This picture was taken 6.07 miles outside of Madison. That's a thirty minute bike ride, give or take five minutes, depending on inner-city traffic lights. There are no beads of hill-climbing sweat, no county lines, no grass patches turned diner for the world's most enjoyed peanut butter and honey sandwich, no scouring of a map for alternate (or oringinal) routes, no depleted blood sugar emergency stops for electrolytes behind this photo: Just Madison. Dane County. A slightly glorified commute to botany class.Shortly thereafter, I made a left turn that should have been a right turn. I felt great; the ensuing downhill was thrilling and lasted about four miles. Then the road just stopped, which was not supposed to happen. Oops. Thirty minutes later I was back up the hill and to my oringinal turning point. The correct direction had no exciting downhill. Not physically anyway. Mentally the downhill was hard to beat. My aged and experienced tubes of 1200+ miles had no evasive powers to the perilous remnants of drunken high school boys or college girls, or forty year old men; anyone can throw a glass bottle out a window.
These are a bunch of horses. They're on a hill in Dane County. They graze about 1.2 miles before the highway, as in four lane divider road 65mph expressway, for which I was doomed. My directions would have had me on this highway for 87 miles. Huge, huge fail.
Sunny cloudless days apparantly have no say in Wisconsin bike trail weather. This tunnel flood engulfed my entire bottom bracket and more as I rode through it. That's to say that at the top of my pedal stroke, my foot was still under water. That, ladies and gentlemen, was the death of my 2010 bike tour. 6 hours and 60 miles later, I was back home. A litte tanner, perhaps a little stronger, still in Madison.Luckily Madison is not a bad place to be. Not at all. I would in fact want to be no where else. No where but my kitchen with Albert,
one cool bunch of bananas who likes to smoke and has a small drinking problem, and
Collin, who cooks at all hours of the day and has an eternal presence in our spice cupboard, a kind of Chinese, Indian, freshly ground wonderspice presence,
and the many daily guests that circle around our beloved kitchen table, entering and leaving at will, partly because we leave our apartment door open, partly because the building door won't shut and the landlady seems not to know she is a landlady. Nowhere else but home :).
Bike paths are fun as well, especially with Syliva and Ike.Truckloads of shirtless men are great too! What is a truckload of shirtless men?
This is a truckload of shirtless men. They are the wonderfully exuberant men who represented Woofs Bar in the Wisconsin Pride Parade today. They are largely without hair, they are gay, and they are not censored. 
Library Mall, as seen from a tower on which I make Thing One calls to my Thing Two counterpart (Jean where are youuu).
Colors of Madison.
Today was a day for Wisconsin Pride. There was a parade, there was lots of color, there was live music, and there were speeches, surprisingly authentic and inspiring, from the Madison Mayor and Congresswoman.
Madison Wisconsin: farmer's markets, bicycles, pedestrian zones, bros, hippies, wordly restaurants, vegetarian restaurants, chicken wings for five cents, spotted cow, Germans, lakes, four seasons, LGBT, straight, everything in between, good music, the onion, coffee shops, the Union, the Terrace, quiet rooms and cages, very loud religious radicals, very loud atheists. This is my college home :).
this sucks that your ride ended in failure. but I really think it was worth it for the hilariousness of the post.
ReplyDeletetoday I showed my speaking partner pictures from our Madison ride, but somehow I think the only thing that really impressed her was your hair.