If you’re a cyclist in Milwaukee, you’re probably familiar with Wheel & Sprocket. The company is celebrating their 50th anniversary this year, and Libby Collins sat down with their president, Noel Kegel, to talk about the legacy his father left in the Wisconsin cycling community, his path to the presidency of Wheel & Sprocket, and more on today’s WTMJ Conversations! Listen in the player above.
A partial transcript is provided below, courtesy of eCourt Reporters.
LIBBY COLLINS: What was the most memorable part of the trip for you?
NOEL KEGEL: You know, I could speak a lot about that, because there’s a lot of memories. So, I’d been, you know, in Western China, it had been several days since my last resupply, I was really in the middle of nowhere. And this was in October, so it’s getting towards the end of the year, sun goes down maybe around four or five o’clock, so you don’t have a ton of daylight. So, this time of year in the desert, it gets very cold at night, very cold, you know, it gets below freezing. And in the day between like, let’s say, 11:00 and 3:00 p.m., it’s above freezing, so you’re sort of out in the elements day after day after day. And I was really looking forward to getting to a town where I could maybe get a shower, find a hotel, get some real food. On my map, I saw that approximately 80 miles away from where I was starting, the highway that I was on was crossing another highway. I thought, if I could get to that intersection, there’s probably something there. And, actually, it wasn’t 80 miles, it was like 110 miles.
So, I woke up early when it was still dark that day, I’m packing up my stuff, I’m getting ready to go, I’m excited to get to this, what I thought would be a town. I go and go and go, there was an unexpected mountain pass that was hard, running low on water, the sun was setting. Normally, I would pull over and start setting up my camp so that I could be in my tent, in my sleeping bag by sundown, because it got cold. I pushed through because I knew there was still more to go, the sun was setting, you know, it’s just dipping below the horizon. I come over the rise of a hill and I see one road crossing another road, and that’s it.
