How Writing Has Helped My Bicycling

It’s Leap Day, 2024. Let’s jump right in. I have kept a journal for most of my life since being a young teen, encouraged by my maternal grandmother. There have been plenty of long gaps and since starting this blog in 2016, many days that I skipped both to work on my bicycle memoir. Writing is a way to express your feelings, and in a journal it’s private. Blogging is sometimes an online extension of that, depending how personal you want to get. Either way, helping to clarify thoughts, process emotions, outline goals, and refine motivation are all good for your health. Which in turn is both what one needs for any sustained exercise habit or practice and a benefit of the same. The fact that I’ve written a whole book (or two, since it’s too long–even as I try to revise it a third time, what it really needs is funding for an editor) is another way I’ve expressed myself, usually about all my biking. Sure, I could still ride a bike without writing, but both are entertwined and part of my daily do’s, and so far as I’m able to continue, I plan to and hope I will.

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4 Takeaways from 4 Years, 4 Months, 4 Days of Consecutive Daily Bicycling

Four–she’s a jolly good number. Another cycling milestone has passed, and that’s something worth commemorating with a blog post. Surely, there are plenty of much older geezers than I who have been out there racking up decades of daily bike rides. Or maybe not, and I’m in a handful of elite athletes who have a streak going. Hahahaha! Even pro riders take days off, and I’m certainly the very model of a modern amateur. As I often say, any day my streak might end, and somehow, life will go on. But I’m still streaking… for now. So here are some words about that.

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2/2/2024: 5 Reasons Why Austin, Texas Is Not as Bicycle-Friendly As It Thinks

Austin, Texas. Just the words call up images in the minds of people who have lived here a long time, the recently arrived, and those dreaming of coming here. I know this because I’ve been all three, obviously in reverse order. I’ll stipulate that we’re much better off than Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, and most other cities in the state. This isn’t a comparison with them. But compared to the great bike cities of the world, to which Austin can aspire, we are surely lacking. And Austin sure thinks highly about itself. It’s evident in our slogans — The Live Music Capital of the World, Keep Austin Weird, The People’s Republic of Austin, Silicon Hills, The Third Coast (as if–we’re over 200 miles from the Gulf of Mexico).

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