Cheesehead Triangle

Took a day off from work, left home and picked up the Capitol City bike path to the Greenbush and Southwest paths, got on the Badger headed south and rode through the tunnel to Monroe. From there, I rode the Cheese Country ATV trail to Mineral Point, grunted up Shake Rag Street to the bike path along US151 to Dodgeville and caught the Military Ridge trail back to Madison.

Sounds simple, but was by far the longest I've ever ridden all by my lonesome. Three counties and 17 towns.

Even on a 29er with really big tires, the ATV trail was no joke. Hard work. Hot and humid.




Still, 147 miles in under 14 hours on that thing? I'll take it.

Pics on the Flik.

Gravel Metric 2014

Drove down to DeKalb with Nate and Steve to ride Axletree's Gravel Metric, the ride with the clever videos. Grant skipped this one because apparently there was some kind of dispute on their ride while I was at Almanzo.

Pretty big field of locals, Chicagoans and Sconnies took the start. Rolled out of the NCC parking lot, onto some pavements to get us out of town, and turned the dogs loose on the gravels maybe 5 or 6 miles out. Pace lines held until maybe 25 miles in where we did a long stretch of turf grass trails through a state park. Interesting at times given that some folks obviously don't spend a lot of time on surfaces other than pavement. It was pretty hot and quite a few people would run out of water as the ride went on, but we were smart enough to stop at the park and top off.

Peeps were feeling a little low at the halfway checkpoint, so that slowed us down a little, and we took another longish break at the water crossing around mile 45-ish. Couple of really fun B roads on this one. Ended up taking a little longer than I might have liked overall, but we had a good lunch afterward in good company.

Word has it that the next running will be the last, so make it if you can.

Pix over on the picture site.