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A Fellow Blogger Interviewed Me! And What Shall I Do After 10 Years and 52,000 Miles Bicycled?

~ A Dude Abikes ~ 14 Comments

I’m super stoked to be the latest blogger to be featured on another blog! Ortensia is the voice behind Truly Madly Ordinary, Diary of a “Not So Desperate Housewife.” I’m featured in her series Chats With Bloggers Episode 7. Lucky number seven. Check out the interview, and her other charming, relatable, funny, and interesting posts at https://trulymadlyordinary.com. Did I mention she’s an Italian who has lived for quite a while in Ireland? Or that she’s a published author, prodigious blogger, mother, among many other things. I want to thank her for her interest and graciousness. I’m not one for the limelight, but if I get a few more butts on bikes, or folks get a chuckle, then it was worth it. Meanwhile below, I’ll delve into what the road ahead holds for A Dude Abikes after my epic velocimania and reaching that literal milestone of 52,000.

Read more: A Fellow Blogger Interviewed Me! And What Shall I Do After 10 Years and 52,000 Miles Bicycled?

This month I have managed to do what I set out to: reduce my bicycling. Gasp! I mean, my body is going to make me take a break sooner than later. Whereas in 2025 I had a weekly goal of 100 (5,200 for the year) which I just missed by 200, for 2026 I set my Strava goal on 7.5 hours per week. I managed one 100 mile week in January, but otherwise I will just barely make it past the 333 needed to make 4,000 for the year. Which again, no one really cares about.

Numerous factors have gone into this decision beyond reaching that decade-long goal. First, I’m just tired, and I deserve a break today. Second, I never intended to have this 10-year goal anyway. I reached the point where there was no more point to continuing at the same pace. Third, it’s winter, and even the milder ones we get here in Central Texas are still cold and not always fun to bike in. Case in point, we had a weekend ice storm that shut the streets down for several days. And fourth, I started a new full-time job, which truly sucks the life energy and time out of the weekdays.

A sign of the times.

Overall, I’m okay with it. It’s a paradox, but less mileage = more health. I’m still keeping my daily streak alive (6 years, 4 months, 21 days), but that will end at some point. (As I’ve said before, a forced break is coming.) My commute is pretty short, but it counts. The week I did 100 miles was by biking 10 miles per night on my home trainer, and then two 25-milers on the weekend. Part of me wants to keep it up, but another part knows it’s better if I don’t. Also, I am slowly other taking steps to improve my overall health, partially because I have no choice. That means diversifying my exercise, improving my sleep, and making better choices about what I eat. Biking will always be by jam, until I’m unable to do it, but there are in fact other things in life. Another gasp! I mean, “Biking is life,” to paraphrase Dani Rojas said in Ted Lasso. And yet it isn’t. Scandalous and blasphemous, I know. So sue me! (Please don’t.)

Stickers I saw in Toy Joy.

Being freed from the 14.5-miles per day every day regimen, I have noticed my legs are less tight, my body and mind are less exhausted, and I’m sleeping more, at least some nights. Those are all positives. Getting to the gym to swim and doing more challenging yoga and resistance bands at home will take some effort at the end of a long work day. But one must pay the bills, so while I was rich in time, I can afford to be poor no more in terms of bills. I owe, I owe, so off to work I go for the next few months and hopefully beyond, because it’s a temporary gig. But isn’t everything in life?

While my daily half hours walks and yoga practice continue, I don’t always read for 30′, and writing is far less often than when I was doing it daily. Certainly with this blog, and since losing my writing buddy, I’ve slacked off the novella. Perhaps Ortensia’s interview and example will lead me back to more frequent writing. I do journal sometimes. I also volunteer on a bike-related project, so that takes time and involves some writing too, be it email messages to fellow volunteers, a flier for event outreach, etc. I also have the chores and errands of daily life to contend with like everyone else, and now that incudes sometimes going to protests. Somewhere in there should be time for naps and a little enjoyment of the filmed entertainments, right? Right!

Bike scenes

In the end, I’m getting older, slowing down, and have to do better at managing my health, which is no small task. Riding solo as I do means no wife or kids to support or to support me. (That I know about! There were a few crazy lost weekends in Las Vegas…. Just kidding!) Life goes on, and so does A Dude, at least until he doesn’t.

Hopefully you enjoyed my interview with Truly Madly Ordinary and this post, too. Adios January, here comes February! Time to reset those New Year’s Resolutions (or not).

Rosie, nice
Frankie, asshole
Scout, sweet. Three cats I pet at a week.

Copyright 2026 A Dude Abikes. All rights reserved.

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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How Writing Has Helped My Bicycling

~ A Dude Abikes ~ 8 Comments

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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5/5/2022: James Clear Is Killing Me With His Atomic Habits

~ A Dude Abikes ~ 2 Comments

At the end of last’s month’s post, Blog Post #666: The Blog In Which I Announce My Retirement from Blogging*, was a little-noticed * aka asterisk. Only one astute reader followed that to the denouement and figured out the meaning in these words, hidden in plain view: “Respectfully submitted on 01.04.22*, ADAB.” That’s European formatting, day first, month second. That reader was the ever-sharp Half Fast Cycling Club (say it out loud — it’s a fun pun) up in Wisconsin. Not only has he (I’m deducing that’s his pronoun) ridden his bicycle across most of the US (and he’ll correct me in the comments if I’m wrong about that), he’s fixin’ to do it again — at almost 70 years of age. Oh yeah, to do the trip, he’s resigning his hospital job as a literal lifesaver of COVID patients (mostly the ignorant “I did my own research on Facebook” variety). So kudos to Half Fast, and to the rest of you (except if you are in other countries where this peculiar American prank day is not celebrated), I say this: APRIL FOOLS, suckahs! Strap in, it’s going to be a long post.

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Blog Post #666:  The Blog in Which I Announce My Retirement from Blogging*

~ A Dude Abikes ~ 36 Comments

Welp, after almost two-thirds of 1,000 blog posts, it seems like a good time to take the pause that refreshes. Which the astute observer would have noticed that I’ve been sorta doing for the last couple of months already, anyway. Spring has sprung in Central Texas, so it’s a good time to examine where I’ve been, and where I’m going, not just with blogging, or biking, yoga-ing, walking, reading, fluting, etc., but life. A little metaphorical housecleaning, so to speak. (Actually clean house? Pshaw! That’s for suckers.) And who could begrudge a dude the chance to step back after six years and six hundreds of blogs? So forthwith, posthaste, and inmediatamente, let’s get skippy with it. (By the way, after this mention, this post will be Will Smith and slap-free. I’m Team Chris Rock all the way. Fuck you for ruining the Oscars, Little Willie. Get your face offa my TV and movie screens and go for some goddam anger management!)

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SOPHIE STOLEN! Beloved Bicycle Boosted by Brazen Burglar! (+ How You Can Help!)

~ A Dude Abikes ~ 14 Comments

The evening of Saturday, January 8, 2022, I was inside a big box store talking to a clerk about replacing my over four-year-old cell phone. I had parked Sophie, the Fairdale Weekender Archer, a bicycle who has been my trusty sidekick since I won her in a Bike Austin raffle in 2017, a mere 10 feet away in the small vestibule for shopping carts. Since I was so close and regularly looking right at her, I did not use my u-lock and cable lock — a fatal mistake I’ll never make again. At 6:30 pm, a brazen thief walked into the little lobby, stood there for 20 seconds, then walked out with my bicycle while I wasn’t looking. The next time I looked up, Sophie was gone, and with her, a piece of my soul.

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Writing a Book Is Like, Hard, and Stuff; A Partner Helps

~ A Dude Abikes ~ 6 Comments

My bicycle memoir, a book that’s been in process for several years now, is going like my bike rides — ever so slowly, relatively speaking. I like to blame the Writers League of Texas revision class teacher’s fault for blowing up my structure. It was 24 chapters over two years; she said ditch that for hanging things on half a dozen or so major events. The League director pretty much said the same. So not only did I write it, go back and revise it, then try to have some beta readers look at it, now I have to go back and re-re-re-do it? Apparently, yes. But I may have found a shovel to start digging myself out of this hole. That shovel is actually a person. I’ll explain.

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30,000 Lifetime Miles I Bicycled on Strava

~ A Dude Abikes ~ 5 Comments

Flavor Flav was and is the hype man for seminal rap group Public Enemy. Even if you don’t know their music or who Flav is, if you paid attention during the 80’s and 90’s or saw Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing with their hit, “Fight the Power,” there’s a good chance you heard of the guy wearing a big clock around his neck saying, “Yeah, boyeeeee!” and “Flav-or Flaaaaaav!” (By mentioning Flav, I’m pointing out an example of successful marketing; I’m definitely not condoning his run-ins with the law.) Chuck D was and still is the main voice of serious political rap, but FF keeps it fun. Professional athletes, celebrities, and politicians also have paid hype people — publicists to trumpet their successes and explain away their losses or mistakes. This dude just has this little blog, and Strava the fitness app, through which to toot my own horn. So, it’s tootin’ time. And yeah, I just reached 30,000 miles of bicycling in five years, eight months, and 10 days. Not too shabby for a dude who’s old and flabby. It brings up some questions: How did it begin? How did I get here? What does this milestone mean? And what’s for dinner?

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Thoughts on Reaching 600 Blog Followers and 50,000 Views

~ A Dude Abikes ~ 16 Comments

These two statistics appeared recently in my WordPress statistics page. Thanks to everyone who’s signed up as a follower on WP or by getting emails over the last 2,050 days. It’s not a big number when looking at bigger sites, but I’m no celebrity, so that’s to be expected. Of course the vast majority of followers (90%?) don’t read much or at all. But I am also grateful for all the views. That works out to be 24.4 view per day, which seems like a pretty incredible number given that some days it’s far less than that. Included in that number are probably all the times that I’ve looked at the blog myself. Nonetheless, these are milestones along the road and worth pointing out.

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