Eleven, Marty's version "Quirky"

Last entry I wrote about a cycle camping trip Edie and I took to the Traverse City area of Michigan. I wrote about how pretty it was, how pleasant we found the scenery and how nice the roads were. But did I mention the people?

I would not characterize the people of that area as pretty, pleasant or nice. Not that they were ugly, unpleasant or nasty. But this area is peculiar, distinctive, unique. And the folks we found up there could be described the same way…in a word...quirky.

The little village of Northport is nestled on the shores of Grand Traverse Bay. We passed it on our way north in a hard rain, parking our bikes under the overhang of a closed bakery as we scrambled to find warmth in the nearby grocery. We returned the next day in bright sunshine to find the bakery open and welcoming. Photos on the wall depicted some place European and yet, Middle Eastern.
‘Where?’ I asked.
‘Turkey’ came the reply.
The owner had traveled to Istanbul when she was young, fell in love with the city and bought an apartment there. Thirty years later she divided her time between her Northport bakery in the summer and Istanbul in the winter. In a separate room were Turkish rugs for sale. You won’t see many bakeries selling Turkish rugs on the side.

Near the town of Beulah several days later we were dodging rain clouds, attempting to get back to our campsite at the National Lakeshore when a cyclist greeted us carrying a Yorkshire terrier, Rosie, in a custom-designed handlebar bag. Carol was another of those folks who split her time, the summers and vacations spent near Beulah where she had a home, and the winters spent as a musician in residence at a college in the
Upper Peninsula. Carol was a serious cyclist, commuting to work in snows that measured in the tens of feet. Her dog Rosie was also a serious cyclist. Inviting us to her house a few miles away, Carol warned us of the impending hill. ‘I can make it without walking’, she advised us, ‘but I have to take Rosie out of her carrier to ease the weight and to have her help me climb the hill’. Help her climb the hill? No sooner did we turn a corner and face the hill, then Carol dismounted, placed Rosie on the ground, and attached her leash. Rosie, well used to the drill, lunged ahead and we could see by the tension on the leash that this 6 lb. animal was earning her keep helping Carol up the hill. Half an hour later we were sitting on her dock, her backyard bordering Crystal Lake, admiring her woodpile and her fine garden. Rosie was off chasing voles.

Some of the quirky characters we knew of only by their works. One fellow who owned a farm, painted a tall old silo in huge flowers as though they were growing up the side, cut a window-sized hole near the top and installed a mannequin whose long blonde polyester tresses hung a good one story down from the tower. Rapunzel, Rapunzel…

One of the more startling objects we encountered was a lawn chair. A humble lawn chair startled you, you ask? Yes, and it took a moment to realize that the lawn chair, accurate in every detail from its aluminum frame to its plastic webbing was about 10 times normal scale. I walked my bike down to the lawn and over to the chair, and only then, in close proximity did I realize just how big this thing was.

Marty Cooperman