August got off to a bad start. With my first pedal stroke today in the motel parking lot, my crankarm gave way. The mechanics took the whole thing apart, fussed, and adjusted a few things and put it back together. It finally worked, but I left 30 minutes behind everyone else. It also meant that I exchanged a nice cool 30 minutes first thing in the morning for an extra half hour of steamy afternoon heat at the end of the day.
So I started at the back of the bus and slowly made my way forward. I caught several folks at the first rest stop, and by lunch I had worked my way towards the front. I found Franz at lunch, and we helped each other for the last 60 miles of the ride. For the first half of the day, I had no paceline help, so I worked hard today. I never quite caught up with the hammerheads (those who like to "hammer" down the road......i.e. go fast) that I like to ride with.
I had always thought that Wisconsin was a flat place with dairy cows and cheese factories, maybe with a few bratwurst stands and breweries thrown in. Southern Wisconsin is NOT flat. Up and down we went today, usually in only 50 to 200 vertical foot increments, but since we ended up climbing 8000 vertical feet today, we climbed hundreds of such hills. Some of them had pitches of 9 to 12%. Sometimes you could partially get up the next hill by zooming down, but not always. It was a "zero sum" ride, as I'm fond of saying, so we got to go DOWN for 8000 feet as well. It seemed like I was either going 9 mph or 30 mph all day. We had to do another detour, which added about 4 miles, and quite a few extra vertical feet, to the ride. Despite all the climbing, I managed to average 17 mph today.
Wisconsin is very pretty. It looks geologically old. Lots of oak forests, and attractive farms on rolling hills. The farms here are smaller than in Minnesota and South Dakota; they look like Mom and Pop operations rather than massive corporate entities. Early in the day, I crossed the Wisconsin River, a good sized tributary of the Mississippi, and I saw something that I haven't seen since Seattle......FOG!!
With these long days in he saddle, there is very little downtime at the end of the day. You arrive at the motel, shower, take care of your bike, and then you need to eat. With laundry always a pressing chore, there is precious littlle time to relax, and certainly no time to explore the town, because getting enough sleep is a very high priority. Beloit is a pretty college town on the Rock river. As we neared our motel, I spotted a Starbucks, the first one that I have seen since Montana. But it is about 6 blocks away.......getting rolling in the morning is on such a tight timetable that I won't have time to walk up there for a double latte. Oh, well.....
Tomorrow we plunge south into Illinois (Beloit is virtually on the border), giving wide berth to Chicago, before heading east toward Indiana.
144 miles. 8000 vertical feet.
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2 comments:
Syed and I are sitting here in the office feeling sorry for ourselves at 11:45 PM but now bolstered by your wonderful description of your ride. We decided not to trade places with you but Syed and David are definitely signing up for next year. They muttered something like "bring it on!" Oh well, back to work.
i can picture david and syed on a tandem, bickering along. "you said i could be captain today. you're always the captain." "gear down! gear down!" "you're not pulling your weight." "i told you not to eat so much cheese."
john, your Tour has been the only one worth following this summer. if you're doping, don't get caught!
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