Southern WI ride

Friday night I planned a route and printed cue sheets for ride through south western Wisconsin.  I went into work for four hours then took off at 10 am toward Mt. Horeb.   

I wasn't sure what to expect for the day, but after looking at the maps Friday I knew I was in for some good riding.  The good rides ahead were confirmed by all the cars driving by me with bikes on the back.  It seems silly to me that someone would drive a road bike to a road, then ride.  I prefer to just ride my bike there!

I passed a Walgreen's and a gas station in Stoughton, but I had a full bottle so decided not to stop.  That turned out to be a bad idea because by the time I got to Mt. Horeb I was feeling pretty bad.  The weather was perfect and there was only a slight headwind.  I was surprised at how many other cyclists I saw out on the road, it was crazy.

Us flat landers really got ripped off when the glaciers ran through the area.  The hills are what attracted me to ride in this area but once I got there I started to wonder... why?  It was constant rollers, climb up at 10 mph then fly down at 40, then back up.

The hills were taller than the trees.

Drafting combines in Wisconsin.  Seemed a little early for that.

150 miles including a couple lengthy stops took 9 hours 46 minutes.

            So it ended up being a great day on the bike.  I was pretty dehydrated when I got to Mt. Horeb, but got over it and by the time I hit New Glarus at mile 90 I was feeling really good.  90-150 was an easy ride, I need to figure out how to feel like that all the time. The new All City feels great and I can't wait to put some more miles on it.

        One thing I gotta say is that I spent almost 10 hours on Wisconsin roads and not once did I get my arm hairs buzzed off by a car, flipped off, covered in a black cloud of diesel smoke, or have someone pull out in front of me because they "didn't see me."  Nobody laid on the horn or yelled out the window, in fact they were more interested on how my road bike had disc brakes and wanted to talk about how my ride was going.  Wisconsin is a cool place!

-David Swanson