Woo hoo!! Here we go...

Herriman Ride

Yep. 5 hours in the saddle. Solo. I pulled a Herriman.

When I moved, my brother Mike was in the middle of fixing my car. Head gasket, timing belt, thermostat housing, water pump. Easy stuff. Jay flew in to DTW with the last of our frequent flyer miles and we drove the moving van back to Madison together. I had to get back to Detroit this past weekend for Mike's wedding reception anyway so I took the train back. The train doesn't go from Madison, only Milwaukee or Chicago. So, I took Jay's car to Milwaukee, took the train back for the awesome reception. (Who knew Jeff Fooks was such a good dancer!!) Where's Jay? Turkey, Italy, Portugal.

So, today I had to ride the 75ish miles to Milwaukee to get Jay's car. No computer. No data. I rode most of it (52 miles) on the Glacial Drumlin rail trail. Perfect weather.

It's so straight that I got mesmerized. I put my head down to rest my neck and didn't have to worry about steering. There were almost no cars at the road crossings and no reason to stop. I felt like I was on the trainer for the first 3.5 hours!
The trail crosses many rivers. The bridges are beautiful. Two of them were "closed" due to high water/flooding, but I crossed them anyway. Saw lots of deer, 2 Bambis, 4 sand hill cranes, and tons of birds. Mmmmm.
As I got closer to Milwaukee, rural turned to urban. There are some cool old buildings next to train tracks. This one was still in use as some industrial plant. I swear I rotated this one 5 times! Maybe pictures from my phone have some alien code in them. Call it your exercise. Turn your head.

Good thing I rode my knobby tires. The trail was crushed gravel so knobbys weren't really necessary, but riding through parts of Milwaukee had roads way worse than the Monday night ride!!!!

Flooding in Wisconsin

There are many highways still closed from rivers overflowing and FEMA is still working in the state to reduce flooding. I knew that, but it was purely intellectual until my new friend April took me on a bike ride last week. She works 2 miles north of our apartment but she doesn't know the roads on the "east" side very well. She borrowed a cue sheet from someone and off we went. One of the roads on our route had a little water on it...

I rode into the half inch of water. Clipped out and lifted my feet. It got deeper and deeper and deeper and finally stopped the bike! Soggy feet for the next 35 miles didn't bother me. It was 74 degrees! It was a bit akward with April as I had just met her 15 minutes prior to this, but, hey, she's a triathlete training for IronMan Wisconsin. I figured she likes water. She followed me in without a word of complaint!

Every view on a ride is like a postcard...

What time is it?

Istanbul:


Amsterdam, Rome, Prague and Vienna::


Lisbon:

Trek 100

Wow! Beeeeutiful! Hot hot hot. It was sunny and humid and 90 degrees.

Lance was there. The Trek 100 is a ride to raise money for children's cancer. MACCFUND organizes the event. Lance rolled in two minutes before they called him to the podium. He was wearing a black and yellow Mellow Johnny's kit. They started his wave about 3 minutes before our HUGE wave. (See pic below). A few minutes in to the ride we passed him on the side of the road adjusting his saddle on his black and yellow custom Livestrong bike. A few guys worked him back to the front of the crowd and he rode so close to me as he passed I could have reached out and touched him! Ahhh. Celebrity admiration!

At the start.
The rolling farm country is beeeeeutiful!
Check out the background!
We didn't get to enjoy the post ride festivities because of a small thing like four tornados. Luckily there was time to evacuate everyone (I hope they got everyone off their bikes). We watched the rain, 70 mph wind and quarter sized hail out the window of a deli as we waited for the storm to pass, all the while checking the weather and tornado warnings on the Blackberry. I love technology!