A Catch Up Day

Not every day is full of blog-worthy tales of adventure. Despite my frequent babbling, the argument could be made that MANY days are lacking of blog-worthy tales of adventure. And yet I write. Side note: I just had remove a bug from my screen and apparently I was bit too aggressive as I now have to remove bug guts from my screen. Sigh.

Insert passage of time transition and appropriate sound effect here.

Okay, bug guts have been removed from my screen … on with the update. For a few reasons, today was a short riding day. Partially due to wind, partially due to accommodation limitations, and partially because I really needed to take time to get caught up (again) on my updates. It really is remarkable how quickly things fall behind.

My goal for the day was to get to Winona, MN (not to be confused with Wenona, IL from a week earlier). Winona was less than 60 km away making it seem hardly worth a day’s ride. However, despite the short ride, the day would include moving on to another previously uncycled (not a word) state (by me, anyway). Minnesota, here I come.

In addition to a great omelette for breakfast, my hosts were kind enough to provide a good route out of La Crosse and onto Winona. Well, some people might not have approved of the route as there was a sizeable climb very early in the ride but I generally find that better than at the end of the ride. Plus, I really didn’t think it was THAT big of a climb – although, my speed was limited to mid-single digits for a few moments. Anyway, regardless of the hill’s steepness, by the time I reached said hill I had crossed another state line and was officially in Minnesota. State number seven on this tour. Once again, there was no welcoming sign to mark my accomplishment and so I just pedalled on.

After the aforementioned initial climb was over it was pretty easy riding before reaching a somewhat matching decline near the end of the ride. Yes, the headwind did take some of the fun out of the descent but it was still good. Certainly better than a climb with a headwind, at least. Although, I guess that’s pretty obvious.

My arrival in Winona meant that I needed to address the lack of accommodation that I was facing. The good news was there were several Warm Showers hosts in Winona. The bad new was they were either already hosting people or not available at all. Considering I wanted to do a fair bit of writing, I really didn’t think a Warm Showers stay was appropriate anyway. For the same reason, I was hesitant to go to the local campground because typing while sitting cross-legged in a tent for extended hours isn’t exactly ideal. As such, I deemed it would be a motel night.

The motel in question was the Sugar Loaf Motel. It certainly wasn’t a four star place (or a three … or a … well, you get the idea) but it had everything I needed – including surprisingly fast internet access – and the room was less than half the price of the franchise establishments in the area (i.e. Holiday Inn Express, Super 8 and other such entities).

Checking-in to said motel was a bit more of a challenge than expected as my US credit card was being denied. I’ll spare you the details but in the end in turns out the card wasn’t the problem but the machine that was trying to read said card. Blah blah blah, by 2:00 PM I was settled in my room typing away the hours. And blog entries.

Of course, it would be four days later before I would actually get around to typing up THIS update. But it’s now typed and I can move on to the next one. No rest for the wicked.

Today’s totals:
Distance: 58.96 km
Ride time: 2:46:10
Average speed: 21.28 km/h
Maximum speed: 52.92 km/h