Hi everyone! Welcome to day 23. Today we had a 75 mile ride to Madison where we got to stay at the University of Wisconsin campus. The day was again very hot, so just like yesterday we decided to roll out an hour earlier at 6AM. The roads were significantly nicer today however, mostly smaller country roads without much traffic. Just as we like it! Some groups stopped to get breakfast at MacDonald’s in the first 20 miles of our ride and I can’t help but think that this company should sponsor us at this point (we stop there a lot!).
Still waiting for that MacDonald’s sponsorship…
Nap time in the van
At about the half point of the ride we stumbled across an access to a very nice, refreshingly cool small river, and obviously couldn’t miss an opportunity to splash around just a little bit.
Jessica’s sunglasses floated away in the river :(
Pure bliss
After getting to Madison we went straight to the lake for some further splashing. Just like yesterday, it was unbelievably nice to cool off in the water after such a hot day.
After our lake shenanigans we got dinner (lots of stir fry!!) and snacks provided by two Illini 4000 alumni who have done the ride in previous years. Thanks to them! We unfortunately couldn’t explore the campus much after that as we had a tornado warning and had to stay inside of the building for the rest of the evening :(
Today’s rider and bike highlight is going to be… Angela! Angela’s bike is named Elmo because “the handlebars are red like Elmo's hair? (fur?) and Elmo's from sesame street and we bike on the STREET".
Elmo looks really good on photos and even better in real life
-Valerie