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12/12/2025:  52,000 MILES BICYCLED IN 519 WEEKS!!!

~ A Dude Abikes ~ 14 Comments

A Dude Abikes has done it! I AVERAGED 100 MILES PER WEEK FOR A DECADE! I started tracking my miles on the Strava sports app on 12/19/2015, so I actually completed this monstrous achievement a few weeks early, on 11/28/25. This converts to 9 years, 49 weeks, and 2 days. It was all done on regular bicycles and trainer bikes under my own power (no e-bikes aka motor-cycles here!). My “epic velocimania” has reached its zenith, finally. What a lengthy, weird journey it has been!

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6 Years of Consecutive Daily Bicycling and a 60-Mile Ride

~ A Dude Abikes ~ 5 Comments

Zig Ziglar, the motivational speaker popular in the US in the 1970’s until the 1990’s, used to give out these circular business card thingies that had the letters TUIT on it. I must have gone to a speech because I had one for a while. It was to remind people that goals should not be for some day in the future, you should seize the day. It was my intent to write this post a week and a half ago, but I’m just now getting a round to it. Get it? In other words, after my long ride of 60 miles, I was so tired… (How tired are you?) I was so tired it has taken me a couple of weeks to write about it. So, here at long last is my report off my big annual ride and another year of consecutive daily bicycling.

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9/26/2015:  The 10-Year Anniversary of My First Mamma Jamma Ride to Beat Breast Cancer

~ A Dude Abikes ~ Leave a comment

It was early on a Saturday mornimg in Martindale, Texas, a small town south and east of Austin. I had arrived in San Marcos the night before where I stayed with a friend. The accommodations were not the best, with a very noisy air conditioner, hole in the floor, disgusting toilet, and an air mattress that deflated overnight. But it was free, so I couldn’t complain much. The friend, who was flirting with frenemy territory, got me to the ride in the nick of time. I checked in, got my rider number stickers, goodie bag, said hello to some fellow riders I had met on practice rides, and got ready to roll out hundreds of other people.

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9/9/2025:  33 Days to 2 Big Goals… If I’m Lucky

~ A Dude Abikes ~ Leave a comment

What goals might you ask? Well, one takes us back to the Before Times of October 2019. When the world was, while not pristine, it was still pre-pandemic. Fear and loathing were not yet endemic. And we had the same leader who is seemingly now more schizophrenic. This here dude from Texas would ride his bike often, and gaily. Until one day he decided to do it daily. To make that  six years is one goal I seek, and that is about which this blog does speak. (Or it will when I return to it to tweak.)

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After 5 Years With a Car, I’m Still a Bicyclist First

~ A Dude Abikes ~ 9 Comments

Five months into the COVID-19 pandemic, I got a call. The voice said, “We’re getting rid of this car. If you want it, it’s free, but you’ll have to come and get it now.” After 15 years without a car,  I was ready to be able to buy a watermelon, visit relatives out of town without “riding the pooch” (taking the Greyhound bus), and go places when it was rainy or cold or hot without suffering the consequences of biking in Mother Nature. I found a friend willing to wear a mask too, so we bit the bullet and drove a couple of hours to get the car. We didn’t die. So, five years ago, I returned home with a used but working vehicle. I could no longer call myself car-free.

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8/8/2025: Some Ghost Bikes in Austin, Texas

~ A Dude Abikes ~ 14 Comments

A lack of inspiration and bicycle newsworthy items has me a bit stymied. But except for last month’s post on 7/11 (the date, not the 7-Eleven convenience store in the southern US), I’ve been writing a post on the date where the month and the day match for a while. So, to keep that going here’s a pictorial of the number of recent ghost bikes with some thoughts that I have passed by on my daily rides around town.

(Come back later, I hope to have added some more photos and comments.)

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7/11/2025:  On My 500-Week Streak + 3 Months Until 6 Years of Daily Bicycling*

~ A Dude Abikes ~ 4 Comments

After passing 50,000 miles and 9 years, 6 months, and 8 days bicycling, you’d think there wouldn’t be any more milestones for a while. You’d’ve thunk wrong. I’ve been streaking for a while, but not the kind where some idiot is running buck nekkid across a field where they’re playing sports ball in front of thousands of people and more at home watching the ol’ boob tube.

My streak is decidedly more tame, doing some sort of activity every day for 500 weeks which is that 9.5 years. I’m not sure how Strava calculates the streak week, like you have to exercise at least half the week or a certain number of hours.  But I’ve cycled every day for 5 years and 9 months as of today. If I can make it another 3 months, that’ll add up to 6 years. Plus I’ve been walking almost every day for 7.5 years and doing daily yoga for 11.5 years, each for 30 minutes or more.

As always with me, and really everyone if you think about it, that’s a big if. Read on for more thoughts. I can’t promise they’ll be deep, but I won’t promise that they aren’t, either.

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50,000 Miles Bicycled! A Dude Abikes Did It!

~ A Dude Abikes ~ 13 Comments

I begin this blog like I did my journey on December 19, 2015: One step / pedal / word at a time. It took nine years, six months, and eight days, but I did it! I rode bicycles for 50,000 miles. That means I have now traveled the distance of the equator TWICE. (You may recall my October 23, 2020 blog, AROUND THE WORLD IN 1,770 DAYS (24,901 MILES): 5-YEAR GOAL ACCOMPLISHED !!!) When I reached that goal, I titled my Strava ride “Planet Earth: Lap 2, Day 1?” Similarly, I titled my first ride after the goal, “The Start of Another 50,000 Miles? Just Be Here Now, A Dude. One Pedal Crank at a Time.” That’s all to say that there’s a lot to say about this. I’ll try to be brief.

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6/6/2025:  Dates and Goals and Miles, Oh My!

~ A Dude Abikes ~ 6 Comments

June 6, 2025 is the 156th day of the year, meaning 209 remain for any of us to reach our New Years resolutions. (That’s 43% for you math nerds.) For me that’s mostly my bicycling mileage goals. It’s not just about this year, though. I began tracking my journey January 1, 2016 (technically, 10 days earlier). But December 31, 2025 will conclude a decade of using the Strava fitness app to record my bicycling. The numbers tell a large part of the story, but only part of it.

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