Metric Monday

As I rode out of my driveway this afternoon I honestly had no idea where I was going. All I knew was that a sunny, 84-degree day was a rare thing worthy of celebration. I figured I would be gone for a while.

With a little bit of wind out of the south, I decided to go south. It’s a common strategy: fight the wind when you’re fresh and then have it at your back on the way home. At Maple Road and County Highway NN my wife spotted me as she was driving back from her summer job. Just north of State Highway 60 on County Highway M, I spotted a female teammate putting in some training time on her road bike and a male teammate waving to me from his pickup truck.

I continued southbound into Germantown, making good progress against the wind. Then I turned east and flew through Thiensville and into Mequon. It was almost 6 p.m., time for the weekly shop ride at Belgianwerkx.

Yeah, why not?

If the Belgianwerkx ride had been going south, then I would have said a quick hello and goodbye. But the ride was going north to Port Washington—more or less the direction I would need to go to get home—so I joined the other 19 riders and settled in. It was good to catch up with a few people I see infrequently, and the miles passed easily and quickly despite an unpleasant chill off Lake Michigan.

At Port Washington the riders hopped on the Ozaukee Interurban Trail to begin the return leg of their trip. Belgianwerkx manager Nick Moroder and I headed west through Saukville and made a good duo until we split at County Highway Y to go to our respective homes. I finished with a metric century (and then some): 63 miles at an average moving speed of 18.5 mph.

That’s a rare and wonderful Monday. Usually, Mondays are rest days for me. But after three days off last week—Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday—and with rain in the forecast for the rest of this week, I had to ride today.