August is usually a slow month for me. I tend to ride less for reasons that vary. This year I took four days off to go to Asheville, North Carolina with my wife and daughter. We toured Biltmore for the second time. If you haven’t seen it, you really should. We also did a lot of hanging around in Asheville and came to the conclusion that we’d never want to live there.
As for reading, I polished off some of my backlog of magazines that piled up while I was riding across the country. My brother Jim gave me a book of essays on bicycles and bicycling called Two Wheels Good by Jody Rosen. I found the chapter on Bikecentennial to be especially interesting. There was also a good account of the claims by many to being the inventor of the bicycle. On the watching front I managed to sit through Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, two hours of my life I wish I had back. I also binge watched in one sitting Obi Wan Kenobi which I thought was surprisingly good. I had low expectations, I suppose, after The Book of Boba Fett and The Mandalorian. Also, Hayden Christensen didn’t totally suck.
Big Nellie and I went to see the Nationals play a game. They didn’t totally suck either and they won.
As for riding, I managed to squeeze out 1,070.5 miles, exceeding 1,000 miles for the fourth month in a row. I started doing 60 mile rides every other day. I find that I can just put my brain into touring mode and ride all day. I discovered a brochure that includes six loop rides in Talbot County, Maryland on the Eastern Shore. The rides are flat and mostly car free. The maps in the brochure are color coded so that you can easily construct rides that are two or more loops long or add or subtract pieces of rides to make shorter loops.
I did my long rides on my Cross Check (679.5 miles). Big Nellie, my Tour Easy recumbent did most of the short days after my 60-mile rides (243.5 miles). The Mule contributed 100.5 miles until it made it to 68,000 miles. The rest was from riding Little Nellie to and from the car repair place. (My 2009 Accord was in need of new rubber and a working air conditioner. Suffice it to say, my wallet took a hit.) I use the car mostly for driving to places where I can ride my bike.
So far this year, I’ve ridden 7,910 miles, more than half of that was on The Mule because of the 3,400+ mile bike tour. I’m on a pace for 11,881 miles this year.
A Few Spokes Shy of a Wheel 
One question: you indicate how far you have ridden the bike. How far have you driven? Wonder which is more. I’m sure there are few who can claim they have ridden more miles than they have driven.
I drive my car about 3,000 miles per year. Long trips are usually done in Gin’s car which gets driven about 1,000 per month on average. My bike has been used over 10,000 miles per year since I retired in 2017
Funny, isn’t it; how, after a long tour, 60 miles (unloaded) is a “short” day? And, for you, 1000 miles was an easy month? Air conditioning fixed? When I told the mechanic my air conditioning quit, he said it wouldn’t be worth it to fix it. As soon as they fix one thing, another goes. He said I’d end up spending a lot of money. (But then, my car is 20 years old. Maybe that’s why he said that.)
I wouldn’t say 1,000 miles is easy but it wasn’t much of a stretch. Weighing less helps a lot.
In DC the car’s AC is more important than the engine. My Accord has only 115k on its odometer so it has many years of light (and hopefully cool) use ahead of it