Due to the really high temperatures and dew points, I had not been on my bike at all in August, plus I traveled a lot for our safety events during that month including some Saturday travels. Labor Day weekend was supposed to be the same… high dew points with potential high temperatures too. Earlier in the week they forecasted Sunday to be partly sunny with no rain, so I had invited some folks to potentially go for a ride I wanted to plan for that day. Turns out as the week progressed rain was forecasted every day over the holiday weekend. We decided Saturday evening to stick with our plans and instead of planning a route, work something up that morning based on radar/rain and ride around the rain as best we could.
Tom and Kevin were my only takers. It had rained good early in the morning and we planned to meet at my place at nine. There wasn’t any rain around at that time and might not get any more until later in the afternoon. We proceeded west on Hwy 23 thinking we’d take Hwy 73 north out of Princeton, but as we got closer we could see we’d be heading straight into some rain moving around that area heading northeast, so we opted to take Hwy 73 south instead. We hardly take this part of Hwy 73 so it was somewhat new scenery for us. We ended up taking Hwy 89 south out of Columbus and then back onto Hwy 73 south out of Marshall. We decided to stop for lunch in Deerfield. We just parked the bikes on Main Street and walked to one of the local tavern… The Flannel Frontier Bar & Grill. They had really good sandwiches for a small local eatery/bar.
From there we, well I, decided to go further south on Hwy 73 to Edgerton area since no rain was showing up on the radar and then east on Hwy 106 to Palmyra before taking Hwy 67 north through Oconomowoc and so on. We did so and decided to make a stop in Iron Ridge for ice-cream at The Stand. We ended up talking quite a bit while there, even after eating our cream when I happened to notice some pretty dark clouds coming in from the west. So we checked the radar, and sure enough, rain was closely approaching so we high-tailed it out of there. We went through Mayville and I wanted to go through Brownsville so Tom could see all of the damage the tornadoes caused that went through there earlier in the week. Just outside of Brownsville we got rained on for a bit. We stopped underneath the NEBAT drive through in town to wait out the rain which diminished but we could see more rain heading our way from the west. So we decided to hit the road to Hwy 175 back to town. It rained quite a bit around Byron and the remainder of the way back to town. Tom and I took Hwy 151 bypass to Esterbrook Road where we ran into a little bit more rain, but nothing bad. It was dry when I got home. At least my bike was clean!
I had a great day and it felt really good to be on the bike again! I hope we have a really nice fall for riding.
