I heard Bob Barnes, who I met yesterday, made the news on the Madison NBC station.

Today I visited family in several different towns around here and got in about 46 miles of bike riding between the visits. I did have one new experience during the last leg, today. While I was riding, a chipmunk ran under my bike between the wheels. I’ve narrowly missed running over a number of chipmunks over the years, but this is the first time this has happened.

On a totally different topic, I’ve noticed a funny phenomenon occurring during some rides on long straight stretches of roads. These are the kinds of roads where you can see a very long way down the road. Sometimes I will see objects in the distance, but not be able to make them out very well. In many cases like this, my brain will kind of morph an indistinct distant object into something that is desirable. For instance, a number of times, indistinct pear shaped objects in the distance looked like they might be fellow bike-packers coming down the road in the other direction. This object may end up being a simple mailbox of something like that. It’s really funny how your mind can play tricks like that on you.