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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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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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I Can’t Drive 5,555.55 Miles, but I Bicycled Them! (6,056 Total with Walking in 2021)

~ A Dude Abikes ~ 10 Comments

It’s year six in the books, for those keeping count of both blog and bodacious bike riding (and four years of basically daily bipedaling, i.e., walking). As you know, 2020 was remarkable globally because of THE KILLER VIRUS, but it was memorable for me personally. I really got after it and as a result last year’s review post was titled A Devil of a Year: 6,666.66 Miles Bicycled in 2020 (7,278 Total with Walking)! So yes, I biked every day all year (one less due to leap year) — again — but for 1,111.11 miles less. That was intentional, since 18.21 miles a day was too much to repeat. But it was also necessary to do less, because, life. And I’m not a machine; I’m a dude. However, 15.22 miles a day is still pretty, pretty, pretty good, so Sophie the Fairdale and I are quite satisfied with it. Let’s get to the Strava images which best sum things up with aplomb. (Yum, a plum sounds delicious, but out of season.) After all, one must have a hint of color!

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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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8 Years of Consecutive Daily Yoga Practice

~ A Dude Abikes ~ 4 Comments

This past Saturday was a cause for celebration. Not because of that Jewish carpenter who, if he ever really lived at all, died over 20 centuries ago. It’s something else, of far less momentous import, than those old stories, if they are to be believed. This thing I’m talking about I did — every day, for eight years. That’s 2,922 days including two leap years, if you’re counting, as I obviously have been. This thing lasted for 30 minutes or more. More math:  that’s 87,660 minutes. Or the equivalent of 60.875 days. But while the numbers and math have surely have strong significance, what’s as if not more important is something Yoga with Adriene says: “Keep showing up for yourself on the mat.”

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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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