Coffeeneuring/S24O, 2nd ed.: Sjölinds Chocolate House in Mount Horeb

Last weekend offered another opportunity for a combined S24O/coffeeneuring adventure. Friends of mine had grand plans: Bike to Blue Mound State Park late on Friday, camp there, ride 200 kilometers the next day, camp again, and then ride back to Madison. My wrist and general fitness were definitely not up for the middle part, but another quick fall S24O camping trip sounded good. 

As per usual, I didn't manage to pack my stuff the night before and therefore only left Madison around 5pm. It was a beautiful fall evening, warm enough for 3/4 shorts and a short-sleeve jersey. I was riding Grando, with two Ortlieb Front Roller panniers and my handlebar bag. The sun was slowly setting, and by the time I rode through Mount Horeb, it was mostly dark. My friends, who had left Madison earlier, texted me that they were on the wait list for a table at Hooterville in Blue Mounds, famous for its Friday fish fry. After dinner and a couple beers, we headed to the state park and set up camp. I finally got a chance to try my new hammock, but of course it was pitch dark by now, my headlamp was low on battery, and one of my whoopie slings seemed to have some sort of malfunction. In the end I did get the hammock and tarp set up more or less properly and slept alright. More testing is required to see if I'm a hammock person or not...

Military Ridge Trail

Unexpected obstacle on the Military Ridge Trail

Tartar sauce explosion at Hooterville

 The others had set their departure to 6:30am, and since I was up early anyway, I quickly packed up my stuff and got on the road at the same time. While they turned west and then north, I headed back east into Mount Horeb. I was the first customer of the day at Sjölinds Chocolate House. While their main attraction certainly are the various kinds of chocolates, sweets, and quiches, they also have decent coffee. I hung out there for a while, reading a John Grisham novel I had picked up from the Little Free Library next to Sjölinds's bike parking, first drinking a cold brew and then a regular coffee.

7am at Sjolinds

I bought some fancy hot chocolate powder for the SO, and then headed back into Madison.

Double-track detour near the Quarry Park MTB trails

Souvenir

A strangely warm and breezy October day

Coffeeneuring and a Fall S24O, two-in-one

Despite my deep immersion in all things bike and my love of coffee, somehow I never picked up on the coffeeneuring phenomenon. Yeah, I had seen the occasional hash tag, but only this year did I realize that there is more to it than just getting on your bike and having coffee somewhere. You can read all about the origin and rules of this "utility cycling challenge" on the Chasing Mailboxes blog. In any case, this year I'm participating.

Sunrise on a beautiful fall day

After a false start over the previous weekend—I had assumed the challenge started on October 1—I got my first two rides in last Saturday and Sunday. Even better, we combined coffeeneuring with a fall sub-24-hour overnight camping trip, the first one since my crash in July. Living in Madison puts you in the fortunate position to pick from four different destinations for an S24O that are all close enough to not be too challenging, despite me still recovering from my injury. This year we had already done two trips to the west (Blue Mound State Park and Brigham County Park) and one trip to Sand Hill Station in the east. So this time we opted for New Glarus Woods State Park, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Madison.

New Haro coffee carafes at Crescendo

Both the SO and I still had some work to do on Saturday morning, giving me an opportunity for a quick coffeeneuring ride to one my favorite Madison coffee shops, Crescendo. It is less than a mile from our home to the shop, and so after enjoying a nice Rwanda pour-over, I had to do some detouring to get the trip distance over the required two miles.


After lunch I crammed all our camping gear into a plastic tote strapped on a trailer and hitched to my SOMA Grand Randonneur, and off to New Glarus we were. The great thing about the route is that is almost exclusively on trails. First on pavement, where lots of people were out on their bikes, absorbing the October sun. Once the Badger State Trail turns to packed gravel, bike traffic diminished quickly. The trail was quite overgrown with grass, turning it into double-track, probably due to the above average rainfall over the past weeks. While the bike was in the track, the trailer would roll over grass, providing me with an extra workout.

Downtown Belleville

 After a quick snack stop in Belleville, we continued on to the always amazing Stewart Tunnel. Time to leave the trail and ride the final stretch to the park. This involves a rather mean climb, where passed two other bike campers headed for the park.

Obligatory tunnel pic

Exeter Crossing Road, just before the climbing begins

Slanty camp site, in close proximity to Highway 69...

When we arrived at the park, we were amazed how busy it was. Almost all the walk-in camp sites were already occupied! A chatty ranger informed me that not only was there a harvest festival and a renaissance fair in New Glarus, but that night there would also be a bonfire and candlelight hike in the park. While we didn't care much for the park and camp sites, the proximity to New Glarus is a nice feature. We rolled down the trail into a bustling little town and enjoyed dinner at Toffler's Pub.

Rolling into town just after sunset

The next morning we once again followed the trail spur into town, getting in coffeeneuring ride 2 at Fat Cat Coffee Works. This is a great little coffee shop right on the bike trail, offering decent coffee and excellent pastries and breakfast foods. It's quite popular with the cycling crowd, and indeed while were there a large group of roadies made an appearance, including someone in a RUSA wool jersey.

We had a bit of a headwind on the way back, but we made the S24O mark with time to spare, arriving back home around 1pm.

On the Sugar River Trail

Finally, the first S24O! Blue Mound State Park

So it's September 2014, and the Ride or Pie?! crew still hasn't ever done a "Sub-24 Overnight" (S24O), the bike camping format "for the time challenged," introduced in a 2007 article by Grant Petersen of Rivendell. The idea had great appeal to us. We have done a good number of multi-day bike camping trip over the years, but they do require a good amount of planning, preparation, and coordination. The idea of the S24O, one the other hand, is that it's possible to just head out sometime in the afternoon, with little prior planning, camp overnight, and be back home in less than 24 hours.

When we still lived in Montreal, we had made several attempts to actually do a S24O, but —ironically enough— they somehow always fell through because we were too busy or something. So it was high time to make use of the last warm days of the year and finally head out there.

The post-mortem analysis of the earlier attempts seemed to indicate that packing all the gear was one factor that had led to failure. It's not really a S24O when you have to spend 4 hours putting lowrider racks on the bike, digging for camp gear in various closets, and then neatly packing it into your four Ortliebs. For that reason I decided to just take along the trailer this time. The trailer is nothing fancy, just a Y frame with a flat deck and rattly wheels, but I figured it would certainly make it through the 45 kilometers from Madison to Blue Mound State Park and back.

Tent, sleeping bags and pads, a towel, and some pillows were just stuffed into an old mail bag and strapped onto the trailer. This left of plenty of space in the panniers for half a change of cloths and cooking gear—no optimization required. The Biketopus only carried one mostly empty pannier for groceries that we would buy on the way. 

Right on time, at 2 p.m., we were on the road. That unfortunately was also the time when the Badgers football game ended, and there were throngs of people dressed in red everywhere. Soon, however, we were past that and on the bike path towards Verona. The new extension of the Cannonball Path seems to get close to completion, but for now we still had to take the detour on the US-18 frontage route. After that section, it was 100% car-free bike trail all the way to the State Park.

The weather was terrific, and there was even a bit of a tailwind to compensate for the gentle uphill. We were going quite fast, and probably a little too fast. I had forgotten to bring any on-the-road snacks, and at some point first signs of bonkage appeared. By the time we arrived at the Grumpy Troll brew pub in Mount Horeb, there sure was some grumpiness to be had, as evidenced by this picture:

Grumpy troll biketopus

A pint and some cheese curds later, we continued the last 10 kilometers to our campground. To our surprise, there were already several other bike campers at the site. Dinner consisted of beans and Tofurky sausages cooked on the fire pit. Because it was so warm and the sky was clear, we decided to leave off the rain fly and watch the stars before falling asleep.

 As per usual, I didn't sleep that well and got up around 6. This gave me plenty of time to turn the damp firewood into a nice morning fire and prepare coffee, tea, and oatmeal.

Unwilling biketopus is unwilling to get out of the tent...

...but breakfast and sunshine make everything better.

Moi, in my usual morning cheerfulness, especially with a cup of coffee

 Breaking down tent, as everything, wet and dirty or not, was stuffed into the mail bag.

Sunrise plus turning leaves: Awesome colors

Back in Mount Horeb, we stopped for a second breakfast at Schubert's. And after pretty much exactly 22 hours we were back home in Madison. Full success!

So I think we have this S24O thing down now. The one improvement I'll make for the next season is to buy a huge tote box, in which we can store all the camping gear and that then I can just strap onto the trailer. The mail bag worked okay but was a bit difficult to strap down, and the storage box should also further reduce prep time.