Day 18

Howdy blog readers.  This is Bryan Duke coming in live from the Madison, WI Best Western Inn room 321; Tim Aiken will be sitting side lines for this one.

Today is a rest day.  That's right, nothing to do. Oh, besides laundry, prep bikes, pin numbers, ride for an hour, get haircuts, pack the van, prepare for departure on Monday, shop for groceries...

We started with a double purpose bike ride: an easy one hour ride with a little course recon of tomorrow's crit course around the state capital.  As we rolled up to the block around the state capital, we came a cross a huge farmer's market.  Hundreds of locals were enjoying live music, food, and illegal jaywalking. This made course recon very unproductive. We fled out to the epic bike paths that surrond Madison - pictures below.

We came back, showered, replenished our energy reserves (aka stuffed our face with food), Tindered (yeah, it's now a verb), and then explored the darker side of the internet (not explaining it anymore than that).  Then it was time for some laundry.  A week of dirty kit and sweat logged clothes really make for an unpleasant entrance to our hotel room.  Sorry cleaning staff! We started our laundry at a nearby coin wash and shortly after had diner at Chipotle with the PDX Devo Team from Oregon. Of course this was followed by a trip to the Terrace and a game of Heat Seeker.  Heat Seeker is a game in which your close friends choose an attractive female who you must approach and start a conversation with. As Stu has been advising us, "Don't talk about it, be about it".  So this was our time to not talk about attractive girls, but rather talk TO attractive girls. I have to say, I was proud of Tommy and Tim. They approached two girls and immediately took the two open seats at their table.  They then said "hi". A solid twenty minutes later they returned to share their stories.  There was a lot of talk about cheese curds and little swapping of numbers - actually there was no swapping of numbers.  Tim had some redemption later in the night in which he chased down a girl walking in his direction and scored some digits!  To his disappointment  the number was fake.  She missed out.

Now it is time for some Zzzz's and dreaming of podiums.