see that we've been doing this for 25 years and are the cheapest week long bike tour around. What you may not know is that we are a family oriented ride. There were 192 riders out of 757 that were 19 or under. We have a lot of first time riders: last year we had 345 riders that had never done PALM before. About half of these had never done a week long bike trip before. There are reasons for this. For one, the daily mileages are about 50 miles, within the reach of people who are not training for the Tour de France. (But if you are, we have longer routes available. No Alps though.) Last year we had 60 people 70 and over who did the ride.

While the biking is important, the people are more important. I consider PALM summer camp for adults. Just like summer camp when you were a kid, you know no one when you start and by the time it ends you have friends that you just can't wait until next summer to see.

This blog will also contain the lastest information about this years ride and answers to questions that have recently come up. Some of this stuff may also make it to the web site, but that takes too long. The ride is June 23 to June 29 (so it won't mess up July 4) and this year goes from Spring Lake on Lake Michigan to St. Clair on the St. Clair river. The applications are being printed now and will be mailed out on January 21. Email us to get on our mailing list. See you then!