Day Thirty Seven - Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana - A day of challenges

Poor WiFi connection and late getting into hotel so text for today's blog will likely be delayed. Will try to load the pictures first and then write the commentary later, or maybe even tomorrow or maybe Saturday!.

Today was one of those days where everything we planned went NOT according to plan...

Day 37 Track

Our "plan" was to get an early start so that we would get down through Chicago around mid-day to alleviate the stress of trying to go through at rush hour... It started out well with us leaving the hotel at 6:15 AM. It was just an 18 mile ride up Hwy 69 to get to our first waypoint in New Glarus, WI which gave us the "n" in Strange for the TS30GT Tour.

New Glarus, WI - "n" in Strange for TS30GT

From there we headed up to Madison to get our 2nd waypoint of the day. As you can see below the Post Office didn't have the city/state showing prominently, but it was on the door, so we took a 2nd photo to show that. But getting there wasn't so easy. There was a large bridge construction project going on and between that and the routine morning rush hour traffic in the capitol city, it took us 20 minutes to go the last 5 miles to the post office!

Madison, WI - Presidential Tour

Closeup of Madison, WI Post Office Door

I wish I could say this was our biggest problem, but it wasn't. When I opened my side case to get my "flag" it wasn't there. I knew right away what happened. I forgot to stow it after I took the picture in New Glarus which meant it was somewhere back in New Glarus - about 30 miles back... If it were just the flag, we might have blown it off and had a new one made, but in the green clip-case that I was using to hold the flag, I also have my checkbook and passport - so we HAD to go back. This also meant going back through the traffic nightmare we had just done getting in! When we finally got back, the case wasn't right there in front of the post office, but after a while we retraced our route and about 1/4 mile from the post office, out on the highway, I spotted the broken remnants of the case. We pulled over and picked up everything we could find and when done, I had the flag, my passport, and my checkbook! We grabbed a quick breakfast here in town but this episode would set our plans back by nearly 2 hours which meant we would be getting to Chicago later than we'd hoped.

After breakfast we headed back out, this time detouring around Madison by running up Hwy 83 through towns named Mt. Horeb, Black Earth and Sauk City where we got on US-12 to get up to our next checkpoint - Baraboo -  for the I've Been Everywhere Man tour.

Baraboo - I've Been Everywhere Man Tour

From Baraboo we headed east on Hwy 33 out through Portage, Randolph and then Waupun where we got on US-151 to get up to our next checkpoint in Fond Du Lac. We were doing OK progress wise until we got to within just a half a mile of the post office when we got to be in line for a railroad crossing with a train that seemed to go on forever. It actually was only a 3 minute wait but it seemed longer. We then got our photos. It was now 12:34.

Fond Du Lac - I've Been Everywhere Man Tour

From Fond Du Lac we headed south, first on US-41 through Lomira and then on Hwy 83 just north of Hartford. At this point we were on secondary city roads that while scenic had posted speeds of just 35 mph so we weren't making very good time. We continued down through Chenequa and Genessee Twp and Mukwonago. From Fond Du Lac to Mukwonago was a 67 mile stretch that took us 1:44 to cover, averaging just 39 MPH. Now that did include an 18 minute lunch stop where 83 crossed I-94. At any rate, we finally got down to the state border and entered Illinois just north of Antioch which was our next checkpoint. We rolled into town and got the post office only to find yet another example of a post office with no city or state names on the outside. And since this was for the ts30gt tour we HAD to get something with both city and state names listed. We searched the GPS and found the police station was right across the street, but even that only had the city name in big letters!

Antioch, IL - "a" in Strange for TS30GT

While over there taking the photo of the police station, I noted the police SUV parked on the left of the above photo, and I could see that IT listed the Antioch Police and had an Illinois tag so I figured that should work!

Proof that Antioch is in Illinois!

So now we're off headed for Chicago, but it is already 3:06 PM. I'll spare you the blow by blow details, but suffice it to say the traffic to and through Chicago was beyond un-believable. It would take us 60 minutes to cover the last 6 miles into the post office location in town. Aside from the time issue, there was another problem. My bike had developed a cooling problem where the fans that kick on when I'm not moving enough to cool the engine weren't working. That meant I either HAD to stay moving at 30+ MPH or stop and let the bike cool down when the temperature gauge showed too high a temperature. Even Larry's air-cooled bike was having elevated temperature warnings, so we did have to stop a few times to let the engines cool a bit. When we finally got to the post office waypoint - it was nowhere to be found! We both did GPS searches for alternatives and I found another PO listed just .3 miles from where we were so we headed over there and were rewarded with the following photo.

Chicago - I've Been Everywhere Man Tour

OK, so it's now 6:00 PM and we need to get OUT of downtown Chicago! Again, sparing the detailed blow by blow, we tried to work out to Lakeshore Blvd, along Lake Michigan but the access to that was limited. Then we ran into a detour due to a closed bridge. We finally did get on, but it was very congested so some more stop and go and cool off, and finally we got to where it did open up a bit more and eventually got to where we could run mostly unrestricted and finally my engine temperature came back down to normal. From the "good" post office to where we got open running was 27 miles that took us another 1:27 to cover (Avg Speed 16 mph). It's now 7:30 PM. We're only 30 miles from the hotel now and we managed to get there in another 42 minutes, getting in just as the sun was setting at 8:08 PM...

So, it was a TOUGH day. I don't know how much better it would have been had I not lost the flag and had to go back, but that certainly made it worse, though I suspect it still would have been tough regardless. Anyway, nobody broke down and had to be towed away so we had that. Hopefully tomorrow would be better.

Today's Stats: 418 miles in 14:06 elapsed time, 10:18 saddle time.