A Good Day for a Bike Ride After All

As much as I wanted to take a bike ride yesterday, it took a considerable amount of time to get myself motivated. I seemed to be looking for excuses to stay home.

It’s too windy.

The local forecast on the Weather Channel noted gusts of up to 25 miles per hour. And when I looked out the window, all the trees were energetically waving at one another.

It’s not a very pleasant day.

In fact, it remained overcast and cool all weekend – always looking as though more rain was imminent.

JoAnna might need a ride before I get back.

I drove her to work on Friday morning, as the group of women going to Bayfield shared the cost of renting a van – one with enough cargo space to accommodate five sets of golf clubs. (Which were never used.)

I finally got underway at 1:20 – not in the most serious and confident of bike-riding moods.

“I’m going to give it a try,” I said to Eddie, who declined an invitation to join me, just before leaving the house. “The way it looks, I might not be gone that long.”

But as soon as I accelerated onto Mayflower Drive, the wind and temperature and steel-gray sky became non-factors. It just felt great to be on my bike again, particularly after a two-week stretch of nothing more than pedaling around Middleton.

My destination was Reindahl Park on the far-east side of Madison, where the UW-Milwaukee lacrosse team had two games on its schedule. I figured I’d be able to watch a brief portion of the second game, which started at 3:00.

Most of my route followed Madison extensive network of bike paths. And where one wasn’t available, I managed to stay on quiet residential streets for the most part. When I arrived at the park, I didn’t find a team wearing Milwaukee’s black-and-gold colors. Nor did I spot the Saturn in the parking lot. When I called Andy, he didn’t answer his phone. As a result, I found myself in a should-I-go-or-should-I-stay dilemma.

Maybe their second game was canceled when the other team decided not to show up, I considered.

I retrieved a Dane County bike map from my fanny pack and studied an alternative route to the Capitol. When I looked up again, I saw someone walking in my direction and wave to me.

Is he hailing me? I wondered, not recognizing who it was until he continued about five more paces.

“Tony!” I called out.

It was Jack Peterson’s dad, so I figured I must be in the right place. (Jack is one of Andy’s roommates and a member of the lacrosse team.) And that game 2 was still on.

“You look lost,” he teased, having seen me intently focused on the map. “Did you bike all the way here?” he asked in disbelief.

I assumed it was a rhetorical question.

As I had guessed while flipping through various scenarios, Andy and his teammates went to one of the restaurant in the vicinity of nearby East Towne Mall for a late lunch. Or, more likely, a second lunch. He answered his phone the second time I called and reported that he was on his way back to the park. I figure-eighted the parking lot awaiting his arrival.

We talked for all of three minutes. Then I needed to head back to Middleton. The start time of Andy’s second game had been pushed back to 3:30.

“I just talked to Mom 15 minutes ago, and they were just north of Wausau. That means I’ll probably have just enough time to bike home, take a shower, and drive to the Cherokee County Club.

Our previously agreed-upon pick-up location.

I thought the wind -- from the north-northwest, though it did seem to swirl a lot -- would be more of a distraction during the return to Middleton. Curiously, it wasn’t. I didn’t feel anything hold back my progress. All in all, a very satisfying 2½ hours of biking.