It’s the last day of August as I write, and the first of September or after when you’re reading this. It’s a balmy 88 degrees F after dark, but in a couple of days that will be the high with some rain in the forecast. After a 20-mile bicycle ride on a scary section of road, I am gorging on a sweet, succulent nectarine, one of those tasty Texas stone fruits harvested in the hot months. I chase it with some chocolate plant protein powder in water, not as bad as it sounds. Classical music, my usual soundtrack, swells and diminishes. There’s a ton of craptastic stuff I’m dealing with. Life keeps lifeing, someone said recently. In some ways, life is not so crappy. My biking is still a struggle, but I keep on truckin’. Which column do my bike numbers go in? Probably some of both. Let’s find out what this dude’s been doin’.

Under three months remain until a dude achieves a major mileeage milestone, and I find myself asking the age old question:  Just how many licks DOES it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop? (Here’s the old commercial I’m referencing.) The world may never know. Although according to Tootsie Roll headquarters, a bunch of college and some high school students tried–some even invented a licking machine–and they alll came up with different numbers. Digression over, my real query is of course more real world relevancy:  How long can I keep my streak of daily bicycling going? Should I keep going? Why? And why did I start in the first place?

(If you didn’t read the finished version of Part 1, please do so first.) Two weeks after a very hard gravity check, I am still breathing and ambulatory, so that means I’m still biking. Here then, is the rest… of the story.

Your dude is pretty good about keeping the rubber side down. A recent exception to the rule deserves some ink. I’ve had a few days to think it over and for the pain to subside somewhat. The three ingredients that keep coming to mind that make this recipe for disaster are: 1) low headlight battery, 2) too much downhill speed, and 3) overconfidence that I knew the road. Do the opposite of those, and you might reduce your own chances of taking a spill. What’s done is done, but here’s how it happened… and the aftermath. (What was there before math, anyway? Lunch period, probably.)

…just to be A Dude who biked 2,000 miles to be at your door. Those are paraphrased lyrics from The Proclaimers, a Scottish band’s big hit. And it’s a milestone I just passed. Well, yesterday. I added 20 miles tonight. Usually, I’ll get into my Strava statistics on the 11th, but five days early, so what?