Beatin' Heat

This month has been a deadly scorcher. August is usually hot, but weeks exceeding 90 is rare. My relatives in Florida laugh at me, but here in the midwest, 85F is EMERGENCY TIME!

The asphalt in the city was becoming a bit much, so I loaded the Hunq to take the trail out to the coast for a few days of respite.

It's so nice to pedal through the shade trees for 40 miles to one of the best coastlines in the world.

The tourist town of South Haven provides enough amenities to entertain yourself and cool off for a few days.

I'll leave it for the academics to explain, but we humans never seem to tire of big blue bodies of water.

Traffic on the beaches and in the shops and restaraunts was slow, it was a weekday, mid August, kids are getting ready for school, families are in turmoil, dad's credit cards are maxed out from the summer and everybody is trying to get organized. But I was enjoying the lower traffic on the beaches.

Gear I'm using for camping hasn't changed much, but in the past year I've added a Trangia cooking kit. I was using some small backpacking pans and a Trangia alcohol stove for years. Now, cooking with the full kit has been an upgrade.

The windscreen is a piece of engineering, focuses the heat really well

and the kit includes two pots as well as a non stick frying pan. All this stuff nests together neatly for travel,

it's bulkier than the backpacking stuff, but with it you can put together a real meal. Of course that depends upon what the local groceries have to offer. Most of us know that food can always be found but it's hard work foraging for nutrition at Dollar General.

After a few days of cooling off in the water and watering holes, the ride back was hotter but still enjoyable. I stopped often and didn't get in a hurry to test myself. So it was all a nice break.