In the summer of ’72, my friend T.G. and I decided to ride our bikes from East Lansing to Battle Creek because he wanted to visit a camera store and purchase a new camera.  This is the same T.G. whose year long, very dirty, graduate research project involved trapping gasses at the top of Lansing’s tallest power plant chimneys.  He also had an M&M addiction and would regularly offer quotes like “It’s great to buy M&M’s at convenience stores because I love to get ripped off!”

We set off one Friday evening, cruising down Mount Hope as far west as we could and then angling south to Charlotte, stopping in the late evening at the local Dairy Queen.  This is the famous shar-LOT of central Michigan, not the more famous SHAR-lot in North Carolina.  As we talked with the workers and fellow soft serve connoisseurs  someone mentioned we could go a few blocks east and get on the new highway. The NEW highway?

It turned out that I-69 was under construction and soon to be open in their neighborhood.  The initial leg connected Lansing and I-96 to Marshall at I-94.  Since then, I-69 has extended south past Fort Wayne to Indianapolis, and east through Flint to Port Huron.  It is one of the few interstates that has a north-south part AND an east-west part.  And my brother in Bloomington, Indiana says they are hoping to extend it south to his town and beyond.

But on that night, all we found was a completed roadway with no traffic. What a ride! Fifteen miles of smooth concrete with no competition (except  for the police car that seemed to be doing a speed test on his vehicle and was surprised to find us on the road).  Even in the dark, it is easy to find your way on an interstate.

The pavement ended at Ainger Road, so we camped for the night.  The next morning we had to walk our bikes up the sandy ramp and found our way from there into Battle Creek.  I never found out how far north the unopened road extended at that time; T.G. and I rode home through Jackson to visit Diane, so we missed the opportunity of a return trip.  That Friday night was a once in a lifetime event!