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

Illinois Incursion: 150 gravely spring miles

As part of his preparation for the TransIowa race, Michael had announced another "long training ride," meaning about 240 kilometers (150 miles), a significant portion of it either on unpaved rail trail
or gravel roads. In theory that sounded like something right up my alley -- except that it was barely April. I had gotten in a good amount of riding in the previous weeks but am of course still not in
the greatest of shapes this early in the season. Combine that with the vagaries of April weather, and suddenly the ride looked a little daunting. Once I saw, though, that the weather forecast was about as
good as it can get at this time of year, I committed to the ride.

Jacob and Tyler on one of the first gravel roads we reached

Maybe the collapse of Wisconsin road funds will get us similar roads closer to home some day...

Incursing Illinois with me were Michael, Jacob, Tyler, and for part of it Steve. We have all ridden together before, and I think the size and constitution of the group was just right for such a long ride. Steve and I met up with the rest of the group at 5:20. The sun wouldn't be up for another one-and-a-half hours, and it was cold. I was only wearing thin wool gloves on my hands and wool socks in my summer shoes on my feet, making for a somewhat miserable experience. On the upside, there is something magical about riding into the dawn on a spring day. Frogs, birds, and the occasional rabbit were already out and about, and once we got into the country, a thin layer of hoarfrost covered the fields and wooden bridges on the Badger State Trail. Despite the heavy rain during the previous days, the trail was in not-too-bad a shape. Still, ruts, holes, and fallen branches did require our attention, meaning that I didn't take any pictures during the first couple hours of the ride.

Jane Adams Trail

In Monroe we made our first convenience store stop and also left the Badger Trail. Instead, we rolled along on country roads, which meant a faster surface but also the beginning of some rolling hills. And a dog: Jacob and I were a bit ahead when we spotted a black lab coming towards us from on the farms. It didn't look particularly threatening, but you never know. So we stayed alert and kept an eye on our new companion. He just kept running along and along and along... Only once we got to a farm with more dogs, maybe 2 kilometers down the road, did he get distracted enough and let us continue by ourselves. Soon after crossing the border into Illinois we also hit the first gravel roads, which were in pretty good shape and fun to ride on. The Jane Adams Trail then led us to the turnaround point, Freeport. We stopped at a—well, not that great gas station, where Jacob and I were immediately approached by a toothless guy in a car who wanted us to buy lottery tickets for him. Uh yeah.

The beautiful city of Freeport, IL...

...offers great amenities for the driving population.

Gravel roads + tailwind = bliss

Now turning north, we had a great tailwind for most of the way back to Madison. I felt great and couldn't resist upping the pace a bit. Our little group got spread apart and reunited a couple times until we hit the final rest stop, the Piggly Wiggly (for those of you not from around here: yes, that's the actualy name of a supermarket chain) in Brodhead. Tyler and I hammered along, doing some nice paceline work whenever we had a stretch heading into the wind. I knew the pace was too far in the red zone for me, but with "only" 70 kilometers ago I threw out common sense and kept going hard. We were pretty close to Madison when I started fading. Tyler kept disappearing into the distance and I finished the ride at a more leisurely pace and a coffee stop at Barriques, clocking in at 235 km on what was my earliest-in-the-year-ever 200+ kilometer ride.