Almost Annual Bike Trip

Warning: questionable picture within this post!

Sunday completed the "Almost Annual Bike Trip" weekend. This is a trip that Carl and Sue, Bob and Kathy, Greg and Candis have done for several years, excepting the last two. This year, Carolyn and Roger also joined, so I wasn't the only "newby" on the trip.

Carolyn had taken a picture of Bob and Kathy at the Madison Capitol building on Saturday:

Bob and Kathy

Besides the Farmers' Market, we had other excitement on Saturday... We decided to stay in the Capitol Square area for lunch and got lunch at FromagiNation (https://fromagination.com/) - sandwiches with Wisconsin cheese. They had tables on the sidewalk outside, and while we were eating, the first "excitement" occurred... we were shocked and dismayed as the "World Naked Bike Ride" made two circuits of the Capitol Square (https://madison.com/wsj/news/local/watch-now-world-naked-bike-ride-returns-to-madison-after-year-off/article_7510b224-cc03-53ec-9125-78a81c3dcc71.html) right by our tables.

Let's just say that most of the bodies were not improved by being displayed in the altogether.

The article I linked says that their goal is "to promote body image positivity and alternatives to fossil fuels" -- but that was not obvious to us, anyway, as observers.

As we were about to finish our meals, Carolyn noticed a woman walking up the sidewalk in obvious distress. As a retired respiratory therapist (40+ years of experience), she immediately sprang into action, getting the lady into a chair, getting water to cool and hydrate her. The impression was that the lady had gotten overheated, but, as the man with her brought the car around to the front of the restaurant to take her to their hotel, she became nauseated, so the decision was to call 911 as she may have needed IV fluids to deal with dehydration. The emergency vehicles came and took her to the hospital, where, hopefully, they were able to minister to her and get her back on her feet.

As we were driving back to the hotel where the rest of the group was staying, we saw a single naked bike rider along the path by the lake... it occurs to me that it may be, uhm, feasible, for some people, to ride naked in a group... but... it seems it would become significantly less feasible to walk out of my apartment building or home naked and ride a few miles into town. Who am I kidding -- it wouldn't be feasible at all, group or single!

Now, another funny thing about this is that 2 of the 3 couples staying at the hotel were asked (when checking in) if they had come to participate in the "bike ride". We think that the first couple checking in shared that they were there to participate in a bike ride with friends who were also coming... but after seeing the Naked Bike Ride go by, we wondered what the hotel folks were referring to... We thought it would have been funny if the front desk person had said, "Oh, I didn't expect you to have luggage!"

It was quite hot and humid on Saturday afternoon, so we decided to delay our own bike riding until after supper. We played cards at the hotel through the afternoon. If we'd only had "Bicycle" playing cards we could have said that we were using our bike all afternoon! Finally, after supper, it had cooled enough that we went out for a short ride (about 4 miles) and enjoyed the Capital City State Trail (https://dnr.wisconsin.gov/topic/parks/capcity). We capped off our day with a visit to Culver's for ice cream.

Sunday, the couples staying at the hotel checked out early, got breakfast, and then came over to the campground. It turns out that the Capital City State Trail connects to the one that comes right by our campground. We started out riding out toward McFarland which is the part of the bike trail that goes across about a mile long boardwalk.

We stopped at one of the rest spots along the boardwalk and a fellow who was jogging by offered to take our picture -- we are a happy group!

We rode to McFarland Park and then back to the campground. We decided to cross the road by the campground and head back out on Capital City State Trail to get back to the point where we had turned around on Saturday evening. We successfully made it there, and then back to the campground... 13+ miles in total:

We enjoyed our bike-riding weekend, and most of all fellowship with friends!