Chapter 42

Today, my cast comes off. Yippie!! Yup. Lucy Lou, Candy and Grace are taking me to Ludington to the Doctors and he is going to ... CUT OFF MY CAST? ... cut? Umh?

You sure you want to do this?

Can’t race the boat if you don’t.

If you don’t, then Grace will be Captain for the big End of Season Across and Back race.

She’s very good.

She’s a girl.

OK ... let’s do this.

Piper loaded up too.

Piper is my cat. I don’t think of her as a LYNX ... she’s my cat. I fetch sand for her litter box and burger from the Antler, I rub her back by her stub tail when she wants ... she loves that ... and her ears ... sometimes she pushes my book aside and runs her head under my hand and I scratch her ears.

My cat?

Her human.

Pussy whipped.

The road to Ludington: two choices. Old 31 or the bypass. The bypass is east of town ... not far but it’s far enough. If we were driving up to Grand Traverse from Grand Rapids, the five miles saved by bypassing Pentwater and the three or four miles bypassing Ludington would be worth it. But what we would miss.

There’s the Wishing Well at Bass Lake and their gas is always three cents cheaper ... and they make real buffalo jerky and it’s good ... after that, there’s the stop at Kings Canyon.

It was a huge cave cut under the bluff by an immense storm centuries ago, according to geologists, anyway. They say that November storms kept cutting away at the sandstone ceiling until it collapsed under the weight of the bluff. There’s huge boulders just offshore. Huge as in house size but from the edge of the cliff they look like dice. Square cut blocks of ice worn granite. Can’t take the old road and not stop to look at Kings.