By Staff
To the editor:
I don't see how anyone in town could have missed the bike riders who were camped at the high school Sunday night.
These were the PALM riders on their annual ride across Michigan.
As you probably figured out, PALM stands for "Pedal Across Lower Michigan."
I happen to know this event from my past experience on this trip.
In fact, one year there were 22 members of our family on this bike ride.
My wife and I even came back to Michigan for this ride after our move to New Jersey.
Sue and I did this ride 10 years in a row.
I knew one of the riders on this trip particularly well, since he worked in the mail room at the Bendix Corp. office in Southfield when I was employed there.
Kevin Degen is his name and he is hard to miss on a ride, since he has a special built bike due to the fact that he is handicapped.
Kevin has cerebral palsy and does a number of rides to raise money for different charities.
In addition to this ride some of us have done the bike ride across Georgia and the ride from north to south in New Jersey.
All of these trips are one week in length and involve camping in tents at night.
The PALM ride moves up and down the state so the route is varied from year to year.
Tom Pendleton, one of the original founders of this ride, devoted his life to promoting bike riding.
In fact, he was employed by the District of Columbia to develop bike paths and promote biking in our nation's capital.
All of this at a time when our gas was less than 50 cents a gallon.
Now biking to work or for exercise makes even more sense.
Dowagiac,/b>