Horribly Hill Hundreds

I drove to Mt. Horeb Wisconsin on Friday--the part of the state that the glacier missed--to station myself near the start of Saturday's Horribly Hilly Hundreds. The HHH is a choice of 100 or 200 k --the 200k promises over 10thousand feet of climbing!

Procrastination dictated that I find a camp site, since area hotel rooms had been booked for weeks, maybe months. The campground in Sauk City that took my reservation turned out to be a trailer park. I set up my little tent just yards from the grounds' play ground where pre-adolescents were entertaining themselves by battering a tree with sticks--oh, the sounds of nature.





After picking up my ride packet at the Mt. Horeb high school, I drove to find the starting location of the ride at the Blue Mounds Park. I began praying that the ride's route markings would be clear and less stressful than finding the park. Finally there, I learned that the virtual reservation web site for the state campground was not accurate when I checked a week ago.


A campsite remained at Blue Mounds, just minutes from the start! The only problem was driving all the way back to Sauk City to retrieve my tent. After sitting through the traffic jam created from the I-94 route diversion caused by the terrible flooding, I was back at the Redneck Ranch (I'm just reporting what one of the kid's tee shirts said under a confederate flag: "Redneck"). The tree beating was still in progress. This confirmed my decision to move to the other park, where it appeared that the trees were being hugged.



I have not been tenting in a while. After all the jockying around and goofy logistics, I still had to set up my tent again--this time, in the dark. It was about 2:30am, in the midst of tossing and turning on my bed of gravel, that I made the determination to ride 100k, rather than the 200k.





Before 7am, at the well-worn downtown of Blue Mounds, while waiting for the start, I noticed a strange absence of women and a huge presence of aero bars. I've entered races that weren't as testosterone-poisoned as this atmosphere! I brought a Waterford (not the orange one, below) that is actually a mountain bike with 115psi road tires, moustache bars, full XTR drive train, and a Brooks saddle. I heard "Nice bars!", "cool, retro", "nice vintage", etc. This bike has no computer, so I have no bragging rights to join in the "I was going 53mph" conversations at the end. Relative to the aero crowd, I was rolling the down hills like an old man, but seeing many of the speedsters that passed me on the down hills as I caught up on the climbs. Speaking of passing, whatever happened to the idea of calling your passes? And who could possibly think it permissable to pass on the right when flying at such speeds?

The organizers of the HHH have constructed some killer routes and the rest stops had ample supplies of fuel and friendly volunteers. Only a couple of hours or so away from Kenosha, this area is far from flat and feels as if you've been transported well outside of our topographically tame midwest.

Goulash, grilled chicken, and beans filled our plates at the end of the final climb to the top of the Park--not the toughest of the day's climbs, but aren't the last efforts the most memorable?