Miles biked – 51

10/5/2009  Leaving Boulder was hard, we’d had a wonderful 40 or so hours there and it already felt like home.  We reluctantly left, after a big breakfast at the Walnut Café, for what we expected to be a relatively easy day of riding.  However it was raining and icky – and even though it wasn’t that heavy we didn’t want to ride in it.

After a miserable 10 miles down a highway (with a big shoulder) we arrived in Longmont, soaking wet and annoyed. The entire time we were biking we could see sunshine on either side of our route.  Maybe the weather was trying to say “don’t take the easy route, go through the mountains.”

Even though we were going to come back through Longmont the next day, we stopped there to say hi to our new friend Joe (another Avery bike party friend), who works at Deuter.  He’d mentioned he may be able to replace a hook on my panniers that’d gone missing and we figured we’d better not look a gift horse in the mouth.  Our quick stop turned into about an hour of drying off and hiding from the rain before we absolutely had to get back on our bikes to make it to Ft. Collins in time for our brewery tour.

Once we started heading north, we got out of the path of the rain, and for the first time in the trip we were luck enough to have a tailwind.  A quick 35 miles and we arrived at one of our most anticipated stops of the trip – Fat Tire Brewing Company.

…oh, I mean New Belgium Brewing Company.

We’d emailed them in advance because we couldn’t make it to the brewery on a regular tour day and they’d been nice enough to arrange a special tour for us when we arrived.  Our guide for the day was none other that NBB’s very first employee, Brian Callahan.  (As a sidenote – Brian has just moved from mountain biking to bike polo!  shout out to all our bike polo friends in NYC!) He gave us a very enthusiastic and thorough tour of the entire place, including the bottling plant, where they produce 700 bottles a minute!  We even got a bottle of the Abbey, fresh off the line.  I’ve loved Fat Tire since college, but was surprised how many other beers NBB makes and how awesome them all were.  If only you could get more of them in New York!  We all especially loved the oak barrel aged La Folie (even Caroline!) in case you were wondering.  We saw an employee yoga class in progress above the brewing tanks, took a trip down the slide, and saw the employee orchard, where everyone who works there more than 10 years gets to plant a tree. By the end of the tour we all were ready to do just what Brian did to get a job: offer to work for free until they just broke down and hired me.

Halfway through the tour we were joined by Jon, our host for the evening, who’d offered to put us up after Lynn, our tri-athlete friend, sent an email to her entire tri team.  The people in Colorado are so nice, its kind of mind boggling.  Jon just happened to have biked to work, so he popped by NBB to ride us home once we were done.   Having seen the production facilities, we hung out at the brewery for a bit longer, chatting with some of the employees who were wrapped for the day and having an after work drink.  While taking a few spins around the parking lot on those awesome New Belgium cruisers, we told them about our trip and how bummed we were that we were going to miss another recommended brewery in Ft. Collins, Odell Brewing Company.  Zak and the guys didn’t seem to think that the fact that they were closed for the night was a good enough reason not to ride the 6 blocks over to see if we could talk our way in for a taste and a quick tour.  We figured, they were in the industry and know what they were doing, so we followed their lead!

So Zak, Jason (on a skateboard), Nick, Jon, Caroline and I rode over to Odell and knocked on the door.  They were right!  Once we told them we were on a cross country bike and brew tour, they were more than hoppy to show us around and let us taste the beers.  Tracy even to got to try the Friek AND put some hops in a beer they were brewing that evening (thanks Chad!).

If it weren’t for the fact that Jon’s wife had ordered pizza and we had to get home, we probably never would have left.  (Zak, we really DID want to go to a show, maybe in Seattle if you make it tour our end party?)

As much as we loved Boulder, our hearts now belong to Ft. Collins.

-sara

The girls at New Belgium (photo by Zak)

Follow your Folly

The Notorious BC at New Belgium

miles biked – 11

10/4/2009 Staying with the caterer definitely has its perks.  After a much needed nights rest following the Avery party, we played a board game with Bob’s daughter while he made us a tasty breakfast.  Then we went out to explore one of the many cities Tracy is vetting for her home after our travels – Boulder, CO.

There are definitely many selling points for Boulder – the view, the bike paths, the general active lifestyle of everyone that lives there (and of course, the beer).  We pretty much fell in love.  And the city just kept getting better…  After hanging out on Pearl Street, checking out the shops and having some tasty coffees, we got a call from our new friend Orli, who offered to give our bikes a quick tune up.  Well, if you insist!  After greasing some chains, changing a chain and tightening some handle bars (guess we didn’t put our bikes together after the bus trip quite as well as we thought…) Orli, Tracy, and Sara grabbed some monster calzones and drove up Flagstaff to see the view of the city.  Spectacular!  On the drive we saw many cyclists pushing it up the hill with impressive speed- not because they were commuting to somewhere (the road sort of ends at the top)- but just to get some good climbing in. Without all our baggage I’m pretty sure we coulda taken them.  Meanwhile, Caroline did a three mile run and then swam laps in a beautiful outdoor pool.

After our sight seeing, we hit up another brewery, Twisted Pine, famous for their Hoppy Boy IPA (or at least that’s what pretty much everyone in there was drinking!)  We got a quick tour and found out that they have just expanded distribution from CO to two more states.  It was pretty neat to try a beer that isn’t available in New York yet, and like everywhere in Boulder, they were extraordinarily nice.

Later, we swung by the home of our host for the night, a triathlete named Lynn who we met at the Avery party, picked up her and her three mountain biking boys and walked down to Southern Sun (another Mountain Sun affiliate) for dinner.  Quite impressively, she is training for her first ironman. We were also psyched to be joined by another new friend – Allison from the Brewers Association. You don’t get more badass than being a woman in the beer industry and hardcore mountain biker!

Orli of Blue Cycles

Boulderific

Dinner at Southern Sun

miles biked – 42

10/3/2009 Getting to sleep in Denver after our 40+ hour day before, we were not quick to rise on Saturday morning.  Finally out of bed around 10am, Patty drove us to the most adorable french restaurant, Le Central, for the most important meal of the day – brunch!   We order 6 meals between the 4 of us, because we just couldn’t decide between savory and sweet, and drank about 5 cups of coffee each.

Fed and caffeinated, we hopped on our wheels for our 30 mile ride to Boulder- which of course somehow turned into 36 miles.  It’s surprising, considering how bike friendly both Denver and Boulder are, that there is no good way to bike between them.  We spent the first 20 miles winding up through the residential streets along the highway before finally hitting a few good straightaways.  We knew we were close when we started to see other cyclist, hitting the hills for an afternoon ride.

The ride took a bit longer than expected, so we missed out on the Redstone Meadery (they closed at 5pm) and went straight to Avery Brewing Company.  Pulling up to their tap room, the parking lot was literally filled with bikes.  It was bike and brew mecca.  We were quickly identified as the “cross country girls” by Kellner, the guy we’d been emailing with.  He hooked us up with a kick ass tour by one of their newest brewers, Phil.  He was an excellent guide and was brimming with excitement about the place-we could tell it was a great place to work.  Mid tour, we were told by Matt (another friendly brewer) that they’d found us a place to stay for the night – with the caterer of the party they were throwing for their friend Orli of Blue Cycles.  ”Oh, and you guys should definitely stick around for the party, there’s going to be some great food”.  How do you say no to that?

The party was AMAZING.  We met a whole slew of bike and brew buddies.  The running theme of the night was them saying “man, you guys are living the dream, biking across the country from brewery to brewery.”  And we’d respond by saying “no, YOU’RE living the dream, living in Boulder and working at brewery”.

Avery Brewing Co.

Bike and Brew at Avery Brewing Co

The Fastest Riders of the Pack

miles biked (see day 32)

10/2/2009 So, day 33 is really just a continuation of day 32, as we did not go to sleep after the bus, but somehow when we arrived in Denver we got a second wind.  It is just so beautiful in Colorado!  After arriving at Patty’s around 9am, we showered, changed into some non-bus grimy clothes and went out (we WERE moving pretty slow, this all took a few hours).  Caroline, the true athlete among us, hit the trail for a 8 mile run and then ran some sprints on the soccer field with a guy she saw practicing.  Turns out he happened to play for the Colorado Rapids.  She always ends up in the right place at the right time:)

Tracy and Sara met up with our motorcycle riding groupie Ryan (Tracy’s friend and ex-coworker from New York), made a quick stop at the post office (we gotta keep dropping weight, thanks to our friends in Sultan for accepting all our packages) and then went downtown to try some brews.  We ended up getting ferried on Ryan’s awesome wheels (Mad Mavis the Hell-Bike) to an awesome pub called Falling Rock Tap House.  It was the perfect stop.  We had a tasty lunch, some very good beer from the breweries in Colorado we weren’t going to have a chance to visit (like Ska Brewing and TommyKnocker – yum!) and they had internet.  Tracy even got to try the Russian River Publication (saison with brett- double yum!) What more could a bike and brewer ask for?  How about a chat with the owner of the pub, Chris Black?  Once our waitress realized why we were there, she gave Chris the heads up and he came over and gave us some insider stories about the GABF that we just missed (it was in Denver the week before) as well as a tour of their beer cellar. On top of the 70 beers that have on tap, the beer cellar full of older brew that Chris has been stockpiling. It was like being in a beer library with extensive archives.

Chris suggested that if we were going to any brewery nearby we should hit up Great Divide.  It was a worthwhile visit.  Although we only tried two beers, we happen to arrive right in the middle of a party, with bread and cheese and a great crowd of Denver beer connoisseurs.   It was just what we needed to whet our palates before we went out to dinner at Vine Street Brewery, the latest addition to the Mountain Sun group based in Boulder.  By then however, we were finally starting to fade, so we had a small taste of their wheat beer and then moved on to salads and their house-made rootbeer.  Not bad for a day where we thought all we’d be able to handle was sleeping.

More photos of Ryan and Mad Mavis

More Photos from Falling Rock in Denver

Great Divide Brewing Co

miles biked – 9

10/1/2009  Day 32 is a very controversial day in the bike and brew tour.  First of all, its a the first day on the tour that we can’t remember what day it is.  We were really good at remembering what day we were on based on what day of the month it was.  However, when it was the 17th of the September for example, we knew it was day 18 of the trip.  After day 32 though, all hell breaks loose.  Thus the lateness of this post:)

The second controversy of this day (and this MIGHT be bigger) is that we chose to take a bus 900+ miles to Denver, CO instead of biking through the rest of WI to South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, etc.   Now most people, when they think about it, agree that taking a bus to CO instead is a good idea but we still feel a little weird when someone says “where you coming from, did you bike the whole way?” because we didn’t.  But we still biked a long way.

However, controversy or not, the bus trip was an adventure like every other day.  We got up in Minneapolis, cooked ourselves a ostrich stick and egg scramble, and jumped on our bikes to the bus station, sans stuff (thanks Matt!).  It was a nice 3 mile ride through the city but the weather was cold and cloudy and we were ready to check out a new climate.  Hopefully we could get back on our sunny streak.

The bus station was beautiful (as bus stations go) and it had plenty of space for us to box up our bikes.  The pack up went off without a hitch but it took a bit longer than we expected.  By the time we were all boxed and bagged and ready to go it was time to get on the bus.  It was perfect timing except that we hadn’t eaten lunch.  We grabbed a few snacks from the vending machine and crossed our fingers that our next stop would have something substantial to eat.  That was, apparently, asking too much.

For the entire 19 hour bus ride, we had nothing but vending machine food to eat, except one truck stop at 1 in the morning, where we were able to wolf down omelets and chocolate milk.  We would have felt gross enough based on what we ate alone, but we had the added bonus of being on a very crowded bus all night, with multiple men alternating between smoking in the bathroom and hacking up their lungs while they were in their seats.

Without dwelling too much, it was a painful ride.  We were ecstatic when we arrived in sunny Denver at 6:45am.  We unpacked our bikes (the station wasn’t nearly as nice, but we pulled it off) in front of a few hundred people, hopped on our saddles and arrived at Patty’s house (Sara’s good friend) about 8:15am, surprisingly awake and ready to check out the town.

Boxing our Bikes

Junk Food, Yum

miles biked – 68

9/30/2009 The penthouse in Lake City wowed us again when we woke up to the sunrise over Lake Pepin.  We say this a lot of mornings, but THIS morning it was really hard to get back on our bikes.  We sat around on the cushy couches, curled up in the soft blankets, eating oatmeal, drinking coffee and watching Saved By The Bell for much longer that we should have.  We decided that it was our excellent nesting abilities that allowed us to be on the road for over a month now without really feeling like it.

Back on the road, we had a beautiful day of riding… at least for the first half.  We continued up the Mississippi, but today it was beautiful and sunny.   The wind had died off and we were flying.  We made it the first 40 miles to lunch in Hastings in record time.  We called our soon to be hosts in Minneapolis and told them we’d be there in a few hours, no problem.  It should also be noted that it was on this day that we decided that bike and brew should continue after Australia to do Seattle to Baja in the spring.  Its amazing what nice weather will put in your head:)

After lunch was a whole different story.  We didn’t really know the best way to ride into the twin cities, our trusty Google walking directions were giving us two different options, both of which looked like highways, so we asked the host at Perkins (the diner where we had lunch) what was best.  She said there was no way we wanted to take 61 in, so we’d better take the other option, Route 55.  We can only hope that she just hadn’t driven up 55 too far because otherwise, we’re pretty sure she was trying to kill us.

Route 55 started out fine enough, a 4-lane highway with a decent shoulder.  And then it was like the sky turned black.  This is a total exaggeration, but gives you a better sense of it.  In the distance, there was nothing there was some kind of huge machinery, and the shoulder got more and more strewn with garbage.  We were about to arrive on the set of Blade Runner.

We later found out that it was the Koch Oil refinery – just another reason to trade your car in for a bike.  But at the time, it was just a disturbing and scary site.  From our directions, it looked like we’d be off the highway soon, thank goodness, but it was right then that things got really dangerous.  With no logical side roads available, our nice enough four lane highway turned into a full on freeway – with no shoulder.   This was by far the most frightening 2 miles of our trip.  And to make matters worse, it was right at this moment that Caroline started to have a violent allergy attack.  Our bodies were telling us we were on the WRONG path.

After that, we decided we were avoiding anything that looked remotely like a large road.  We wound our way through the residential streets of the suburbs of the twin cities, mostly on sidewalks, through hilly St. Paul and then to Minneapolis to Sara’s friends Matt and Nina’s home, about 2 hours later than expected.    Caroline was in for the night, her allergies we getting the best of her, but Tracy and Sara went out on the town with Matt and Nina to the Minneapolis Town Hall Brewpub for dinner and some well deserved drinks.

Town Hall was pretty great, we had some tasty nachos (in your honor, anders!) and the sampler of all their tap brews.  We especially like the Masala Mama IPA and the LSD (a interesting lavender beer).

Lake City and the Sunset Motel

The Blade Runner Part

Town Hall Brewery in Minneapolis

miles biked – 82

9/29/2009 Our second try for leaving La Crosse went much better than the first.  This time, when one of our hosts, Dylan, offered to make us pancakes for breakfast, with followed our gut reaction and said “yes!”.

Fed and caffeinated, we hit the road.

Well, actually, we made it at far as the drive way before we realized that Sara had purchased bus tickets to Denver for the wrong day.  We bike all the way to the Greyhound station to make the change, only to find out that the station wasn’t open, so we just started our ride, figuring we’d get the tickets sorted eventually.

The ride started out a bit slowly.  To avoid riding on the larger highway, we road 2 miles up hill onto the bluff above the Mississippi right after crossing over into Minnesota.   Our host has told us it was going to be a tougher hill than our ride into La Crosse, so we were preparing for the worst.   We are either getting stronger by the day, or it was not that bad of a hill because when we got to the top we all felt like it just wasn’t that hard.  (It could have also been the full day before of doing nothing…)

However, to get down the bluff we had to do something that we would have avoided if we had known it was coming.  We had to do a steep one mile downhill on a loose gravel road.  The scariest thing we have done thus far. Tracy took a small tumble into a dirt ditch but otherwise, we made it down unharmed.

Then it was 70 more miles along the Mississippi river with the hopes of making it to the Frontenac State Park for a night of camping.   It was going to be a long day.   Twenty miles in, we decided we had to take a coffee break, not so much for the caffeine as to warm up.  It may not have been 40 mile an hour winds, but it was COLD.  We stopped in at the only thing we’d seen in miles, a diner with one car in front.  Coffee turned into coffee and turkey melts, which were surprisingly delicious.  Then it was back on the road.

When we were nearing our midway point, we did a quick pit stop at a gas station (who knew they had coconut m&ms?) and got a lunch recommendation from the cashier “oh, you HAVE to stop at Buck’s Bar”.

Buck’s bar was an awesome hunter bar, also the only place to stop for miles, but this one was hoppin’, with lots of senior citizens stopping in for pizza and ice cream.  It was awesome.  We had some tasty burgers, including Caroline’s very first elk burger.  Then it was back on the bike.

For as hard as we were riding, we just weren’t making great time.  It was cold, we had a fair amount of winds and even though the terrain LOOKED flat, there were a fair number of long rolling hills that slowed us down when we didn’t even realize it.  Around 6pm were started thing we might not be making it to Frontenac State Park.  So we did the next logical step:  we stopped at Dairy Queen for Blizzards.  Bellies full of ice cream and chocolaty goodness, we started calling motels.

This was quite possibly the smartest move we’ve made on the trip thus far.  Instead of biking in the dark for 5 miles, we stopped in Lake City, right at sunset (yes… very apropos) and checked in at The Sunset Motel.  Not only did the friendly owner help us out with the rate, he also, after hearing about our trip, put us up in the penthouse!  We each had our own bedroom, the hot shower we’d been hoping for, and we had a full living room with a deck and a kitchen to make hot chocolate and popcorn.  After our longest day of riding yet (though not highest in mileage, we were on the road for 11 hours) we ended in luxury feeling totally relaxed and ready for another day.

Day 30

Day 30

miles biked – 10-15

9/28/2009 Waking up in La Crosse, WI we were not planning on a day off.  We got up, put on our span, loaded our bikes and went to Fayze’s Diner for a hearty breakfast (including a huge cinnamon bun cake that we devoured before our actual breakfast even arrived).  To burn off all those calories alone we needed to get on the road.  But as we prepared to leave town, the cold weather and huge gusts of winds felt like more and more like a warning – it was not a good day to ride.   The threats of the 40 mile an hour winds were not just threats.  We stood outside the diner not sure what how to be the twig – should we stay or should we go.   The only hold up, since we had plenty of time to get to Minneapolis in time for our bus to Denver, was that Anders had to catch a flight the day before our bus.  So we looked up the bus schedule from La Crosse to Minneapolis and our dilemma was not a dilemma any more.  We were going to lose a day with Anders, but we were going to take the day off that we didn’t in Madison and not ride in the crazy wind.

INSTEAD – Caroline went for a swim, followed by 20 minutes 0f pampering in the hot tub with the jets shooting straight at her legs.  Anders sent his gear and bike away and hopped on a bus to Minneapolis to spend the day with his friends.  Sara and Tracy spent some time at Smith’s Cycling and then went out on the town in search of beer.  The beer tour, of Pearl Street, and later City Brewery, as well as our attempt to check out the Oktoberfest grounds turned out to be a bit of a bust – none of them were open.  But clearly, our path was not to bike OR brew.  It was to rest.  So we watched a $3 screening of Paper Hearts, went out for dinner and drinks with our hosts at the Carriage House just enjoyed being in Wisconsin one last day.

The boys of the Carriage House were some of our favorite hosts yet (Conner, Bryan, Dylan, and Seth) In fact, Caroline regretfully proclaimed after dinner, “gosh, if I was in college I would have a crush on every one of them!” As our second night came to a close, Dylan prompted us to play the game of three’s with the boys in the house. We did not answer at the time, but, believe me, this produced lots of girl talk fodder for the next days ride! Thanks guys for your great hospitality and friendship!!

The Carriage House Boys

Carriage House Boys and Day off in La Crosse

biked – 88.6 grueling, hilly, way too late, windy, rainy miles.

9/27/09  We woke up in Spring Green, surprisingly not hung over (not that we drank that much, but somehow when you go to a Shitty Barn Party you just sort of expect to wake up hung over).  We were sort of awake when the sun rose at 7am.  We started packing up our stuff around  8:30am.  We made it to the diner down the street around 9:45am.  Then back to the barn to pack up our tents at 10:45am.  Finally on our bikes at 11:10am.  What’s funny about all this is that we were fully aware that we had around 90 miles of hilly biking ahead of us if we planned to get to La Crosse (the planned destination) before sunset at 6:30pm.  But we loved our little tent home in Spring Green and we drug our feet all the same.

The diner in Spring Green was definitely the place to be on a Sunday morning.  Filled with people from town and people visiting, including other Shitty Barn Party remnants.  Anders had some really fabulous looking blueberry waffles and the girls had tasty eggs.  Good energy for our long day.

The first 20 miles or so on highway 14 (a fairly major thruway) was relatively flat and we figured “Ok, we’ve got 7 1/2 hours to go 90 miles, we can do this.”  Then we took some small turns, Tracy’s shifters stopped working (AGAIN) and we made it to highway 56, a much less traveled and more beautiful road than 14.   However, as the rule goes, the prettier the road, the hillier.  These were big rolling hills though and of course, for every slow, drawn out up hill we had a speedy and exciting trip down.  We did get a little worried when a woman came running out of her house to yell “there’s inclement** weather in that direction” pointing in the direction we were riding.  As far as we could tell that meant clouds and a light drizzle.  We kept chugging along, and as a pleasant surprise, with the rain, Tracy’s shifters started working again.

50 miles in, we stopped for lunch in Viola – population 667 – for some pretty tasty BLTs at a very strange little dinner/bar (it was either that or the gas station).  Then it was off for the last 40 or so miles.  Up until that point, we had decided that if we didn’t make it to La Crosse, we could definitely stop at a town closer, or at the camp site just outside of town.  But we were making decent time and figured we might as well just go for it.  Around 4:30pm, with 25 miles to go, Caroline got a call that we had a place to stay.  It was going to be worth the extra push to go all the way to La Crosse because we’d have a warm house and a hot shower, plus the possibility of a brewery stop, instead of camping in the “inclement weather”.  And that was exactly when the terrain got REALLY fun.

Now, thus far for the day we’d biked about 65 miles, feeling pretty strong.  Thus far for the trip, we’d done the mountains in Vermont and felt like we could handle some decent climbs.  But the combination of mountain-like hills after a long day of riding was torture.  We were so close, yet so far away.  There we hills we hit that took what felt like a half an hour (at 4 miles an hour) to wind our way up.  At one point, Sara almost called her mother.  Caroline almost threw down her bike and just walked away.  At the top of the final climb, it was 7pm, the last of any really daylight and Anders pointed out (though we all knew) that if we had any more hills before we got to the river (and some flat, more well lit roads) we were going to be in for some dangerous riding.  Not knowing what to expect, we started down hill, praying for 4.5 miles of decent.  Luckily, that’s exactly what we got.

Arriving at the edge of the Mississippi with 8 miles into town should have been cake, but just to make things interesting, our “easy flat ride up the river”, basically in the dark, was accompanied by some winds that almost knocked us down.  We arrived at our home of for the night in La Crosse at 8:30pm, 88.6 miles under our belt, totally whipped but safe and happy to have a hot shower.

We must have earned some good karma with that ride because our hosts, 4 college guys, were some of the most gracious people we’ve stayed with thus far.  Even though we’d only made plans to stay with the a few hours before, they had already rearranged there living room and laid our extra mattresses for us to set up camp in their home.  The connection was Caroline’s friend’s best friend’s roommate’s college friend, Connor, who was at work at a nearby bar, so we went there after a quick shower, had a quick bite, a few quick beers and fell a sleep in very short order.  The boys we pretty insistent that we shouldn’t leave the next day, we should sleep in and go out with them for Oktoberfest, but we were on a mission and went to bed preparing for another day of riding in the morning.  The last thing we heard before we entered dreamland was “the weather report says 40 mile an hour winds tomorrow…”

**note: after some research it seems like ‘inclement’ is the proper spelling for the common word ‘imclimate’ … this is, however, up for debate.

Stormy Riding through WI

miles biked – 45

9/26/09 After a few days of very few miles on the bike, the crew was getting a little restless, so we when heard there was a party out in a barn in Spring Green, about 45 miles west of Madison, we decided a little ride on our day off was more than worth it.  Talk about being the twig.

Our half day off in Madison was very nice, we went to the largest farmer’s market in the country, Caroline was able to squeeze in a run with Leah while Anders and Sara hit the local coffee shop for a game of chess (it was a stalemate.  typical.).   We all sat sound to a late brunch, ostrich egg scramble (yes, an actual ostrich egg from the farmers market) and then hit the road for the barn party.

Little did we know just how perfect this party was for our trip!  Turns out, it wasn’t just any party but the Furthermore BREWERY Shitty Barn Party.  All you could drink Furthermore Beer, Just Coffee, a locally grown pig roasted right there at the party and 3 awesome bands playing right there in the barn.  Plus, everyone (including us) camped out right there in the field and the 45 miles to the party put us 45 miles ahead of schedule for our WI riding.

The party was a trip highlight so far.  Everyone we met seemed to be in to sustainable food, bikes, beer, good coffee and good music.  It was our demographic to a T.  And we felt like celebrities the whole night, because Leah and Ahren, as well as Anders friend Johnny, had told everyone there who we were before we got there so everyone we met greeted us by saying “hey, aren’t you the bike and brew kids?”.

More photos of Madison and the Ostrich Egg

Furthermore Shitty Barn Party