Day 2

"Stop and smell the roses"? Bah! I've got years to do that! Now is the time to show off my amazing athletic feats to, uh, nobody in particular. I guess I'm not doing very well at keeping under that 75 mile per day average. Well, I always figured I'd make the trip up north as quickly as possible, and I just couldn't let the strong tailwinds I had all day go to waste.

My one unexpected stop was when I paused to check my map and got chatted up by a guy working in front of his house. After offering me some water, he started talking about the political signs in his front yard, saying how West Bend is all for Bush-Cheney. I did my usual good job of agreeing on the few parts I agreed with, and keeping my mouth shut on all the rest. That is, until he started talking about how America, as a bastion of freedom, should prevent gay people from being free to marry each other, and should force schoolchildren to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Well, then it quickly devolved into creationism-vs.-evolutionism discussion. In retrospect, I probably should have steered it back to politics. No one would have changed any minds either way, but at least it'd have been more relevant.

At one point I was riding along and heard a "whoosh" sound. "Oh crap, there goes my tire". But then the sound suddenly stopped, my tires seemed fine, so I kept rolling along. About a quarter of a mile later, a passing car slowed and the passenger shouted "I think you lost your bag back there!" Well, it wasn't my bag, but the rain cover from my left rear pannier had flown off. I sure was thankful that someone clued me in, or that rain cover would have been long gone before I even noticed it.

I've discovered that my speedometer apparently maxes out at 32.6mph. This is a new bike computer; my fancy one with the altimeter/grade/temperature functions was acting flaky, so I got a cheap new one for this trip. In addition to the "speed limit", this one doesn't even keep track of my maximum speed. But then I realized that that's pretty nice, because it means that I'm not hammering my way down big downhills trying to set a new "record". Hmm, now if only it didn't keep track of mileage either!

I passed a nice wooded area and thought "that'd be a nice place to camp", even though I wasn't ready to stop yet. But then I heard some guys tearing around on dirtbikes in there, so I figured it'd be a bad place anyway. I kept going and thought "that's a LOT of dirtbikes, and they sure are loud!" Then: "Elkhart Lake...Elkhart Lake..." Why was that familiar? Oh yeah, the racetrack! That explained the line of six Porsches I had seen a little earlier. After passing it, I got at least three miles away and I could still hear the place.

I got chased by my first and only dogs of the trip so far. Two of them at once, but they didn't put up much of a chase.

I'm spending the night at Brillon Wildlife area. That puts me about 35 miles north of where I had originally planned on stopping, and level with the northernmost point of Lake Winnebago. My spot isn't as well hidden here as last night, but then no one is shooting guns at this place, so that's a plus.