fathlete

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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10 Years Ago Today, I Bicycled 50 Miles in My First Charity Ride

~ A Dude Abikes ~ 4 Comments

Way back in the autumn of 2014, two things that happened that led to me signing up for my first torture I mean fun fest also known as a charity bike ride. First, I was gifted a bike which would come to be known as Sonnie, my 25-pound steel triple triangle GT Arette. Second, I was working for a beneficiary agency of the event when and somebody said, “Hey dude, you ride your bike everywhere, why don’t you do this charity ride?” They tempted me with a shorter distance than when I was riding on the day we spoke. In previous years I had always said “The first word is hill, so no thank you.”  As a fat yet somewhat fit middle-aged dude, I didn’t think I would survive the distance or elevation. I figured I could just back out, but for some reason, this year I didn’t. So, after struggling and suffering on numerous training rides, on April 28, 2015, I joined hundreds of other riders out in the beautiful and terrible Hill Country west of Austin, Texas, and rode my bike half a hundred miles. Which ain’t nuthin’. And as they say, the rest is history. Here’s how it went down.

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Dude, Come to the Dark Side of E-Bikes

~ A Dude Abikes ~ 20 Comments

After years of pedaling a person-powered bicycle, and complaining all that time about the physical difficulties of the same, I have relented. I got an electric bike. It’s April in Austin, and the weather is by turns, rainy, cool, hot, humid, or windy. But overall, it’s nice, and spring is in the air, perfect for hopping on a pedal-assisted machine and ambling about town on errands or just for a recreational ride. So has A Dude really gone to the dark side?

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3/3/2025:  When Things Fall Apart, Keep On Biking (Or Like, You Know, Whatever, Man)

~ A Dude Abikes ~ Leave a comment

The library book When Things Fall Apart:  Heart Advice for Difficult Times (1996), the classic work by American Tibetan Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön, sits unread on my scuffed black card table. Next to it is another of her more recent books, How We Live Is How We Die, also untouched. They’re thin books but on heavy subjects. If you missed it, my last post was 2/2/2025: 7 Lessons from Buddhism, Biking Daily, and the Film “Groundhog Day”. I’m sensing a theme here:  finding ways to cope with the sometimes spectacular, sometimes shitty, show that is human life on Earth. With all that’s going on in the US and the world, it always feels a bit trivial to write a blog post about one fat old dude’s bike riding. But it’s not a bad* thing to explore whatever ways that help us navigate difficult times. (Or as George Orwell said in 1984, *doubleplusungood.)

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A Return to Be Car-Free for Me:  Pros & Cons

~ A Dude Abikes ~ 7 Comments

Twenty years ago today, on January 25, 2005, my car was totaled in a crash thanks to a truck t-boning me (pulling out before I had time to stop aka they were at fault). It was a return to be car-free for me. For 15.75 years, I did not own a car. In January of 2016, weeks after starting this blog, I began a series of annual posts with 11 Years not a Slave to Cars. Then, in August of 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, I was gifted a car, which I wrote about January of 2021 in Come to the Dark Side, Dude: Where’s My Car?.

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11 Years of Consecutive Daily Yoga Practice

~ A Dude Abikes ~ 4 Comments

The voice from behind me at the Safe Street Austin holiday fundraiser bar spoke, unbidden, deeply timbred, but friendly. “I happen to know a dude. And I would like to thank him for introducing me to Yoga With Adriene’s Yoga for Cyclists.” Surprised, I turned, and there was a tall, not dark (if a little greyer), and handsome man. He was much taller than I remembered, since I was used to seeing him on a bicycle, usually only at the beginning or end of training rides. Because those long getaway stems and thin frame are far faster than this fat and slow dude. His eyes glimmered with mischief, or maybe it was not his first brewski, while I only had a sparky water. We chatted; it was nice to see him in person, not digitally only on Strava. As it turns out, although I’ve met Adriene, I’ve not seen this video, but I’ve been doing my own yoga for cyclists as of today for 11 years. And that’s not nuthin’.

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11/11/2024: A Month After My 59-Mile Ride and 5-Year Daily Bicycling Streak, I’m Still At It

~ A Dude Abikes ~ 10 Comments

If you missed the belated edits to my last post, 10/10/2024:  What a Long, Strange Trip It’s Been:  5 Years of Consecutive Daily Cycling Tomorrow, please go check it out first. I’ll wait. (Cue the Jeopardy theme music.) It was written the day before my big annual ride. The spoiler version is that I managed my 59.59-mile bike ride, and I’m still doing the deed daily. Although I’m biking slower for various reasons. Extra weight from high stress and low sleep and also after stopping a gig where I walked five to seven miles a day. Biking 100+ miles a week might have something to do with being tired. Whatever, each mile counts. And the only race I’m in is against myself. Or maybe Death. And we all lose that one, eventually. But not today, Death. Not today.

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Habits: Hard to Make, Easy to Break

~ A Dude Abikes ~ 4 Comments

Unless you’re a nun, the word “habit”–like making going to the gym a habit–may send a chill down your spine, send you burrowing into your bedsheets, or make you want to throw up a little in your mouth. We may want to do something that we know is good for us but is hard and not fun. This dude has made much ado of making daily habits, particularly yoga, walking, and bicycling. I’ve been keeping those and several others every day for several years, and the yoga for over 10 years. I first alluded to these streaks with a mention of “Don’t Break the Chain” in a post referencing Jerry Seinfeld. Type “habits” in the Search bar of this blog, and you’ll easily find some helpful posts on the subject. The experiment to see how long I could keep things going has been interesting, and I continue with those three daily practices. But with other habits, it was only a matter of time before life intervened. It turns out that I’m only human, after all. Assuming you are too, I hope there’s something in here about habits that will resonate for you.

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5/5/24: It’s Bike Month (Again). Does It Matter?

~ A Dude Abikes ~ Leave a comment

It’s that time of year–May aka Bike Month–when we’re supposed to celebrate bicycles extra hard. Why? Because the League of American Cyclists and other groups say so. The other 11 months you can just fuggehaboudit. There’s Bike to School Day; Bike to Work Day with breakfast tacos, free swag, a self-congratulatory after-party; a Clinic on beginning City Cycling (not for the faint at heart); a Frankenbike sale; and so on. But we here at A Dude Abikes have to ask the hard-hitting questions that our award-unwinning journalistic reportage and yooge, bigly ethics require and wonder:  Does Bike Month ever really accomplish its goals? Does it matter? To quote the great pop rock band Chicago’s question in a song: “Does anybody really know what time it is? Does anybody really care?”

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