Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Celebration time!

Aline and Jim caught up with us today. Hooray!!! We did fine on our own - most of the time - but having support feels very good. Having the dinner they prepared felt pretty wonderful, too. Fish, corn, salad, sauteed vegetables and sparkling water. I really don't know what we'd have done otherwise. We are in a fairly remote area and most of the little restaurants we passed during today's ride are out of business. Having their support and their company is going to be a real treat.

Last night's B&B was very nice. It was an old house furnished with, as far as I could tell, eveything that had ever appealed to the owner. But the clutter worked. It was fun looking around at it all, and the bed, the bathtub and the breakfast were terrific. We even had a thunderstorm in the middle of the night.

Actually, that was predicted. Today's weather was not supposed to be great, but fortunately the worst was overnight. We decided, since today's ride was not particularly long, that we would stick around long enough to do our laundry while the storm system passed. It was raining when we got up, but we didn't have any rain at all while we rode.

Today was one of those days I can't ever figure out. How do you know how good a day you're going to have? Bruce felt rested and ready to roll, but I felt sort of tired. Yet after about ten miles that he was not having much fun, and I felt like anything was ok - it was all easy. It happens to me all the time & so far I have no clue why.

We had lots more of the Wisconsin woods and lakes. I spotted a smallish animal in the road once, and approached wondering what it was and how long it would stick around to let me see it. Well, it stuck around until I was almost on top of it. It was a little racoon. Even when I got very close, it thought the thing to do was to head off the road by running across in front of me, growling as it went. That was a bit unnerving.

I have to admit there was a tough side to my day, too. Many of the roads we took were in pretty bad shape. At times they took all our attention. No time to admire the surroundings. I had heard that Wisconsin had very good roads for bikes. So far, we have not experienced that. Some are pretty good for a while; most are rough and have those b-bump, b-bump joints every few feet that really get old after a while. We ended up shifting over to a bigger road towards the end of the day, which helped.

I am sorry we don't have more time to explore Wisconsin. We didn't schedule any of our rest days here. This is definitely a place I would like to see more of.

By the way, today justified Adventure Cyclings claim; it was much flatter.

Miles today: 59
Total miles so far: 2477

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