Today, I am delighted to say, was a lovely day for a bike ride. Some way, somehow many of my aches and pains checked out for the day, allowing me to fully enjoy the beautiful Wisconsin scenery. It helped that the vast majority of today's ride took place on gorgeous state trails.

We even gallivanted through some old railway tunnels that had been blasted straight through moutains. They were super creepy and fantastic -- there were no lights and as soon as you'd gotten a hundred yards into the tunnel it was pitch-black without the aid of a flashlight. Also, although it was a sunny, temperate day, inside the tunnels it was raining. I was kind of disturbed by this phenomenon as we were emerging from one of the three tunnels on our route, and commented something along the lines of "at least there aren't bats" at which moment The Sherpa decided to assure me that there most certainly were.

The Sherpa and I fancied ourselves photographers as we explored these caverns, and here are some of our attempts:

"Abandon all hope, ye who enter here..."

White crystal walls, cool rough ceilings.

We couldn't quite manage to capture the immensity or depth of these tunnels on iPhone cameras, but let it not be said that we didn't try!

As we emerged from the final railway tunnel (this was the longest one -- it lasted three quarters of a mile) we encountered a man who identified himself as "Tunnel Tom," a retired furniture-maker who spends a lot of time in the tunnels. While chatting Tom up, the Sherpa snapped a pic in front of the great double doors at the beginning of the tunnel, so here I am at what very much appears to be the gates of Hogwarts.

Unfortunately not everyone we encountered on our trek through the tunnels was in any shape to take photos for us -- right at the mouth of one of the tunnels, we came upon a woman who had taken a rather nasty fall. We of course stopped to try and help her daughter get the unfortunate lady out of the road, and were finally able to make use of our slightly nerdy and yet infinitely useful supply of stuff strapped to the back of our bikes by sharing our first aid kit.

We also came upon a biker couple that had even more stuff strapped to their bikes than we do -- they were from Kansas and had traveled through Iowa and along the Mississippi all the way to their turnaround here in Wisconsin. He is a professor at a liberal arts college, and it was pretty cool to meet them and discover that crazy hair-brained bike tour schemes like ours aren't so weird as I had thought.

All in all, it has been an incredibly encouraging day that reminded me that I actually do really like riding my bike :)

I think we're going to make it!!!

Thank you for reading and being fantastic,

Bethany

P.S. Yellow Car stands at 60-59 with The Sherpa in the lead. Yes, yes, I need to get my act together, but I did improve my tie-breaker by one today. There was a dark moment today when The Sherpa claimed THREE Yellow Cars in a row and my prospects were quite bleak but I eventually recovered, and fully intend to take the lead again!!

Day 7 -- (98 miles, 605 so far)

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