Life Offline

Getting ready to ride through the northern Kettle Moraine on a gorgeous Monday ...

On Monday my Internet service went down and it wasn’t restored until earlier this evening.  So, today I finally learned who won the US Pro Cycling Challenge and the last three stages of the Vuelta.  I’m frighteningly dependent on the Internet and being without it really sucked, but the timing could have been much worse.  I work from home and absolutely need a reliable, high-speed connection for my job, but this week I’m on vacation.

My wife’s sister and brother-in-law visited from California this week.  I took Glen up through New Fane to Dundee and then back through Beechwood on Monday afternoon to give him a taste of the northern Kettle Moraine.  He was effusive in his praise of our roads and our landscapes, and his enthusiasm served as a good reminder that we shouldn’t take for granted those “standard” cycling routes that are so familiar to us.  On Wednesday morning we rode together again, this time exploring the parkways of Milwaukee County.  There was nothing familiar about those, but they proved a very nice way to get around.  We also rode the Hank Aaron State Trail to Miller Park before heading south on city streets to our start/finish at my wife’s parents’ home in Franklin.

I didn’t see Glen or Jennifer on Tuesday, and without Internet/TV/phone service it was a quiet day until cyclocross practice began at Royal Oaks Park.  We had six participants this week, including two riders we hadn’t seen at practice before.  With the WCA season scheduled to begin on Sep. 8, hopefully we will have a big turnout next Tuesday as racers make their final preseason preparations.

Today was an overdue rest day for me.  Tomorrow I plan to do a long, solo road ride to bring August to a close.  Then it’s back to training with another road ride on Saturday, a short effort on Sunday, and a time trial test on Labor Day.