Our Biking Adventure

The Start in Milwaukee

For several years Jo and I have talked about biking from Milwaukee to Madison, but always managed to talk ourselves out of it due to time constraints and the daunting thought of making the 84 mile trek.  We started that conversation again this summer and this time decided it was just time to give it a try.  After completing a few 40 mile rides over the summer we selected last Friday as our day to head over to Madison.  We started bright and early, as in before sunrise, to try and avoid as much car traffic as possible as we have to get through downtown Milwaukee before we hit the first of our bike trails.  The weather gods were shining on us as we had nice cool temperatures along with partly cloudy skies to keep the sun off of us. 

Almost there in Cottage Grove

We really enjoyed seeing a slice of Wisconsin as we pedaled our way over to Madison.  The fields were high with corn and we discovered that a lot of this part of Wisconsin is covered with marshes and or swamps (when does a marsh become a swamp?) - news to us.  We made a couple of stops along the way to refuel and rest the legs and had only one unplanned stop as Jo suffered a flat tire (although to be fair she has been having problems all year with flat front tires - I think this was number 4 or 5 - initially I blamed her, but we were pretty sure after flat number three that there is something wrong with her front tire).  Fortunately being the good planners we are we had several spare inner tubes and carbon dioxide inflators (which are just too much fun to play with) along and in no time we were back on track.

Made it Madison

One of the challenges is that about 40 miles of the bike path is covered with fine gravel and packed earth.  This slowed us down a bit as we found we were typically off one gear from what we would have expected.  While we saw lots of birds, including one red tail hawk that watched us come and go (we think it was waiting for us to collapse to enjoy a nice afternoon meal) the only interesting animals in the mammal domain were a muskrat and a black squirrel (we aren't counting the numerous chipmunks that have severe death wishes as they always seemed to want to wait until the last minute and then dash right in front of our tires). 

We were both getting pretty tired with about 10 miles to go - Jo's knees and my quads - and probably should have stopped for a longer break but we pushed through and got to Madison.  Kathy helped provide a key portage for us as we neared Madison as there is a small stretch on a busy highway that we didn't feel safe tackling.  We celebrated that evening with Kathy and a robust amount of pizza.  We really enjoyed the trip and have already started talking about making the reverse trek and possibly attempting doing it both ways over a weekend.  Endorphins do funny things to your brain....