No Jobs, No Home, No Worries. A Shared Journey by Bike and Support SUV Across the U.S.

Day 31 miles: 100 miles.

Total miles: 1,929

By bike:

The Radisson hotel was amazing and an incredible deal, but I left that day at about 4:30 a.m. to beat the heat again and make it to Madison, WI.

I did so inefficiently. My directions were on bike paths, but I did not want to take bike paths on gravel trails in the dark so it was up to me to take many county roads on my own initiative. I found a path by reading a map and made the best of it with low efficiency the first few hours.

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I thought I was out of the hill terrain but I encountered 3 or 4 hills that went straight up with double digit grade. The storm clouds from the day before appeared to follow me into La Crosse. The only saving grace was some tailwinds. The mountains reminded me of Virginia in some ways and the weather similar to my day in Havre, Montana with a storm behind me and winds at my tail.

I had so much fun I didn’t notice the heat. It was somewhat uneventful seeing small town after small town.

Then I encountered the amazing trails. It was all fun and games and I remembered the great times when I hiked through them with ugly storm clouds beside me and now cross-winds from the north.

Plot twist- I had no idea the Wisconsin River was flooded. I started riding through some flooded trails an inch or two but eventually, with no way out, started riding through water that went up to near my knees, ON THE BIKE. Unfortunately, there is no video evidence of me doing this but I was blessed to have not fallen and not have any of my stuff waterlogged. I made it to a dry bridge and switched to my waterproof socks.

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It was at this point I read my map again and tried to find a way around the flooding. Luckily, I only had one choice on yet another state road.

At the 100 mile mark I made it to Spring Green and ate 3 bananas and Gatorade at a local grocery store. I wanted to ride more but there was a concurrent severe thunderstorm warning on top of the heat wave warning.

This was another panic moment on the trip. I rode to Culvers one mile away and was stopped by people asking if I felt safe. My superpower of dancing around rain was exhausted, and against the heaviest wind I’ve seen I battled an oncoming storm with debris flying sideways. Somehow I made it to Culvers fast food restaurant.

Unfortunately, no photo evidence of this or the many bystanders in the full restaurant looking at me like I was an outsider as I walked in. To raise my spirits, I ordered a raspberry salad, double veggie burger, and when Lauren came, ice cream with waffle cone.

Again, I RARELY cheat, but the hotel deals in Madison were too good and we drove 30 miles out of the storm into a hotel. My wife is too good.

By car:

I slept in until 8 and treated myself to a smoothie breakfast while planning my day. After getting some work done I decided to check out downtown La Crosse. The sky was looking pretty ominous before I left, so I made sure to send Matthew a picture of the clouds that were heading in his direction to warn him of his pending doom. He reassured me that so far things were going swimmingly.

La Crosse has some really neat stuff.

Mainly nick knacks and antiques. The downtown is small but offers a lot of restaurants and coffee shops. It’s also one of the more bike friendly towns!

My time outside was cut short, however, once the rolling thunder and sheets of rain came barreling down. Luckily the coffee shop I was navigating towards was directly in front of me and I dodged the fat rain drops belly flopping towards the ground!

If you ever find yourself in La Crosse, I highly recommend The Root Note coffee shop! I spent two hours there, but could have easily lost an entire day cozied up in this nook. It was probably the most productive I’ve been on this entire trip.

I became so engrossed in my work there that I lost track of time. Suddenly I was receiving texts and a phone call from Matthew asking if I was close to his location! Of course the man is booking it, so I wasn’t that surprised to see that he was already 80 miles out.

“It looks like the storm is coming, so I need to find a spot to hunker down!” he notified me. I overheard some stranger nearby telling him it would hit around 2:15, so he had maybe 30 minutes to find shelter.

After he updated me on his dry location (a fast food restaurant), I packed up and headed in that direction. We both wondered when the heavy thunder storms would hit given the recent extreme heat waves. Of course, Wisconsin is extremely humid, so Matthew was already drenched before it even rained.

Once I reached the restaurant I sat down to enjoy some lunch with him and he shared his battle stories. We both agreed he smelled like a swamp, which is expected after he practically swam through one on one of the bike trails. Definitely time to find a place to wash up and dry off!

I remember Matthew frequently stating that once we get to cities we should be able to find cheaper hotel prices due to competition. This is *definitely* not the case near Madison! We ended up finding a deal through Priceline at a boutique hotel.

Eager to get into dry clothes and smell less swampy, we hurried over to our lodging only to find no one at the front desk. There were four pieces of paper folded up with individual names written on them- the room assignments and instructions for other hotel guests. Our name was nowhere to be found.

We called the main number, only to be greeted by a voice recording to leave a message, which was quickly followed by a notification that the mailbox was full….

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We considered camping, but given the heat, humidity, rain storms, and flooded grounds, we weren’t very eager to make any moves in this direction.

I wrote an e-mail to the manager and supplied my phone number. As luck would have it, as soon as Priceline cancelled our reservation, I received a call from the manager. She was able to give us a room at the same price and texted me the room number and access code. Unfortunately she didn’t e-mail me any other instructions, so we had no idea how to work the AC, which was still desperately needed. Despite my follow up texts/calls/emails, we were left with a steamy room. We did get a nice basket of snacks, though!

I could tell Matthew was not getting any sleep. In the middle of the night we were startled by some beeps and what sounded like someone attempting to come into our room. There was a confused guest punching in the incorrect code to our room, we assumed. After one more failed attempt, they finally left and found their own bedroom.

We both woke up extremely groggy by the time Matthew’s 4am alarm went off. I felt bad for Matthew…I couldn’t imagine biking after a night of no sleep. The goal today is to get to Milwaukee, where we’ll be meeting up with Jon’s wife, Julie, for dinner. If you remember from one of our earlier posts, Jon is the man I met who has muscular dystrophy and is biking across the country solo.

Fingers crossed it’s a good riding day today!