Day 31 Viroqua to way beyond Madison

Day 31 Viroqua to Madison (Actually way beyond Madison)

Essence - The wrong side of the bed

That feeling you have when you finally walk in the door after an extraordinarily long day at week and just want to collapse and hope for a better day tomorrow.

This morning I got up ready to take on a century. Someone’s alram was going off and off and off and wasn’t getting shut off. That woke me up and from there I was off on the wrong side of the air mattress.


I ddi get to wear my new Vernon Trails, Blue Dog Cyclery, Viroqua jersey. It is funny hos fast folks noticed. We all have 2-4 shirts and sort of know what to expect to see everyone in. So when someone is wearing somehting out of hte norm it draws attention pretty fast. Lots of compliments on the Jersey though and I was glad to have something new.

I was starving at breakfast. That stuck in my head as a point of concern as we were embarking on a century ride. To astart out insufficiently fueled, was a worry.

At least the morning was mild and the arm warmers weren’t necessary.

After sunscreen and tire checks we were off. Riding with the Scott Train, the mormning was beautiful. Our path ran us up and over the roling hills, and at the tops we were getting wonderful views of small hill ridges rising out of fog and low mist.





Absolutely “mistical”, (if you would allow the pun.)

Scott was entertaining us with his new gadget of a small IPOD speaker on his handlebars that allowed us to hear some tunes ont he ride. Not being allowed to ride, with earphones, is really wearing on our sanity for a little normalcy of life. Several folks have bought small transistor radios and other are trying to find IPOD speakers to get around the “No Earphone” rule. Just to have some music is a huge luxury right now.

We had a couple dogs chase us, but Alison put them square in their place and that seemed to be the end of the dog threat. I gotta say that Alison has a very serious “No, bad dog” voice.

In our first town, Scott was goofing around and giving false directions. “Turn right here”, when we should go straight or “don’t turn when” we should. This pushed a particular hot button with me. I don’t care for fun and games, but when we are relying on each other for good route information, false info just for fun’s sake was really aggravating. After a little misdirection competition between Scott and Jodi, I decidded to leave the group behind and set out on my own. Picking up the pace I felt like I was riding strong and seeing many riders, however I developed a mechanical problem.

After getting the chainring bolt last night, the bike guy had adjusted my deraileur, and now I was having all kinds of chain rubbing problems and difficulty shifting. At the water stop, Dave, our faithful and trusty mechanic, was there ajnd he put the bike in the stand and tried several things, on e of which was trying to take the bend and warp out of the chainrings. You know you are doing delicate adjustments when you have the plain old pliers out and are just trying to bend things.

The bike repair, lasted long enough to let the Scott train come and go and put me near the very last of the riders. Ane and Liz arrived, and were such a friendly sight and in such a high mood. Seeing there good mood was such a change form the grumpyu Liz who had a difficult morning start, what with me begging batteries off of her, after she was packed and then breaking a chain only 2 miles out of camp. Since they had turned their fortunes for the day, I asked to ride with them for the day hoping ot turn my fortunes.. They were more than happy to have me join them.



The morning sun had come out and was burning off the fog and the day was starting to heat up. We rode off, taking on the hills and I let their good cheer wash over me and buoy my spiriits. The 30 miles to the checkpoint went fairly quickly and were a good time as they caught me doing some silly things and we even had a tailwind.

The Checkpoint was at a small farmers market with a little animal petting farm. This little goat was just as cute and silly as he could be.



The farm also had camel, which seemed fitting since we had seen a LLama on one of the earlier morning farms we had passed.

At the Checkpoint, Alison had to call it a day as her sprained ankle had swelled incredibly.
Checkpoint lunch was huge. Fresh fruit had been acquired from the farmers market and several of us had chocolate milk to supplement our sandwiches and goodies.

Getting a move on, as we were trying to beat the heat, we headed out about 11:30 to take on the rest of our day. A little further down the road, I saw the sign fo r the Frank Lloyd Wright Visitor Center. Remembering a missed opportunity to visit Talisen during a earlier family vacation, I was looking forward to maybe having some time to learn about FLW this trip. I took the exit off the freeway and headed inthe direction they indicated. What I thought might be a freeway side visitor center, turned out to be directions to Taliesen and the actual visitor center, about 5 miles off the freeway. About half way there I figure out where we were being routed, but I wanted to see it bad enough that I made the effort to added the 5 out and 5 back tail on to our already long 109 mile day.

I was cheered when I saw the Jodi, had made teh same turn and was equally dedicated to get there. Unfortunately the visitor center, doesn’t have that much info. What they really want you to do is take teh 2 or 3 hour tour of the house and grounds, however we did not have that kind of time luxury. Taking a few minutes we did ride down to see the house and the famous entrance waterfall.





Jodi, my co-adventurer! Thanks for the ride Jo!


When I had been in this area during a family vacation with my Ex-wife and in-laws, we had missed Taliesen as they had elected to go to the house on the rock. As strange and remarkable as House on the Rock was, I really had wished we have put that much time and effort into Taliesen. Anyway being able to go back now, take a few pictures and flip through a few boks on the schedule that I dictated, made it up to me and made it worthwhile. Some day I will come back and take the tour. Some day...

Now it was truly hot and the time was getting on and Jo and I had 55 miles to go. So we quit fussing around and turned to the miles at hand. Pressure points or “Hot feet” plagued us as we rolled across the blacktop that was so nice and flat and smooth, compared to the Ka-chunk of Minnesota.

To cool our feet for just a moment we stopped at a histrocial marker about the remains of the town of Dover, after the residents had moved to Mazomanie after teh railroad had bypassed Dover.

It is truly fascinating how the country had been dictated and arranged by both the railroads and the freeway systems of this country. To see how transportation has focused wealth and power or similarly robbed it from places is a somewhat dispecable study of the power of money and politics.

Finally we hit the 3rd water stop and found that inded we were not the last riders, which was a bit of a lift.

Hot and muggy there seemed so rest from the discomfort. If you sat still, the bug swarmed to you. If you continued to move, then you were buring energy and not resting, which was the point.

With water bottles refilled, we set out with Micheal Yee to tackle the final 30 miles. Now being 3:00pm I calculated this to take us about 90 minutes based on our current pace. Picking up the pace, I pressed on and into some really beautiful wooded areas with trees growing over the path and forming a canopy from the now threatening rain clouds. The sections of forrest we encountered were just areas to unlevel to not be valuable for farming and meant that we were climbing hills again. Up one, only to crest it and then roll back down and face a myriad more just like it. The hills slowed the pace and now this ride was really becoming extended and the physical fatigue became very real pain.

At this point I had pulled ahead of Jo and Michael in the climbs and was riding alone.



The directions had us skirt the town of Madison and coming back in from the South to our camp. But it felt like they might as well have re routed us through New Orleans. We were way out on country roads and missed much of the traffic, but also the services of convenience stores and such.

Trying to keep track of all the turns on the country roads, I missed one. I knew I had missed one and ater being a mile overdue I turned around and retraced my steps. however not going far enough the firtst time, I wound up retracing the same 2 miles 3 times. I was hot frustrated, tired, a bit panicky and just wanted to be done. Knowing that I should have beento camp hours ago and now not knowing if my companions had made the turn, I was unsure where i was in the group, in relation to the sweeper suport vehicle and such. I had not choice but to find my error and get my self into camp. My problem was that it was still 20 miles away, an easily and hour or more ride, which would put me into camp about 5:30 or 6:00pm.

Out of food, nnowhere near civilizatino for a gas station of other food store and worryiing if I might miss the group’s dinner, things were getting stressful, which didn’t help. Finally I asked a lady at ther house and solved my navigational error and was back on route. At least that worked out. Bonking (runnig out of energy to the point of disorientation) I was making slow time and now ‘I was lokng for a place where I could get a snack. Finally I found a pseudo grocery store and got a 1/2 gallon of chocalate milk and 3 packages of salted peanuts.

Scarfing my snack as I sat outside the store, I saw our habitual last rider pass by me. That actually gave me a litle hope that I wasn’t left for dead and that I might be found by the sag van. At this point i had already riddn 114 miles and I was fully content to catch a ride for teh last 9 miles.

Pseudo fueled, I was off to cath Helyn, our last rider, and be back with comrades. Along with Helyn I found Floyd and felt like a team again. To once again feel like I wasn’t abandoned was a huge relief.

Shortly thereafter, we reacquired Jo and Micheal as they had also been lost. Somehow that large a group gave my legs some energy to ride and nded finish.

124 long long miles. The bottom bracket ( where my pedal spindle goes through the frame.) was creaking and crunchy and sounded terrible, by the end of the ride. I expect it needs to be replaced as it is the original bracket with 5000+ miles on it. But when I pulled in to camp I dismounted and I all I could do was let my bike fall over. I didn’thave the strength or energy to care if it crashed. In fact there was some small part of me that almost wished it might, so that I wouldn’t have to ride tomorrow.

Everyone seeing me come in so late and just so beaten, knew I had a tough day and was so great and supportive, to get me drinks and water and to make sure I ate.

A quick rest and dinnner was served by the families of riders Dan Scott and Bob Dumke. Wonderful Wisconsin dinners of bratwurst and kraut.

After dinner it was time to setup tent, shower and do al the chores that I usually get done before dinner. Although there was a 40% chance of rain I risked it and did not put the rain fly on since there was not a cloud in the sky or on the horizon and the wind wasn’t blowing yet.

That gamble worked out as it didn’t rain and I had a nice night.

After my bike had squeeked and creaked all day, I took my bike back over to Dave the Mechanic and he looked at the bottom bracket (which is the spindle for the pedals. Taking it all apart Dave did find that I had plenty of crunchiness and graiininess in the bracket. Dave cleaned it up, best he could I adcedied that after 5500 cumulative miles I was okay with replacing it. So a plan was set for Dave to get me a new bracket tomorrow, during hte day and we would work around it until rest day.

I spent the evening in the tent writing blog on battery power and then going to bed. Hopefully tomorrow would be a better day.

Thjat was the day. A long day. A very long day. Not a necessarilly terrible day, jsut one I was glad to have done and one I wouldn’t look to repeat any time soon.

Don’t forget to comment. I surely could use your comments today.