¡Guacamole!

Picnic today featured guacamole and chips along with quesadillas. That, of course, brought to mind the Texas Tornados.

the Texas Tornados included Augie Meyer, Doug Sahm, Flaco Jimenez, and Freddy Fender

I tried to sleep in, since I had no tent to pack up. Didn’t work – I was still up at 5:15, but I read the paper before getting out of bed. We’re now in the glaciated eastern side of Wisconsin, with more flat land, fewer and gentler hills. We headed northeast and through the Horicon National Wildlife Refuge (in which the sky becomes invisible with migrating geese in spring and fall), then turned more easterly. The “flat” ride included Breakneck Road with a short but steep climb – one switchback, so I didn’t know how long it would be until it was nearly over. I almost wanted to go back and do it again. Later was a series of four straight climbs – no surprises, but they always look more daunting on the approach.

I do not recommend riding like the person on the left. If a car comes over that summit, he and the next two riders will look like bowling pins. He was doing what folks call “paper boying”, meaning weaving back and forth to make the hill less steep (like a paper boy going back and forth across the street making deliveries).

We rode the Kettle Moraine Scenic Drive. “Kettles” are created when a melting or retreating glacier leaves behind a block of ice which becomes covered by debris. When it melts, a depression is left behind. “Moraines” are created when the glacier pushes rock and debris ahead of it, then retreats, leaving a ridge of rock behind.

Being a short day, we were in Plymouth before noon. Some headed to a bar. Those of us whose drinking before noon involves coffee headed to a coffee shop converted from a bank. The vault is a little private room. This is the same shop where I met my friend J for a cortado four years ago after a failed attempt to ride the Kettle Moraine Scenic Drive together – he couldn’t get out of work early enough. After a couple of cortados, a bagel and cream cheese, and a coconut gelato with chocolate shavings, I headed to the nearest credit union for some cash before arriving at the school. We are camped on a wooded knoll.

Plymouth claims to be the Cheese Capital of the World. There may be other towns that would dispute that.

Tomorrow is a 40 mile ride to Manitowoc, the home port of the SS Badger, a coal-fired steamship that will take us across Lake Michigan. The boat is chartered on Saturday. As a result, we will have a long afternoon and evening in Manitowoc as well as a long morning Sunday before boarding the ferry. A laundromat will be in the plan somewhere in there. We’ll arrive in Ludington, MI at 7 PM with barely time to eat dinner and set up camp before it gets dark. It will be a short night before we start across Michigan Monday morning. We will cross Michigan and Ontario next week.

As usual, I have invited Jef Mallet and Frazz to join us in Michigan. Since Frazz is two-dimensional, he may have joined us last time and I just missed him because he was turned the wrong way.