Today’s ride was donated to my aunt Marla. She has been a huge inspiration for me as an incredibly strong woman who has already beat breast cancer, skin cancer, and kidney cancer. She has recently once again been diagnosed with cancer but is staying strong and battling once again. I am inspired by her and her resilience and was honored to dedicate today’s ride to her as we rode north.
Today we also dedicated the ride to Tommy Matassa. Tommy has been enduring bladder cancer, and we recently ran into his significant other, who is a University of Illinois alumni. We biked today for both Marla and Tommy.
Today was a beautiful ride through the countryside of Wisconsin! We were thankful to be on some more rural roads compared to yesterday’s more stressful route. Toward the end of the day we saw some lightning and followed the protocol to ensure that nobody was biking in the storm. Luckily for us, the storm blew right over and we were able to make it to our stay over in a reasonable amount of time.
Our stayover tonight is the Calvary Lutheran Chapel in campus town Madison! It is a beautiful facility right above the university bookstore. They provided us with an amazing lasagna dinner complete with garlic bread and fresh salad. We also had the chance to explore the UW campus and downtown area this evening. We would never change loyalty from the University of Illinois, but we can’t help but admit that this lakeside campus is stunning. We even got to catch up with some I4K alumni and eat some more delicious food on the terrace.
Overall, this was a wonderful day!
Today Viraat is getting a shout-out! He had a wheel malfunction in the very beginning of the day but he did not let that bring him down. Our mechanic Marc fixed it up and Viraat rode the rest of the day safely and with confidence.