Two days ago we left Chicago on flat, slow, 30 mile ride along with many family and friends. The first 15 miles or so out of Chicago was very nice because were on a bike trail that parallels Lake Michigan. At night 8 of us went to see the movie "Up," in the hopes that it was in 3D. After buying our tickets, we found out that it was, in fact, not in 3D. 3D or not, it was still a pretty good movie.
Yesterday, we had a 66 mile ride from Deerfield, Illinois to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. We woke up to rain, but it stopped by the time we left for the ride. Much of the ride was spent on bike trails, many of which were not paved. Normally I would not like anything that was not paved because it is hard on tires, but these trails were packed really well, and it was nice not having to deal with traffic, plus they were pretty scenic. For lunch we stopped at the home of the Cantys, family friends of Kristen Tully. It was by far the best lunch stop we've had so far. They live on a lake so we all got to jump in and cool off, plus they grilled for us. After lounging around for a while, we completed the final 25 miles of our ride for the day. We finished at Brad's family lake house on Lake Geneva where we once again got to go swimming.
Today we had a 68 mile ride from Lake Geneva to just south of Madison, Wisconsin. It was extremely hot today, I have heard it got as high as 95 with a heat index of 103. The group I was riding with skipped lunch, and opted for just a quick stop to refill water bottles, that way we could get out of the heat as soon as possible. We did, however, use some of the water bottles just to pour on ourselves to cool off. A couple hours after everyone had arrived at the stayover, a local news reporter showed up, so we put our riding clothes back on and staged riding up to the church. A delicious meal was provided to us tonight by Kristen's mom that we are all thankful for. Hopefully tomorrow will not be quite as hot.