Turbo Chicken
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5252 Portage Road, Suite B Portage, MI 49002 (269) 270-3213 Website Menu
December gets crazy. We go from Kalamazoo Kick-Off Synchronized Skating
Competitio...
2 days ago
From US-131 -- Just north of Three Rivers turn west on M-216 (Marcellus highway). Proceed 18 miles, traveling through Marcellus, to the research station office located on the left side. Travel another 1/4 mile to the roadside park entrance.
From I-94 -- Take the Paw Paw M-40 exit (exit 60). Travel south on M-40 through Lawton to Marcellus Highway. Turn west and travel approximately 5 miles to the research station office on the left side. Travel another 1/4 mile to the roadside park entrance.
"The torch snapped alight again. We flipped our visors down. Jason picked up a fresh filler rod and the flame roared into action on the seat cluster. He worked methodically round the weld, turning the jig, flipping the cable of the torch from beneath his feet, holding the flame steady at the exact distance from the weld. Ten minutes later, the seat stays were on. The torch went out. Jason pulled off his mask and stepped back, inviting me forward with one arm, like a midwife in a maternity ward introducing an overawed father to his child. The frame of my dream bike-- the diamond soul--- was finished."
"He dropped the spokes one by one through the holes in the flanges of the front hub. Periodically, he gathered all the spokes from one side of the hub together and swept them to the side, like someone tying their hair back. When he'd lined up the label on the hub with the label on the rim-- a nice touch-- he placed the first spoke through the hole on the rim next to the valve and secured it with a blue nipple. All the other nipples would be silver: the blue one was a visual aide, and Gravy's signature. Then he went round the rim once, placing a spoke through every third hole. He flipped the wheel over and laced a second set. Within minutes, the pattern of the wheel began to emerge."
"By the end of the decade, the bicycle had become a utilitarian form of transport for millions-- the people's nag. For the first time in history, the working class became mobile. As they could now commute, crowded tenements emptied, suburbs expanded and the geography of cities changed. In the countryside, the bicycle helped widen the gene pool: birth records in Britain from the 1890s show how local surnames began to appear far away from the rural locality with which they had been strongly associated for centuries. Everywhere, the bicycle was a catalyst for the campaigns to improve roads, literally paving the way for the motor car."
The woods around were the then unpeopled forest of Michigan ; and the small winding reach of placid water that was just visible in the distance, was an elbow of the Kalamazoo, a beautiful little river that flows westward, emptying its tribute into the vast expanse of Lake Michigan. Now, this river has already become known, by its villages and farms, and railroads and mills; but then, not a dwelling of more pretension than the wigwam of the Indian, or an occasional shanty of some white adventurer, had ever been seen on its banks. In that day, the whole of that fine peninsula, with the exception of a narrow belt of country along the Detroit River, which was settled by the French as far back as near the close of the seventeenth century, was literally a wilderness. If a white man found his way into it, it was as an Indian trader, a hunter, or an adventurer-in some other of the pursuits connected with border life and the habits of the savages.
The trees, with very few exceptions, were what is called the "burr-oak," a small variety of a very extensive genus; and the spaces between them, always irregular, and often of singular beauty, have obtained the name of "openings;" the two terms combined giving their appellation to this particular species of native forest, under the name of "Oak Openings."