Live from Beautiful Madison, Wisconsin!

Hello everyone from the beautiful city of Madison, Wisconsin!!
The past week was the most anticipated week of the tour. The previous week from Denver, CO to Fremont, NE may have been the longest week of the tour as we covered about 900km (560mi). Last week, however, included three centuries. A century, as I’ve said before, is 100mi or about 162km in one day. But let me start from our trip to Dordt College in Sioux Center, IA.
The ride to Sioux Center was a nice short ride of 98km (61mi) from Sioux City. We had a bit of head wind and cross wind, but nothing unbearable. It’s funny how a 100km ride is now seen as a nice break, it’s also funny how quickly we adjust and adapt to life as it comes at us. The first couple weeks of the tour we took it pretty easy, not many days over 100km and a few mountain passes here and there. And now tomorrow we ride a 133km to Woodstock, Illinois. This is also seen as a short nice day, but we’ll see about that. Wind can bend you and mend you, dry you and fry you, and can literally give you an extra 10km/hr. Dordt College was a great, they let us sleep in the dorms. Having a bed is awesome. And we all needed it, as the next day (Aug 6) we biked 186km (116mi) our longest day of the entire tour. Which brings me to my next learning point of this past week.
God has a very good sense of humour, and He likes practical jokes once and a while. The morning we woke up at Dordt it was raining. Big deal you say. Well this was our first real day of rain, any other precipitation we got was either a sprinkle or a drizzling mist. This was not. This was ice cold, freeze you to the bone type of rain and there was a lot of it. So we all scampered to the dining hall to have breakfast, thankfully it was indoors. And as soon as we got back outside it had stopped. It rained later in the day but not nearly to the same extent. God saw that we were very anxious about our first 100+ mile day, so we woke us up to a down pour, and then stopped it before we left (well most of us). The next day from Algona, IA to New Hampton, IA had the same start. Waking to rain, leaving dry.
God truly does answer prayer, in due time. We prayed from a tail wind for the two weeks coming out of Denver (which was a longest week of an average of 148km daily. The second week out of Denver was 147km daily). We experienced three days of head wind and one day of tail wind the week out of Denver. But once we started our three long days God provided. Tail winds all three days, and to top it off, He provided cool temperatures. So the days were good. The longest riding time on my seat was 7 hours and 57 minutes. On our journeys we rode past vast fields full of hundreds of wind turbines as far as the eye could see in some places, and many little towns. And these towns can be seen coming as they all seem to have the trademark of grain elevators, water tower, and a church steeple peeking above the town’s tree line. We stopped in the town of Britt in central Iowa for coffee as they were having their International Hobo Day Celebrations, strange I know. And in Charles City closer to New Hampton there was a wooden bridge that had been washed out due to the flooding Iowa and the Midwest had experienced this past year. The prettiest rides came as we rode into Wisconsin and the forests started to appear out of the prairie.
When we crossed the Mississippi River from Iowa to Wisconsin the landscape changed. There were still hills and now suddening lots of trees: which is a very nice change from the deserts and prairie of the last 6 weeks. And to close this long posting; we stopped in the town of Mount Horeb, WI at a coffee shop. The store owner asked us who we were and what we were doing, so we talked a bit. The outcome was again a huge out pouring of generosity that people have been giving more and more as we go. Anyway, she gave us cookies, muffins, coffee, lemonade, and ice water all on the house!! It was incredible. Also, a highlight of the week was a good friend of mine from a SERVE trip to Grand Rapids two years ago came and visited me here in Madison today, so we hung out in the downtown area. Thank you again Leslie. It was good to see you after 2 years.
So if you are ever in Wisconsin make sure you visit the Coffee & Wine Bistro in Mount Horeb and make sure you visit the beautiful capitol area of downtown Madison, which is nestled between two fresh water lakes.
Peace&GodBless
Matt