Tour de Wisconsin

What was I thinking?
For our 34 anniversary I wanted to go somewhere special. I look at southern Wisconsin revealed a number of rail-to-trail paths. The Elroy-Sparta trail is claimed to be the first of such trails. Maps.google.com showed that the trip there would be 5 hours and 44 minutes. I rounded it down to 5 thinking that google was conservative in it's estimation. We didn't get away until 3:15pm Friday and by the time we hit Chicago it was time for the exodus from the city to outlying destinations and we crawled for what seemed to be hours. We finally made the Illinois-Wisconsin border and it was still daylight, but the daylight was dimming. The sun went to bed and we were still driving. Seven hours after our departure we arrived at our destination. Had my calculation been a seven hour drive, I probably wouldn't have planned it. Even at 5 hours 44 minutes, what was I thinking?

Saturday morning we drove from our accommodations in Hillsboro to Elroy. As we hung around waiting for the Trail Shop to open, I noticed all the other bikers were wearing their helmets. I began to feel the peer pressure to wear a helmet and I applied that pressure on Barb who eventually conceded to wear the helmet. I believe that in wearing the helmet we advanced our standing among serious bikers.

What was she thinking?
Finally we were on the Elroy-Sparta trail, a 32 mile trail from Elroy to Sparta. My plans were to bike midway to Wilton (15 miles) and then back to Elroy. Maybe even to Norwalk (21 miles). Round trip to Wilton and back would have been a 30 mile ride. Norwalk would have been 42 miles and the longest ride we would have ever done. The Elroy-Sparta trail had 3 tunnels. Two of them were a quarter mile in length and the third was three quarters of a mile long. Lights were recommended. I had planned to buy some lights but never got around to it. The trip to Wilton went well. We even made it through the first tunnel without lights. Bikers must walk bikes through the tunnels. Inside the tunnel the path was crowned and water dripping from the walls fed streams of water on either side of the path that were designed to take the water out of the tunnel. Barb's odometer turned 1,000 as we approached Wilton we lunched at Pies Are Square. Also a visit to the hardware store enabled me to purchase a flashlight. I now had determined we would go through the second tunnel and then on to Norwalk. Truthfully I had planned to go to the third tunnel (24 miles) and halfway into the tunnel before heading back to Elroy. Sparta was 8 more miles beyond the third tunnel. Barb thought, "What's another 8 miles?" (actually 16 round trip). I conceded thinking that we could do it with a break in Sparta and nourishment from perhaps some ice cream. The trip from the third tunnel to the Sparta end of the trail was all down hill. Unfortunately, the Sparta end of the trail did not end in Sparta, but short of Sparta. We had now biked at least 32 miles, more with the side trip into Wilton. No ice cream. Not even clean drinking water. What was she thinking? We now had an 8 mile climb back to the third tunnel where we would then get a little relief down hill. It was gruelling. Now we had envisioned Wilton where we would be assured of ice cream.

Left for dead
Barb's strength and her desire for ice cream soon put her out of my sight. With a mile left to go to reach the tunnel, I welcomed a small descent under a bridge, but something was amiss. Instead of being able to coast, I actually had to pedal. Something was not right. In the shade of the tunnel I examined my bike. I picked each wheel off the ground and spun it to find out where the drag on it was and to see what I might be able to do to fix it. I knew that I could not bike the remaining 25 miles in this condition. To my amazement, each wheel spun freely. The descent had been an optical illusion. I continued my trek. For all Barb knew, I could have been dead alongside the trail. I then heard her voice call my name. There she was, sitting in the shaded grass near a little hut that sold all the amenities bikers would desire on a long ride. Even ice cream. But our ice cream awaited us yet another 9 miles. We needed the incentive to continue.

We eventually made it to Wilton and enjoyed our ice cream. We were now a mere 15 miles from the end of the trail. Another 6 miles and we were going back through the first tunnel. This time we decided to ride the tunnel instead of walking it. This required my holding the flashlight with my left hand and peddling slowly while trying to light the path. Barb kept beckoning for me to slow down and warned that she thought I was too far left in the tunnel. I made an exclamation of surprise and warning. She took it to mean that I had definitely strayed too far left and was endanger of ending up in the stream. She countered by going to the right. Unfortunately she had been in the center of the trail. By the time she realized she had strayed to far right and attempted to put her right foot down to balance herself, there was nothing there for her foot to keep her upright. She had an encounter with the rough hewn wall and the stream. Her right arm was now almost totally incapacitated due to an injury to her elbow. Fortunately the three miles from the tunnel to Kendall were downhill. In Kendall she was able to clean her injury while I obtained antibiotic cream from the gas station, the only establishment in the town to sell such an item. The remaining 6 miles were unpleasant. But now we have the bragging rights for completing the Elroy-Sparta trail from one end to the other and back. My trip odometer read 69 miles as we approached our car. Never did we intend such a ride. Aside from the injury we suffered no other adverse side effects.