Have fun storming the castle!

The half-fast fall colors tour had its second incarnation of the season. We postponed due to weather and it was the right choice.

After a leisurely breakfast to let it warm up a bit, we headed off through the former Badger Army Ordnance Works, now being restored as prairie by multiple owners. This version of the route took us on a few miles of dirt road, sometimes with gravel, sometimes with scattered rocks, sometimes just rutted dirt with fallen leaves to hide the ruts. We met a car. They must have been lost, because we saw them again minutes later, going the other way.

Picture a little shaky due to riding on rough terrain

After lunch we rode past a stone silo and some more stone work that always reminds me of this scene from “The Princess Bride”.

castle turrets/silos

The afternoon featured hills, as we are on the edge of the Driftless Area.

While the colors may be one day past perfect, it was still a beautiful fall day

It remained warm enough for hors d’oeuvres and wine on the back porch of the cafe overlooking the Wisconsin River.

The Wisconsin River, over Pinot Noir

After a day of rest we joined the last Bombay Bicycle Club ride of the season. The ride started 10 miles from my house and was only 40 miles, so I could ride from home to meet them. It has always seemed weird to me to drive my car somewhere in order to ride my bike. It makes sense after work (see Wednesday Night Bike Rides) when you want to get somewhere out of town before it gets dark, but on Sunday morning, with a meetup time of 10, there was plenty of time to do the laundry and get to the start point.

There was a car show going on at the meet point, with a bit of everything (including a matte black Lamborghini roadster – looking at pictures just now, I’d say it was an Aventador – nothing like a stealth car that can go >200 mph [>350 km/h] and 0-100 km/h in ❤ seconds [Ed. note: some browsers change less than 3… < 3… to a heart emoji, sorry]). There was also a Model A Ford and some Chevy IIs, later renamed Nova – another good story, as the Nova had poor sales in Mexico and GM didn’t know why until someone told them “No va” means “it doesn’t go”. Major corporations then learned to check languages other than English before they named cars and other products, and also to use made-up words.

It was 60 degrees (15.5 C) and warmed up to 75 (24 C) as the day went on. We rode out into a brisk headwind and returned into that same wind, as it was a circular route. We seemed to get short-changed on the tailwinds today – but if miles are equal, time certainly isn’t.

Tomorrow may be the last warm day for the year (unless the front comes early), with the temperature dropping 2o degrees by Tuesday and that could be it for warm weather for this year. Then comes the dark and wet season until snow comes to brighten things up.

Sun early, then clouds as I left the house – all of the light seemed to come from the trees. Sun returned within the hour.

Happy birthday to an 80 year old who helped introduce me to cars. Luckily, I outgrew that and turned to bikes;) since the Italian car mentioned above costs about a half million dollars more than my Italian bike.

What if…?

The world of speculative fiction starts with that question and imagines a world to answer it. Ursula K. LeGuin is variously seen as a writer of fantasy or science fiction, but most of her work falls into the realm of speculative fiction – imagining a change in what we call human or how we see the world and then watching it play out. Some of those changes may just be an accurate look into our near future; others may be fundamental changes in our world (or set on other worlds).

“The Left Hand of Darkness” imagines a world without gender, in which humans go into heat but are otherwise asexual, and a world whose tropical regions look like earth’s polar regions, with the polar regions colder yet. How would that world play out?

“The Dispossessed” imagines an earth we have destroyed, a revolution ending in stalemate, and an anarchist rebel group settling on the moon while the capitalist rulers remain on earth. The two groups initially have nothing to do with each other, but what happens if your interests and knowledge are shared primarily by those on the other world?

“Vaster Than Empires and More Slow” posits a world with no animal life – only plants. Humans arrive to explore the world and slowly discover it is not what it seems initially. The world begins to appear to be interconnected and plants communicate with each other. This idea may have been far-fetched when written, but we now know that Aspen groves are clones – a single organism with a single underground root structure and many stems. We also know there is a vast underground fungal network and that trees share nutrients via this network – amd they are not just single-organism stands like the Aspens.

“The Word for World is Forest” (which I mis-remembered as the story above, so I re-read it recently) posits a world colonized by humans, inhabited by creatures humans think of as subhuman, and how formerly peaceful people rebel against that subjugation. The book was written during the war in Viet Nam and could be seen as an allegory for that war.

In “The Matter of Seggri”, LeGuin builds a world in which men live inside of a walled city and women live outside the walls. Male children are sent to be with other men at age 11. Women vastly outnumber men and men are used primarily to sire children (and also for recreational sex, working in “fuckeries”) and to provide entertainment via sports. The tale is told from multiple viewpoints (from the logs of explorers who visit the planet) and the world appears vastly different depending on who is telling the story.

LeGuin’s parents were anthropologists and studied the interaction between the modern world and the indigenous peoples of California and South America, so it seems an extension of their work that she plays with the interaction between colonizing humans and other worlds. She wrote many books and stories based on the Hainish universe, an interstellar network of humans, with the center of their civilization being the planet Hain, and Earth being one of the worlds colonized by them in the distant past.

Not germane to the topic, but I couldn’t resist. I never thought of this device as a “food waste disposer” but that is where we dispose of our food waste after digestion.

Half-fast fall colors tour

Being (mostly) old retired people, we decided to do our annual half-fast fall colors ride twice. Episode One was this week. Four of us headed out after breakfast at the Jaybird Cafe (resurrected from the old Blue Spoon Cafe, an experiment by Culver’s that did not survive the apocalypse pandemic.)

Morning sun over the Wisconsin River

We realized en route that we retired in the opposite of age order, meaning the nearly 74 year old Rollie Fingers is still working, and the merely 65 year old Tim Buctoo has been retired for years.

We traveled some of the roads from the coast to coast tour. Here is one of the route arrows. Luckily this is our home territory, so we didn’t have to follow the arrows, as we were going the other way.

We headed across the Wisconsin River via a route that required crossing it a second time (via ferry) before lunch. There was a chill in the air as the fog lifted. Tights, jackets, and full fingered gloves were in order until lunch at the Little Village Cafe in Baraboo. This time we saved room to split a slice of pumpkin bourbon cheesecake before the ride back to Prairie du Sac. We traveled in a counter-clockwise direction, saving the hills for after lunch. A bottle of bubbly was chilling for the end of the ride. Life is tough when you’re retired.

Episode Two will be in a couple more weeks. You’ll hear about it here first.

Ferry cross the (not) Mersey

“Cause this land’s the place I love/and here I’ll stay” (or at least return to in 3.5 weeks)

“I thought Wisconsin was flat”: most heard comment in the last two days.

Dinner last night was at Tumbled Rocks Brewery outside of Baraboo, with S&T, I, M, & L from my former job. After a walleye filet with grilled potatoes and green beans (plus helping the kids with their fries) accompanied by a Scotch Ale and a Dunkel, it was decided that I needed more calories so added a Champagne Crème Brûlée.

This morning we had a tour of Baraboo. Leaving campus we coasted down toward town but, on the way out, there was a short but steep hill that had some of the folks walking and led to a few of those comments above.

There is a nice (by which I mean short and steep) climb into Devil’s Lake State Park and then a switchback-laden descent to the lake. After a ride along the lakeshore there is a gradual descent back to the highway, then a turn through wetlands and down to the ferry. I offered folks the option of an additional pre-ferry loop up Devil’s Delight Road to the ridge again with a descent farther down. They all declined.

Along the lakeshore

A few of the crew crossing the lake. Terry (in Canada jersey) is the blogger at terrysspokereport@blogspot.com. Four countries are by the five people in the foreground.

There was a healthy hatching of mayflies overnight to introduce folks to that feature.

Mayflies on the boat. I brushed one off of my rear brake 50 miles later.

View from the ferry crossing Lake Wisconsin

After the ferry we continued through some of my favorite country before turning east into the flatter (more rolling) glaciated area. We came within about 25 miles of my house.

I have ridden past this many times but never stopped to take a picture. Note the “person” behind the wheel.

After lunch in Rio (pronounced “rye-oh”), we continued on to Beaver Dam. Ice cream and white cheddar popcorn helped delay my arrival but I was still much too early for the trailer unloading. The tent was spread out to dry and then packed away, as we are staying in the dorms of Wayland Academy.

Someone scoffed at my “Horribly Hilly Hundreds” jersey and asked, “how many feet of vertical?” When another someone pointed to the number “11,000 feet” on my back, his expression changed to one of respect. Yeah, Wisconsin is flat.

It may be just me, but I think from the turnoff to Schutte Road mentioned yesterday to the ferry crossing today may have been the best day of this tour.

Love letter to WI

If you ask why I live here, one answer could be “turn right off of hwy 33 outside of La Valle onto Schutte Road, follow it as it morphs into La Valle, turn right onto Twin Pine, left onto Old Ironton, and when you get back to hwy 33, look back and I think you’ll know.”

Mike Ferrentino wrote an essay called “Vehicle to Something Greater” describing the changes in his mental state as he rode home after work one day.

The town roads through these hills don’t go anywhere fast. Schutte Road may take you to the Schutte family farm, Enchanted Valley Road will take you through an enchanted valley. They may not be transportation TO anywhere but they are that “vehicle to something greater” that Ferrentino is talking about. Reedsburg may be farther away than it would be on the highway, but “something greater” is right around the next bend or up that next climb.

The ride today was to start on the Sparta to Elroy Trail, the first rails-to-trails conversion in the US. I was planning an alternate route. The trail is an experience not to be missed, with its multiple tunnels, but the crushed limestone surface means you need to clean the mouth of your water bottle before you take a drink and you will need to clean and lube your chain before you ride again. If it’s dry, it’s dusty. If it’s wet, it’s like riding in wet sand. I have ridden it both as part of this tour and as part of a loaded tour, carrying tent, stove, food, etc. I did’t feel the need to do it again.

At last night’s briefing, the alternate highway route was offered openly, and the second half of the ride, which was previously on the 400 Trail, was written as on roads with the trail as an orally described option.

State highway 71 started out with beautiful pavement with a clean and wide shoulder. After the town of Norwalk both deteriorated. There were about ½ dozen 1-2 mile 7% climbs. We had constant views of the heavily-wooded ridges. In the valleys we were in clouds and on the ridge tops the sky got light, almost as though we were going to see the sun.

At picnic the sun came out to stay and that is when the ride turned from very good to heavenly. The sense that the roads don’t go anywhere fast reminded me of this from Mose Allison.

Pictures were not the first thing on my mind and don’t convey the sense of riding these roads. I have written before of my hierarchy of roads (town roads with names preferred, county highways with letters if needed to get somewhere, state highways with numbers only as a last resort). Since this trip is partly about getting somewhere we have needed to ride bigger roads than I prefer. Today was one of the days that reminds me of why I ride. Today was like a Wednesday Night Bike Ride, when the destination is not important, the ride is.

The road not taken

The last turn toward Baraboo is onto Terry Town Road, one of my favorites. It meanders a bit and then turns up. Then it really turns up, but only for a very short distance, then just gradually climbs to an amazing ridge top vista, looking over the valley before a 40 mph descent and then a fast and gently rolling approach to West Baraboo. My face hurt from grinning.

Terry Town Road