Milwaukee - Days One and Two

From Rockford, Illinois, where we stayed after leaving Iowa, we rode to the suburbs of Milwaukee. We had a friendship visit for lunch and that night went to Pewaukee Lake for a dinner sponsored by the family of a guy who rode a few years back. They had a cool little cottage on the lake and took us out on the boat for a trip around the lake. It really reminded me of northern Michigan. It was a nice relaxing evening.

The following day we had our second shortest ride of the trip of 15 miles to Milwaukee. On the ride into Milwaukee, the city reminded me a lot of Hamtramck, Mich. It just feels very blue-collar. When we arrived we met with Independence First, which is an organization dedicated to helping people with disabilities live on their own. We met Gabi, a little girl with spina bifida who was just a ton of energy and fun. She was really cool. Independence First had a bunch of wheelchairs and we got to play wheelchair basketball, tennis, and softball. Basketball and softball I felt like I could pick up relatively quickly, but tennis was nearly impossible. I could only hit the ball if it was in just the right spot because it was so hard to maneuver the chair laterally. We also played goal ball, a Para-Olympic sport for the visually impaired. Basically three people stand opposite each other and try to roll a ball past the other team. The ball is a little bigger than a basketball and has bells in it. So we played that with blindfolds, which was pretty sweet.

Later on that night we went to a bar on Water St. downtown called Duke's since we had a day off the bike the next day, which was a lot of fun. Ray and I met a couple locals who we were hanging out with who later on gave us a lift back to lodging. It was nice to get out and relax since we had just completed 13 consecutive days of cycling, the longest stretch on the trip.