As regular readers know (if there are any out there), I was hoping for good weather this past weekend for a bike ride I’d been planning on for months. Well, I got what I wanted, sort of. Saturday morning broke clear, a little breezy, and HOT. Really hot. Like, stay-inside-and-close-all-the-shades hot. But I’ve never been one to let the prospect of heat stroke get in the way of a good time.
And a good time it was. My brother-in-law Kevin was down from Madison for the ride, and he brought along a case of delicious New Glarus Edel Pils. About 11:30 we were joined at the house by friends Lisa and Cabel, who were atop their tandem and looked ready to conquer the world. We biked down to the ride’s starting point and met the rest of our group. After we got registered and drank a couple beers to strengthen our resolve, we set off for the first beer stop 10 miles away in North Liberty. We refueled there and then biked another 10 miles to the last beer stop on the road, which was a mere eight miles from the ride’s end. We managed to stay at this last stop for quite a bit, just drinking water and beer and lounging in the shade.
At the end of the ride, we sat under nice green hops vines at the Millstream Brewery and enjoyed some bratwurst (with a couple more beers and more water). I won a pair of biking socks in the drawing, and everyone appeared to head home happy. The cool news from the ride is that they had more than twice as many people sign up this year as they had last year. Last year, attendance had nearly doubled from the previous year, so this ride is really up and coming. It can’t be this hot again next year…can it?