Second day of the trip, riding west through the driftless area of Wisconsin, Brint and I came across a county fair. The Crawford county fair with a sign on the outside "Hug a Hog, tonight, 7pm." Ideas raced through our minds, we'd only come 50 miles for the day and were hoping for a bit more due to the late start the day before. But we're not riding just for miles, we're on the road for experiences and fun. So we entertained thoughts of camping at the county fair as we ate lunch by the dam at Gay's Mills. After lunch we walked into the natural foods coop in town, a coop that had a huge selection for its small size and we learned had been started years ago and was run by volunteers. The guy at the counter was extremely nice and it wasn't long before him, the one other customer in the store -Mike,- Brint and I were in an avid conversation about local food, and the ideas of the hippie generation to live sustainably off the land until they all got, in the words of Mike, "lazy." The conversation stretched onward to politics, life travels and experiences, and seemed like the typical kind of conversation that would go on in the natural food coop in Gay's Mills, heart of the driftless area and Kickapoo Valley in Wisconsin. It wasn't long until other kind hearted locals entered the store, and conversation switched to that of "The Wedding," happening the next day between the Organic Valley CEO's daughter, and her fiance; a couple referred to as 'driftless area royalty.' "Are you going to the wedding tomorrow?" "Yeah, I have to play in it, I'll be there." Everyone seemed to know everything about the events going on within the community. While this put more ideas in our head, we were really there to learn more about the 'Hug a Hog' contest. Two to three person teams were given 20 seconds to put a 70-80 pound pig in a barrel in the middle of a ~30ft diameter ring. The ring was composed of half a foot of standing water, plus a good foot of mud, plus the end product of every little piglet that would enter, against their will, see hundreds of people in the stands looking at them, plus the 3 pig catchers staring intently, realize they were separated from their friends and alone, and relax their abdominal muscles... There were two categories, men's and women's, and the first prize went to the quickest teams. Our competition, therefore, was burly looking farmer men who had claimed to have participated in this event for several years in a row. Neither Brint or myself had ever touched a pig... So we biked back to the fair, entered ourselves in the contest, and mingled with other fair-goers (our bikes draw a lot of attention). When the pig competition began, team introductions were made as we stepped into the ring. Everyone seemed to know who we were and our plans to bike west; we were the city slickers. Yet, upon the word "Go," Brint made a lung for the pig, held it in place, while I grabbed it around the belly, and hauled the 70 pounds of squirming and squealing muscle to the barrel in the center for a time of 10.8 seconds. We earned 4th place and $50 as a reward! Later that night, as we polka-ed and listened to the local band in the beer tent, we learned more about the wedding the next day...
Next morning we woke and met with Anthony, a friendly guy who we had arranged to bike with the next day. The plan was to bike about 60 miles north together and camp somewhere where Brint and I could make it to Minneapolis the next day. Instead, we struggled over a hill, headed west to the Mississippi, hit 45mph on the way back down, and found ourselves at a tractor pull outside of Ferryville, 6 miles away from where the wedding would take place that night. We stayed at the tractor pull long enough to get an idea of how the competition worked, drink some well deserved beers, and check out the farm machines before we tired and headed into town to eat lunch and swim out to a raft in the Mississippi. We discussed our options for the night. There seemed to be so many pros and cons. On one hand, we would have a tail wind going up the river which would make it easy to put more miles on top of the 15 we had covered for the day, yet we would miss out on a huge wedding with like-minded, open hearted people. It was just yesterday that we had cut our day short for the pig catching competition and promised ourselves to put on miles the next day. Yet, we may never have this opportunity again, huge community weddings of 300-400 people don't happen every day. So we decided upon the wedding. We went into the bar across the road to cool off from the 100+ degree weather and ended up having some drinks. Friendly folks in the bar decided to buy us shots, and after an hour inside it was 5pm and we had a pretty good buzz going, trying to keep in mind the night that lay ahead of us. After talking to a woman who offered us a spot on her land to pitch our tents, we stepped outside to make dinner (we had been told not to attend the wedding dinner due to a specific number of people that would attend, though the thought of the tasty meals that were being eaten made our mouths salivate). We found Ferryville in a state of celebration. The raft we had swum to hours before was now being loaded with 100s of fireworks. Merriment on the street was picking up; there were people grilling and playing bags. It turned out this was the equivalent of the 4th of July for the town, and it wasn't long before we were eating grilled pork and brats and drinking more beer. The generosity of the townspeople was overwhelming and we were close to staying in Ferryville for the night. But the idea of the wedding drew us away enough to bike up the road (after extensive goodbyes and more offers of food and drink) in more or less straight lines, and find the home of Donelda Surguy. She was a California woman, brought to Wisconsin on a whim, heading back to CA after retiring, but after discovering a piece of land for sale in the driftless area, stayed in Wisconsin. After making camp, we biked 5 miles up the road to the site of the wedding and were immediately shocked by the size of it. Cars lined the drive for miles. On our way in, we ran into friends from the previous night, "the dancing just started, and there's still cake left!" We were in our element. Equipped with the finest clothes we had brought (my chaco-like sandals, zip-off pants, and white button up shirt), we found ourselves folk dancing and blending in perfectly with the crowd of old hippies and organic farmers. When the second band came on, a mixture of jazz, rock, with a latino flavor, the dancing really got going. Mike, our friend from the natural food coop the day before, was ecstatic to see us. "This is the Shire," he told us, and we believed it. The mixture of good people who cared about the food they ate, community values, sense of the land and keeping old traditions alive was like stepping back in time, stepping into another world though we were 100 miles from Madison. Cider and wine were flowing, the cake was amazing, and there was a plethora of fresh veggies and dip that smelled like the produce section of an organic food store. People were amazingly kind, and it wasn't long before I was talking with the bride and groom and 'Gandalf,' the bride's father, congratulating them, telling them my story... 'Were we seriously considering missing this,' we thought? We somehow made it the 5 miles back to our tent that night in the pitch black, and by 3:30am, as a lightening storm rolled in, we fell quickly to sleep.
What a trip its been. After starting at 1pm the next day we rode 50 miles and camped just north of Lacrosse on the Black River before riding 123 the next day to arrive just before dusk, sore and tired to Erinn's house ready for sleep and a roof above our heads. Pictures at:
https://picasaweb.google.com/forrest9/PigsAndWeddings?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCJqD1KvArfapowE&feat=directlink
