Riders have now racked up exactly 450 miles as they ended Stage 2.  Today’s route started the riders from the Great Wolf Lodge in Traverse City, Michigan and zig zagged them 256 miles through the middle of Michigan on some of the best two lane roadways that this area has to offer.  Riders ended up in Battle Creek, Michigan at Battle Creek Harley-Davidson with a sea of people to watch these archaic machines cross today’s finish line. The day wasn’t all rolling hills, tall trees, lakeside passes and old school navigation for some of the riders. Right out of the gate at mile six Cannonball veteran #25 Scott Byrd lost compression on his front cylinder and after an hour of wrenching determined that a road side fix wasn’t going to happen so he was loaded up on one of the two sweep trailers on the course.  It wasn’t but two miles later that the same sweep crew came upon rookie rider #112 Dennis Peterson from California who was experiencing some of the same problems, and was quickly loaded.  The rest of the morning was quiet for sweep operations as the one sweep truck had two bikes and the other sweep truck was empty.   Hoping they would make it to the hosted stop empty, they came upon #83 Jon Szalay at mile 134 with a half dismantled Indian four cylinder that appeared to have a melted piston.  Only two more riders #42 Mike Bruso and #30 Keith Kardell with minor problems were loaded not much further down the road.  Battle Creek Harley-Davidson put on one great event tonight for the riders. Spirit and confidence is growing and looks like there will only be a few people that will be working into the night to be ready for the start tomorrow which will land us at the Rip Rap Roadhouse in Dayton, OH.

Scores posted at www.motorcyclecannonball.com