goals

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.

1/11/2026:  5,011 Miles Bicycled in 2025, 6 Years & 4 Months of Daily Cycling… And I Get Pepper Balled at a Protest for Woman Killed by I.C.E.

~ A Dude Abikes ~ 2 Comments

Renee Nicole Good was killed–apparently unnecessarily–by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.) officer at a protest of immigration policy in Minneapolis the other day, reigniting a protest movement with over 1,000 events across the country. Your dude attended one tonight that involved some angry young folks marching around downtown Austin and chanting anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.) slogans. At one point, two people set a Department of Justice flag on fire. I thought it was dumb and counterproductive; and should have been my cue to leave. But the Texas Department of Safety–who was kicked out of a joint operation with the City of Austin for aggressive law enforcement actions–again overreacted by firing pepper balls that spew out a gas that causes eyes to water and breathing to become inflamed. This caused the crowd of several hundred to disperse coughing, wheezing, eyes burning. Some were prepared with gas masks and stayed in the smoke, and soon after many marched down Congress Avenue without a permit. Your dude was not too badly affected, and biked home. As I wrote on Strava, my sinuses needed to be cleared out from cedar fever, anyway.

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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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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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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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4.5 Years of Consecutive Daily Bicycling, and This Dude Is Pretty Damn Tired

~ A Dude Abikes ~ 4 Comments

“Everybody’s “got something.” That’s the title that Good Morning America host Robin Roberts gave to her book about fighting then recovering from cancer–twice. I’ve mentioned–okay, complained–about the various things that my body’s got plenty of times. I guess this is another one of those times. Because despite the milestone of daily riding my bicycle, my mileage is miserable, my Strava stats simply suck, and this dude’s definitely dealing with downright dullness. But for some perspective, the moon and sun achieved totality in eclipse the other day here in Central Texas. It was pretty cloudy and anticlimatic especialy for all of those who plunked down thousands to come see it. This dude, and the Earth, spin on.

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