camping failure

We woke up to rain. The pouring kind. Throughout breakfast at the university cafeteria, I kept eyeing the windows to see if it had stopped (one can hope, no?). It didn't stop. And it didn't look like it was going to anytime soon. So, off we went in the rainy mess of Madison morning rush hour.

It was raining so hard that it was difficult to see road signs, and we started out the day by making a wrong turn, but got back on track before going too far astray. I rode with different people throughout the day – mainly Kim, Kate, Daria, Brian, and Jim -- and it turns out that riding with people makes the day so much nicer. Silly books on tape... what was I thinking?

Late in the morning, the rain let up and we spent most of the day on county roads winding through the Wisconsin countryside. Surprisingly (I don't know why this is surprising really... I suppose I'd just never heard much about Wisconsin), it turns out that Wisconsin is an absolutely beautiful state, and I really enjoyed riding through it.


To give credit where credit is due... I took the above from Charlie's photos.


We did have to ride on a gravel road for a few miles today, but we took it slowly and made it through without any trouble. It seems that Jim was not so lucky. When we approached the end of the gravel bit, he was on the side of the road changing a flat tire. Unfortunately, it was not just the one -- both of his tires had managed to go flat at the same time! Several of us stopped to lend a hand and wait for him. A few minutes after we'd been sitting around there, a loud sound, not unlike a gunshot, rang through the air. Around the same, I felt a bit of a jolt, and looked down to see that the side of my rear tire had blown completely out. Thankfully, Charlton, the crew leader, was nearby with the gear truck and had a spare wheel that we put on to keep me going.

Lunch was later in the day today, which I prefer. That way, at lunch you can be assured that most of the day is behind you and you're on the home stretch. Unfortunately, a bit after lunch, I had my second flat of the day. Thankfully, I've had so many now that I've become a lot better at changing them quickly. A Big Ride alumni, Jim Andresen, who lives nearby set up the afternoon checkpoint for us and brought all sorts of amazing goodies, including watermelon and Dairy Queen blizzards! These were truly appreciated on a day as hot as today.

I had a nice ride throughout the afternoon with Kate and Daria, and we put the Beatles on my speakers -- riding through the amazing Wisconsin countryside with the Beatles songs blowing in the breeze is not a half bad way to spend an afternoon!

We're staying at a campground again tonight, and on the way into camp, we saw a little girl skid on some gravel while biking and fly over the handlebars. We helped clean her off and waited for her parents to arrive, and she'll be fine, but it was a good reminder to be careful when cycling.

We ate dinner as a group at a nearby pizza joint, Rock Bottom , and I had a nice post-dinner walk and talk with Kathleen.

Throughout this trip, you've seen how much difficulty I've had learning how to properly assemble my tent. However, I do think we've now moved past that stage and are actually getting on quite well these days. Unfortunately, there's now someone else I'm having some trouble with -- the rain fly. I know it's a sensible thing, but it just makes it so hot inside the tent -- like a little sauna. And who can sleep in a sauna? Not I, so I went to bed with the rain fly off (I did not see a single cloud in the sky and figured this would be fine) so that the breeze could blow through the screen of my tent.

It turns out, this was a mistake. I woke up sometime between midnight and 1 AM, approximately 5 seconds before it started to pour. I was disoriented, half blind (I couldn't find my glasses), and could not recall how to work my rain fly. It started to rain. I had a choice to make -- I could either work out how to put the rain fly on properly (and let everything inside my tent get drenched in the meantime), or I could just throw the rain fly on and hope for the best. I chose the latter. It did not work out well for me. I managed to put the rain fly on both upside down and backwards -- a truly special thing indeed. I also managed to get completely drenched in the process, and by the time I crawled inside the rain fly and squirmed around the tiny gap between the tent and rain fly to get to the tent door, I realized that everything inside the tent was wet as well. It seems that rain flies do not work as well upside down, and throughout the night, the rain dripped steadily into my tent. Unfortunately, it was too late to rectify the error as it was raining so hard that taking the rain fly off, even for a moment, to flip it around the right way, was not an option.

One might think I'd been ridiculous enough for one night, but, in fact, I was just beginning. I noted that the rain was coming in more around the edges of the tent, so I tried to push together and pile up everything in the middle of the tent. In the process, I managed to crush my (prescription) eye glasses (which I had still never managed to find throughout this whole mess). I then realized I'd left my bicycle shoes and (non-water-resistant) speakers outside hanging on my bicycle. If the night were a contest to see how many things one could destroy in a single night, I feel certain I would have won. If you'd let a tasmanian devil loose in my tent, I'm convinced he could not have done more damage than I did that night.

I lied there soaking in a puddle throughout the rest of the night staring at the ceiling of my tent and seething. My tent may have won the battle, but I would win the war. And yes, it is now a war.