Day 2 was another challenging day. The usual expected coulees and great farm land views were present. My roommate Jeff decided to start a little later. Rode on/off with a couple riders once in a while, especially from Coon Valley (mi 60) down to Soldiers Grove (mi 91). This was a nice backway that I had never driven on my trips to LaX. You can see that max grade was 15%! Tough. That and the headwind. The temp was a bit moderated as in the 80's. At mi 112 sat for a bit at the control c-store. Jeff came up and the 2 of us rode from there mostly to the end, together. He took off a bit faster as we got closer to the overnight. So I had a different roommate, the guy that I rode the Apple Valley 600k with the previous year. The stretch along the WI river was pretty flat. Then at mile 144.7 a volunteer was there so topped off water and Jeff and I turned north, finally with a tailwind. Then the sprinkles started. At Spring Green ( 148.6) it really started to rain. That south tailwind was awesome until mi 150.7 where it became a cross wind. At mi 155 we turned north and again had a screaming tailwind until about 171. Somewhere in here Jeff took off and I did not catch him. Volunteers were present at the hotel and it was a catered meal. Yummy. As was the case in Day 1, the ~42 cyclists had split into 2 main groups of about the same size: 1) faster and 2) slower. I was at the tail of the faster group & about 1 hr ahead of leading slower group. This was how every day went for rider distribution.