June 28: Madison WI to Elroy WI

91  miles

First day with true team biking -- so we cover more miles by not doing all legs, the way we have to do later when we are self-sagging when Deb goes back to Chicago to take her class.

If Brett Hulsey is as helpful to all of his constituents as he was to us, he's worth considering. We saw a lot of his signs in local yards. See http://www.brett4us.org/ for more info.

We got a late start -- after a bagel breakfast and adjustment of new pedals/shoes it was 9:30 before Beth and I started.  Madison has great bike paths, but it was hard to cross-reference them with the cue sheet I had. We only took one 3 block detour, but had to stop and ask for directions a lot.  We were staring at a map when a politician rode up on a Trek 520 (the classic touring bicycle) and asked for our vote. Despite being out of his district by some hundreds of miles, Brett Hulsey took us home to find a Dane County bike map and gave us improved routing instructions. 

We saw a lot of his yard signs, and he clearly knew a lot about bicycling and bike advocacy, so we wished him luck.

Lots of headwinds again today on the way to Sauk City (on backroads, and then the shoulder of US12). We met for lunch in Sauk City.  Abby and Beth did the next leg to Reedsburg, encountering steep hills (Abby's max speed was 42, with a headwind).

Abby and I did the last leg on the 400 trail to Elroy.  We got stopped by a man active with the 400 trail, who snapped some pictures (picture to come) of us, a jogger, a woman with two small children in a trailer, and another older gentleman on a bike -- pretty much hitting all summer constituencies except dog walkers.

Fun fact: the trails are used by snowmobilers in the winter -- who have a 55 mile per hour speed limit during nighttime hours. That seems fast, but I don't know much about snowmobiling.