Saturday bike . . .

. . . ride to New Glarus.

Alarm was set this morning to make sure that we got going relatively early. It is big time beer events around Madison this weekend. The annual Great Taste of the Midwest, a gathering of craft brews and breweries bring 1,000 different beers to a lakeside park. The event is limited to 6,000 people and sells out quickly. Anyway, because of this emphasis on craft beers in the area, the New Glarus brewery is busier than normal and they had a limited release of sour Peach ale. While we got to the brewery at 10:45, there were lines of people already there at 7. We weren't there specifically for the limited release, although it would have been fun to participate. When we pulled into the parking lot people staff said that they had 1,500 people at the brewery just before we arrived. Even though we missed the limited release, we got to enjoy the wood fired pizza of LaFortuna pizza and enjoyed a couple of beers, including Staghorn and MoonMan, two of my favorites.

I invited a couple that had participated in this years Tour de Brew, which I organize over Memorial Day weekend. I know they like to bike and thought they would enjoy this ride. They had never been to the New Glarus Brewery and I think and hope they had a great time.

Here are a couple of pictures from the road and of course in front of the tunnel entrance.

After we got home, I was basically a couch potato. Well actually a porch hammock potato. I am embarrassed to say I did nothing. Usually a 30 mile ride doesn't tire me as much as today's, but I was tired and didn't want to do anything! Oh well, I know that these days are few and far between. No problem or reason to feel bad. Sometimes you just need to hang!

Tomorrow will be a busy Sunday with church and then we are going out on the boat, but that is tomorrow and next on the agenda is a wonderful night of sleep!

Enjoy the moments and enjoy good beer!

 

 

 

 

Posted with Blogsy

Biking . . .

. . . through Wisconsin.

The day started with a walk around the yard to check on my gardens and to deadhead the day lilies. Why oh why do these beautiful flowers only last one day. Couldn't someone develop a day lily that lasted more than 1 day? It can be called the several day lily!

Day Lily

Front garden

Bee balm

I took today off. It is probably the first Monday I have had off from work since the end of February, not counting Memorial Day. Another big project at work is making to hard to take much vacation. This totally sucks because the same thing happened last summer and I and my staff were hoping that this summer would be different, but it isn't much different. Dang!

On my day off we decided to bike to New Glarus today. I love this little town. We made a day of it, first stopping at the fudge store, then Fat Cats for a latte and sandwich. Finally ending up at The New Glarus Brewery for a beer and tour. We have never been at the brewery when they were bottling, so were quite excited to see the operation.

Spotted Cow

The weather was cool but breezy. There were 15+ mile winds from the northwest - since New Glarus is southwest of Madison, the wind was over our right shoulder heading to New Glarus, but seemed almost head on when we returned. I knew the ride back would be windy and didn't complain. Last year we had a ride to New Glarus that I swear was into the wind both ways, which is highly unlikely, but I swear that is what happened.

Bridge in Bellville

A great day and a great 42 mile bike ride!

 

Last Thursday's bike ride

Adder: this is from last weeks bike ride.

Enjoy the moments!

 

Posted with Blogsy

Another Sunday . . .

. . . actually another beautiful Sunday. I just can not get over the beautiful weather we are experiencing in WI! We have had week after week of beautiful fall weather. Sunny days, more than I remember in Octobers past!

EXERCISE: I took advantage of the warm temp's and biked to work on Monday. I took Friday off and Todd and I biked to New Glarus on the Badger State and Sugar River Trail. I attended my first of 4 Yoga For Runners classes and a early morning Pilates class. I also managed to run 2 miles on Monday, 5 miles on Wednesday and am trying to get 12 miles in today. After today's final run, I will have 7.5 hrs of exercise for the week?

This morning while I was running - around 4.5 miles - I got a text from my friend Trix (normally a biking buddy) - but this morning she was signed up for Gilda's 5k run - she was wondering if I was doing the run? I called her back, because it is far easier to run and talk than run and text - When does it start? 11:00 - Sure. I had time to head home, grab my keys, explain to Todd, I am going to run a race with Trix and off I went. I got there about 10:20, registered and met up with Trix. This was her first 5k with a timing chip and she wanted to run the whole thing! No problem - she did great! We finished at 33:13.

So after this mornings run of 5 miles and the 3.1 mile race I have a total of 8 miles in and 4 more to go. As soon as the Packer game is done - I will be heading back out for 4 more miles. Strange way to get 12 miles in - but 12 miles will still be run today. (UPDATE: I finished 4.5 miles after the Packers win for a total of 12 1/2 miles)

As I mentioned above, I took Friday off and Todd and I biked to New Glarus. We stopped at Maple Leaf Cheese and Chocolate store for Fudge and then stopped at Fat Cat Coffee Works, where I enjoyed a latte and we ordered sandwiches to take to the brewery to enjoy with our beer.

When we got to the brewery - and were selecting our beer - the bartender took one look at us, "oh, it's you two again, how was your bike ride?" They know us! :-) I selected a Staghorn and Todd chose Spotted Cow. We sat outside and enjoyed our sandwiches and beer. We have yet to see the brewery bottling, but today they were filling 1/2 barrels, so we went inside and watched that for awhile. It was then time to head back.

The day was quite windy, with a S-SW wind at 15-17. We knew we would have the wind in our face biking to New Glarus, and figured that it would be at our backs coming home. But that didn't work out. New Glarus is south west of Madison, so our return trip was headed NE, which still allowed the wind to swirl around and ended up in our face, or at our side for much of the return trip. I am usually OK with the wind - but after biking 22 miles into the wind to get there, I was counting on putting it in cruise on the return trip, instead I was complaining, so much so, that Todd said he has never heard me complain that much! Oops! Be thankful to be out biking on such a beautiful day and keep the complaints to a minimum!

Enjoy the moments!

Posted with Blogsy

Sunday

What an appropriate name for the day! The morning started with a nice walk with Sophie. A little fog on the water and a beautiful sunrise.

Lot's of geese and ducks flying overhead and honking on the water. Our neighborhood Sandhill crane's were at the park this morning. Usually they start walking away as soon as they see us - this morning they didn't seem to care that we were walking by.

Once home we loaded up the bikes for a ride to New Glarus Brewery! 42 miles round trip. It was beautiful - days like today are meant to be enjoyed. And we did! Look at that blue sky!

RUNNING: My running has not been great lately. While I have been getting in 4, 5 and 6 mile runs - with a half marathon in a little over a month - I need some double digit runs. That is hard to do during the week, since I run in the morning before work. Better planning and getting to bed earlier are what is needed. I am a person that needs a good 8 hours of sleep - getting up at 5 means heading to bed at 9 - not 10, like tonight! And if I really want to get 10+ miles in before work - I need to be out the door at 5 - not rolling out of bed.

So I need to get to sleep and get this post sent!

 

 

Posted with Blogsy

A perfect combination

Day off of work for both hub's and me means a bike ride to New Glarus! He knew I was disappointed that our previous Sunday bike ride to Monroe to visit Minhas Distillery was cancelled because off the weather. I wrote about that here. He decided to take today off so that we could bike.

After enjoying my coffee outside with the last of the strawberries, cherries, walnuts and dates  - we headed out to our starting point in Fitchburg.  

We biked on the Badger State trail (rails to trails). It was a picture perfect day for a ride.  Not many people on the trail (although it never seems like you run into too many other riders). Stopped for water in Belleville just past the bridge. This is a great old bridge - in the past I have seen a wedding party posing for pic's on the bridge.  

Then back on our bikes - through town and into the tunnel between New Glarus and Belleville.  No pictures of the tunnel - I have taken many of them over the years - but a couple of the bright colored moss.  

The moss is on the New Glarus side of the tunnel. Only thing in the tunnel were a couple of pigeons.

Any time we are out and about we comment about the corn and how tall it is.  Same thing today.  I asked hub's 

"how tall do you think that corn is?"

          His response - "pretty tall"

"I'm going to stop and see"

          And we did - 

Based on my height - some of the corn is twice as tall as I am - and looks to be 11-12 ft tall! Our house ceilings are 8ft.  

Traveling on the Sugar River trail there is a farm with cows (OK - there are a lot of farms with cows - this is Wisconsin - the Dairy state - but these cows are close to the trail and they always look nice).  The cow standing was mooing a lot - clearly she had something to say - maybe things are not as pleasant on the farm as I like to think!  

We stopped at Maple Leaf Cheese and Chocolate shop for Fudge and then biked to Subway for sandwiches to take to the brewery.

The brewery location is called "hilltop" for a reason!  Every time we bike there - the last little hill gets me - even though I know it is there! The brewery is undergoing a huge expansion project - considering it is only sold in Wisconsin - we really like our beer!  

We enjoyed, "totally naked", "spotted cow", "moon man" and " two women".  I had the pint glass of "totally naked" 

 and hub's had the sampler, and started with spotted cow - since he isn't mich of a beer drinker - I got to have his 2nd and 3rd sampler glass and enjoyed moon man and two women.  :-)

Very relaxed feel at the beer garden and tasting room on a friday.  I of course had my New Glarus Brewery bike jersey on, which is a good conversation starter!  A gentleman walked over "nice jersey" and then asked where we biked from. He is the construction coordinator and told us about a lot of the new construction and still to be completed work at the brewery. We also talked to Deb Carey, founder and president of the brewer. She was walking her two dogs in the beer garden - she saw my shirt - "nice jersey"!  We then talked to her about the expansion and of course told her that we loved the brewery and the beer! Dumb thing to say - dah - of course we love the beer!  

We walked around the beer garden area, it has been expanded and has a lovely walking path down the side of the hill. We also headed into the brewery, hoping to see them bottling - but no such luck. Sounds like Monday or Tuesday are good days to catch the bottling operation.  

Time to head back to Madison. Instead of biking back through town, we take a back exit out of the brewery -it is the truck delivery route and see MORE expansion there and head out on the highway for about 1/2 mile and some back roads which ends up cutting off a couple of miles and as I mentioned - the brewery is on a hill - so the biking is "downhill" - at least for a little bit!  

Then back on the Badger Trail - back through the tunnel - back through Belleville and again stop at the bridge for a water break and then back into Madison.  

It was a great day and biking and beer is a perfect combination!

Enjoy the moments!  

Making the most of a day

My day started after a great nights sleep. I felt so rested. A lot of that was probably because I was asleep before 10. When the alarm goes off at 5:15 - I really appreciate the early to bed evenings. Clearly I am needing more sleep as I age!

I am trying to take my camera / phone with me when I run so that I can take pictures of everyday events of beauty. After all, pictures are what memories are made of!  

But this morning as Sophie and I came around the corner to a majestic sunrise - no phone - no camera - no photo.  Major fail.  :-(

Did a quick 2 mile run - back home to pick up the yard and enjoy my coffee outside. This morning the temp's were much warmer than the last few mornings, when temps were in the high 40's.  This mornings temps had to be upper 50's.  

I did stop for a picture of one of my dalhlia's.  

Then hopped on my bike and headed to work. I am really trying to assume that I will be biking to work and hope to consider driving the exception. It was a beautiful ride. 

I am still working on a plan to take vacation days. I realize this is a problem most everyone would like to have! I started my year with 42 days of vacation. I have used 4 days of vacation. My plan was to take 1/2 a day of vacation this afternoon and all day tomorrow. Does leaving at 2:00 count for 1/2 day? Sure does in my book. 

The bike ride home was especially enjoyable - leaving at 2 is wonderful. Since I was planning on taking vacation - I didn't eat lunch - so was famished when I got home. I enjoyed a sandwich thin with mustard, avocado, turkey and Gouda cheese, a few pita chips and New Glarus Totally Naked! Great lunch. 

Relaxing rest of the day. Laundry - weeding - watering.  

Hubbie picked up the CSA - dinner was fresh corn on the cob!  

We are taking tomorrow off and are planning a bike ride to New Glarus Brewery for a beer and Maple Leaf Cheese and Chocolate for some fudge.  I am looking forward to he 40 mile ride! 

Lunch

Brought to my table from Vermont Valley - my CSA provider.

Everything in the bowl, except the red pepper!  Oh and the Spotted Cow from New Glarus Brewery!