The Dark Knight Rises and this retrofitted Greyhound provides wifi and plugs as it runs east from Muskegon to Detroit MI.

If these seats are not rich Corinthian leather, they are certainly covered with almost real black pleather, a word that combines the connotations of pleasure and leather. We have lost that word from the seventies, naugahyde. Although a web search shows that the brand isn't dead. Shortening the word, a common linguistic strategy, has yielded the cooler term Nauga

I am not seeing the bus wireless showing up with any bars. That's why I am transferring to Indian Trails in Grand Rapids for the journey up to St. Ignace. The bus driver on Greyhound actually has to stop the bus and reset the router from outside. The wireless was strong enough to let me sign on, but its influence is gone.

No amount of leather on the seats, faux or real, can make up for the fact that Greyhound isn't bike friendly. Bikes have to be boxed and count against the one piece of stowed luggage allowed. The bike has to be lighter than fifty pounds and that leaves my beach cruiser out, possibly. I didn't think of it but I could have bought a box at the neighboring Muskegon post office. How much for a box that fits a beach cruiser? Indian Trails, if I am reading the web page right, welcomes bikes without restriction. How bikes are easily accommodated I will have to investigate. Last night, as I tooled around the mall out on Sternburg, I realized I had become bonded with my bike. Sure, I power stroke the pedals mostly with the piston of my right leg, sparing my left knee. I feel more athletic, might need some skinnier pants and feel less joint pain. My painful right arm has improved, feeling much more comfortable. The body must remember that it was forged in the eons before the machine and the body desires to be treated as a machine. In another month of this routine, I shall have my rheumatoid arthritis factors checked again.

I am loving the sight of a field of rolled hay bales that passed by our north bank of windows as our bus approached Coopersville Michigan. The first and only cutting of wheat has been taken from the field, the wheat kernels shaken from the chaff. In the south bank of windows, a farmer is beginning to drive a combine through his field, and the first swath has filled the combines hold, and a metal tube pours the golden stream of grain into a wagon with high steel walls. Coopersville is now a memory, the town of four thousand still mostly tied to the pursuit of farming.

I will arrive in St. Ignace as the sun fails and have a sunset over the Straits of Mackinaw to anticipate in my imagination. I can write my road thoughts as the road passes and thoughts arise. I had tried to capture road thoughts while driving by calling Google voice, but dialing was an unsafe pain and the three minute time limit pinched off thoughts. The transcription failures left work to be done. I am feeling a writer can do well by traveling by train or bus.