exercise

3.5 Years of Daily Cycling & 2023 1st Quarterly Report

~ A Dude Abikes ~ Leave a comment

Way back B.P. (Before Pandemic), I started riding my bicycle every day. Today marks three and a half years, or 42 months, or 182 weeks and five days, or 1,278 days in a row. Also, I’ve walked daily with very few misses and many extra miles in five plus years, and I’ve done yoga daily (moreso nightly) over nine years. I continue to reflect on that, and it’s time to review my Strava activity stats for January-March 2023. Let’s take a look.

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12/12/2022: Slow, but Still I Go — Biking, Walking, Etc.

~ A Dude Abikes ~ 5 Comments

Another month has gone by since my last post, and just a few weeks are left in the year. As the weather cools and holidays and a new year approach, thoughts turn inward, toward retrospection, and to the future. There’ll be time for a review of the year come January, though. For now, what has gone on since 11/11? Work, for one. It has involved a lot of walking, which has been surprisingly exhausting. Seven or eight miles when you’re used to the equivalent steps of three miles, and standing for long hours in between, is a change. Other things like rain, health stuff, and perhaps some existential ennui have slowed me down, too. In the past month, I’ve alternated between 80-110 miles per week riding my bicycle. Not great, but not horrible.

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9/9/2022: Sookie Shares with Sonnie; Autumn Approacheth; Failing Fast Forward

~ A Dude Abikes ~ 2 Comments

In this installment I’ll try and fail again to summarize what I’ve been up to for the last month. There’s too much to pack into one post. It seems the more I work on my book, and read other books, the more I realize that the art of writing is as much about what gets left in as what gets taken out. In his intriguing novel John Woman, Walter Mosley touches on this idea by having his eponymous protagonist (a professor with a checkered past and a troubled present), explore the deconstruction of history. His professor believes many things about his field, the main one as I understand it so far, is that it is not absolute. We are constantly creating history, our own and the larger world’s, Professor Woman teaches his students.

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8/8/2022: Biking While the Heat Is On in Austin

~ A Dude Abikes ~ 2 Comments

We’re on track to have the hottest summer EVER in Austin, Texas. (Climate science deniers ought to move along right now.) Texans are accustomed to the heat, but not like this. In 2011 we had 90 days over 100 F. So far in 2022, we’ve had 58 of those 100+ days. May, June, and July were record breaking hot. August is the worst month. Also, it’s barely rained, so we’re in an extreme drought. Many places from France and the UK to California are experiencing extra high temperatures. The hotness makes bicycling, as well as other important activities like standing up, breathing, and putting on pants a bit challenging.

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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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Actually, I’ve Bicycled About 45,000 Miles in 17 Years

~ A Dude Abikes ~ 4 Comments

The week began slowly. I only managed to average about 12 miles a day when I’m meant to do 15. For 2022, I haven’t set any new goals or made any New Years resolutions. I’m just sort of coasting on auto-pilot from last year. After 5,555.55 miles in 2021, and 6,666.66 in 2020, and riding every day for over 800 days in a row, I have now passed 32,000 miles in just over six years on Strava*. (I started in very late December 2015 and it took five days of 2022 to hit that number, so call it six years and two weeks). That got me to thinking about what I did pre-Strava. The actual total mileage I estimate is much higher. Actually, I’ve bicycled about 45,000 miles in 17 years. (As for whatever I did in childhood and adolescence, into college and young adulthood, I’ve no clue. I could guess 5,000, but it would be a total guess.)

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The Last Bike Ride (of 2021): Rolling with Rhodney

~ A Dude Abikes ~ 7 Comments

The year began like it ended, with your humble correspondent throwing a leg over the top tube and pedaling. Neither far nor fast, but flat. Nothing remarkable, save for the fact that I have this platform from which to remark about it. After all, bicycling is a relatively simple act that hundreds of millions of people around the world do. Many much “better” than I. But as someone reminded me, everyone has their story, and here I’ve tried to tell mine, for what it’s worth. Everyone also has obstacles in their life, be they genetic, disability or health-related, environmental, social, economic, or political, and there are many other things that make it “hard”. I try not to focus on these challenges, although I do grouse at times. (It’s my blog and I’ll whinge if I want to.) In the end, one hopes that something good comes out of their efforts, or at least nothing too bad. Just a simple bike ride is its own reward, though.

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A Chat with Sophie the Fairdale at 20,000 Miles + 800 Consecutive Days of Bicycling

~ A Dude Abikes ~ 4 Comments

It’s a pair of milestones this time for A Dude Abikes and his trusty steed, Sophie, the Fairdale Weekender Archer. I won her in a raffle from Bike Austin back in 2017, though I didn’t start riding her exclusively until January of 2018. On Sunday, we passed 20,000 miles, according to the Gear setting on Strava, the fitness app (which means “to strive” in Swedish.) As it turned out, it happened the day after 800 days I bicycled in a row. Two years, two months and 10 days if you’re wondering.

There was some major effort involved, and with that some pain and suffering, that’s for sure. They’re all part of attaining these big numbers and worth commemorating. I’m not really tooting my horn here as much as I’m just reporting the facts. It’s another step on my journeys both on the bike and here in the pages of this blog.

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November 2021 Strava Stats; One Month to Go

~ A Dude Abikes ~ Leave a comment

December is here in all its tawdry commercial tinsel and glitter, saying “Hey everybody, look at me, I’ve got Bodhi Day, Chanukah, Winter Solstice, Christmas, Kwanzaa, and New Year’s Eve!” To that I say, “Curb your enthusiasm, December.” But for this dude, it’s just that same time of month, i.e., the first, in which I sometimes recount what I did the previous month on bike, foot, and yoga mat. So let’s see how I did.

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