For some reason, holidays never seem to work out as planned in my family. I won’t get into the details, but I wasn’t surprised when I drove down my alley on Thanksgiving AM only to have my tire pressure light come on. WTF? I had just checked the tire pressure the week before, but it had been a few days since I had last driven my car. My tire was nearly flat, so I decided not to take any chances. I missed Thanksgiving with my dad, but was able to drive up to WI on Friday after getting the tire repaired (another victim of last winter and another reason why I got road hazard insurance). I didn’t get in as much biking in WI as I wanted, but I had fun biking the Military Ridge State Trail on Saturday night.
On my way from Prairie du Chien to Mt. Horeb, I realized that I had left my tire levers and CO2 inflator at home. Not good, since I got a flat the last time I rode this trail. I swung into Walmart to see what they had. I knew they would have tire levers, but was pleasantly surprised to see they carried a Zefal CO2 inflator. However, at the check out, the clerk scanned the inflator only to find out they couldn’t sell it too me. Huh? The manager said it was due to a product recal. A little research the next day showed that Zefal was getting sued by Genuine Innovations for patent infringement, so the recall makes sense (see here). I still had a hand pump in case I got a flat, but I was a little peeved they still had these on the shelves. Oh, well, Walmart isn’t a specialty bike shop.
When I got to Mt. Horeb, there were some still people running the trail (it had been in the 50s around noon), which was great to see especially since it was Saturday night and temps were now the lows 30s . It took me awhile to get dressed with all of my cold weather gear. I headed west towards Dodgeville and encountered a mushy trail with some leftover snow, but happy that wind was minimal (compared to the last time I rode this trail earlier in November). I was jacked to have both my Ay Up helmet and handlebar lights. They were so bright that I could light up a road sign on the other side of US 151 (just as if they were car headlights). I was anticipating seeing a few deer, but only saw a couple of rabbits. Riding the trail at night was a little spooky with a near full moon and plenty of stars. Here’s a bad photo from the trail using my cell phone camera:
I got as far as Ridgeway before I decided to turn around. I would have loved riding all the way to Dodgeville, but it was cold and I still had to drive 3+ hours back to Chicago. Here’s my route:
By the time I got back to Mt. Horeb, I was frozen. Once I got my clothes changed and on the road in a heated car I began to thaw out, but I still had tingling in my fingers for a few more hours. Weird. And speaking of weird, I stopped at Kwik Trip to pick up some New Glarus beer, which you can’t find in IL. Turns out they can’t sell beer after 9 PM in Dane Country (it used to be only Madison). Huh? Wisconsin is getting wackier all of the time, especially guys like this who grew up there…
