I’ve only been up in Cable Wisconsin for a couple days and it seems like a week. It is very easy to get into a routine up here, which is really a non routine, with no agenda. That is pretty great.

July 4th we nearly slept through the 4th of July parade in Cable, since we were swimming at 1 am, we barely made it to Cable by 11 am. After the parade, they have a BBQ, which is completely home cooked food. I had to have a brat, but what I was really into was pie. An incredible amount of homemade pie that was nearly 1/4 pie a piece. For $2.

We went out for a couple hour road ride afterward. 40 miles and I think maybe 2 cars, total, passed us the whole time. That was when the county was swarmed with people from all over for the festivities. It is an amazing place to ride road bikes

Then yesterday, after swimming again, we went out and rode MTB bikes on the new singletrack from Boedecker Rd. down to OO. It is great, as usual. The guys that build new trails up here are experts and the single track flows like a stream. We turned around and rode it back up North, hooked up to the Chequamegon course and rode over the high point, then the Birkie Trail and back to Cable.

I hadn’t ridden my MTB bike for a while and was mildly amazed how much different it is that pedaling a road bike. You end up pulling up a ton more on the backstroke than you do riding road. I was mainly trying to check out my shoulder to see if it could function off-road. I’d have to give it a 6 or 7 out of 10 for usage. It is kind of sore, but not nearly as sore as my crotch. 3 hours of MTB riding and I feel like I’ve never sat on a bike seat before in my life. I actually woke up way too early this morning because of it. Pretty usual.

But, that isn’t enough reason not to go back out and ride all day again today. I think we’re going to ride the single track all the way down to Hayward, get a coffee and ride it back. That should be around 70 miles of riding, with 50 something of that single track. My butt is going to hate me big time.

Here are some picture from the last couple days –

A racy shot of Catherine following Bill into the warm water. Trudi is in the background. The water is so warm the top 12 inches. It then gets progressively colder. 6 feet under it is icy.

This is some of the parade in Cable. These are the girls from the Rivers Eatery, my favorite pizza place in the world.

The Brick House Coffeshop always has a good group of dancers. Pretty fun.

Yuri, czar of CXC ski team, never resting. He’s trying to talk Trudi into coming back next weekend for a MTB race he’s promoting. Trudi hasn’t had the Tour off in years. I don’t think she’s missin’ it much at all.

The pie table at the Cable picnic.

It is Wisconsin, so they make sure you can coat the complete ear of corn with butter.

It looks like Gary Crandell, Mr. Chequamegon, is going to go for Catherine’s lunch.

This guy had it all going on. 4 ears of corn, a brat, plus a pitcher. What more could you ask for on the 4th?

Riding here behind Bill and Jeff Bradley. Nearly the whole ride was under tree cover.

Hawkeye, Dennis’ dog, had no interest in watching Greipel win the stage yesterday at the Tour.

The single track here is groomed beyond imagination. Here is Catherine riding by one of the artsy rock placements on the trail.

I saw a comment yesterday from my friend Rod Lake about how cool it is that we have so many options now to follow the Tour and cycling in general. I couldn’t agree more. I’ve personally witnessed this evolution since the, almost embarrassingly to admit, the early 70’s.

When I was in junior high, my brother and I used to go to the Topeka Public Library and look at the London Times, to see how Eddy Merckx was doing at the Tour. The deal was that the library didn’t get the paper until close to 3 weeks after the race. So, we’d be reading the play by play in August when the race was already over.

Then later in the 70’s, early 80’s, it was absolutely necessary to be in Boulder during the Tour because the Daily Camera wrote a daily article on the Tour. During this same time, CBS would do an hour recap on the weekends of the weeks events at the Tour. Usually it was a 45 minute travel show on France and 7 minute bike race recap.

Sometime later in the 80’s, Velonews started the day of, coverage, with Bob Roll doing a recorded phone recap that you had to dial an 900, pay by minute number, and then listen to the results of the race. That was the first you could get the results the same day.

Soon after that the daily TV coverage started, it was never guaranteed that any channel was, for sure, going to cover the race until right before the event. Traveling to races, the hotels were always chosen by if they had Versus or whoever was doing the event.

Now we can get it a zillion places on the internet, in about any language you can imagine. Plus, the NBC sports is advertising that they are covering the Tour until 2023 I think. Man, that is a pretty long contract for a sporting event.

I’ve been following the Tour for a very long time. I’m on the fence about a lot of “progressions” this information super highway has created. But, the Tour coverage is definitely a huge plus and A-okay with me.

The best there ever was.

Eddy Merckx joke-

There was a super Cat. 5 out training one day and he hit a pot hole, flipped over the bars and that was it. Upon awaking he had no idea where he was. All of a sudden he realized he was at the Pearly Gates and Saint Peter was there. He said welcome and you’re not going to believe the “training facilities” we have for you. Heaven is a bike racer’s dream.

St. Peter proceeds to show the Cat. 5 rider around. There is a exercise physiology lab. You can race everyday of the week, road, criterium or time trial. There is a training ride leaving every hour, 24 hours a day that goes any speed you like. And the food is unreal, a buffet with fresh juices, anything you could imagine.

The rider is ecstatic. St. Peter takes the rider over to show off the new indoor velodrome. There is a rider hauling around the track and then the Cat. 5 realizes who it is. He says to St. Peter, “Man, I had no idea that Eddy Merckx had died.” Saint Peter replies, “No, that is God, he just thinks he’s Eddy Merckx.”