Day 36 (82 miles)
Trip Start
Jun 13, 2008
1
35
36
Trip End
Aug 09, 2008
Madison, Wisconsin
Sunday, July 20, 2008
in early june, a ton of rain came down in wisconsin, and there was a lot of flooding. in some places, roadways had been damaged by the water levels and were still under repair. in other places, the roads were actually still underwater. one of our diversions happened near devil's lake (apparently a popular name since this is the second one we've encountered) where the road was covered in up to 1 foot of water for a few hundred yards. julie, brad, and i turned around at that closure to go around the long way, but we later discovered that two team members decided to take off their shoes, hike up their pants, and carry their bikes through the nasty water rather than go around. they probably had the right idea because we had to go back up a huge hill and then divert for a few miles on a really poorly maintained and heavily trafficked road. all in all, the diversions probably added close to 8 miles to our route. oh, and just before we hit the water-logged road, brad had his first flat tire of the day.
the most surprising part of the day was the ridiculous hills we had to climb. at no point had i thought that wisconsin would have insanely steep hills like we encountered today. we had one hill in particular that seemingly went straight up, and even in my bottom gear, i was standing on my pedals the whole way up and only pushing uphill at 3 or 4 mph. we later ran into a guy who was training for the madison iron man, and he told us that it's notorious for having the most difficult bike route because of all the hills. it's not all bad, though, because we could really get zooming on some of the downhill portions.
after 35 miles or so, we got to take a free ferry across the merrimac river. for those of us who have had to travel in the van, we got to have a little snicker at everyone else because they could no longer claim to be part of the efi (every fabulous inch) club. there is a nice little ice cream stand near the ferry entrance, so we all grabbed cones to munch on during the ride across. we took a break on the other side to cool off in the shade and leisurely finish our snacking. once we set off again, it was more of the same hills. the one picture i took for the day was at this part, where i spotted a really nice soybean field. soon thereafter, brad had his second flat of the day, and julie and i went ahead for a while because she was moving slowly with all the hills and, since she was mapless, i accompanied her. we started going through a very pretty area, winding through farmland transitioning into a nature reserve.
unfortunately, we never should have arrived at the nature reserve. due to some inaccurate directions from our mapping software, we took a wrong turn, which described a left at what was a T in the road but actually meant to continue straight. we didn't discover it until we wound up at another T (after having our suspicions aroused just before by passing a street we had turned on earlier) and couldn't find ourselves on the map anywhere. fortunately, brad had made the wrong turn as well (as had michele and steph), and we managed to get ourselves set straight (while brad fixed his third flat tire), albeit having gone 5+ miles off route.
after turning around and getting going again, we thought we were on the home stretch. the night before, we had made some slight adjustments to our route after george noticed that there was a quicker path from the county back roads we were taking that avoided going through downtown madison. unfortunately, we didn't discover that the route was quicker because the church was flagged in the wrong location until we arrived at the spot where it theoretically should have been...after climbing yet another absurdly steep hill. with our minds thinking we were done, we still had to push eight more miles or so to get to church. but we finally made it at around 5:30...again.
when we got in, the religious members of the group caught a late church service while i milled around in the parking lot talking on my cell phone. it was a bit awkward when the service got out because i was still in my biking regalia and lots of people were giving me funny looks and other wanted to talk about the trip. somehow, i got myself out unscathed, and dying of hunger, got in the car with julie and brad to go grab some food. because we were in a big city and because michele and steph had wandered off (steph attends university of wisconsin, so they were sleeping in her apartment that night), and because george and maxine's son surprised them with a visit, we were all on our own for dinner. of all places, we ended up at the olive garden, and we managed to gorge ourselves on breadsticks and pasta for the next day's ride. the waiter even said we looked like hungry cyclists before learning about our trip (we suspect he was prepped by george and maxine's son) and brought us breadsticks at a faster rate than olive garden rules allow. sweet!
