October 2024 – Rain?

Biking

I started the month by taking four days completely off my bike, and a 7-and-half-mile day that was a ride home from an auto body shop. (The short ride was courtesy of my neighbor who backed his humongous pickup truck into my parked car.)

The month featured over four weeks without rain. And mostly warm temperatures. It was in the 80s on Halloween, quite normal for Orlando. Great riding weather. The Tank hit 31,000 miles. The Mule hit 77,000. I did a couple of hundred miles on Big Nellie as well.

I did squeeze in three longish rides. One was a one-way, downhill jaunt from Purcellville to home via the Washington and Old Dominion Trail. Another ride was the Great Pumpkin Ride in the Virginia Piedmont outside Warrenton. The last was a 48-mile bikeabout in DC.

The total mileage for the month was low, owing to the days off, but I consider 812 miles a victory.

In September I decided not to do the Natchez Trace ride this month. It was a good thing too. The price for the same van-supported (you don’t carry your gear) tour was cut by about $1,000 for 2025. Also, the direct driving route to Nashville from DC was torn apart by flooding from a hurricane. Then there was the matter of my car being in the body shop for two weeks. I’ll reconsider doing the Trace in the spring.

The Tank hit 31,000 miles only to be topped by The Mule hitting 77,000 a week later.

My year-to-date mileage stands at 8,757 miles, 424 miles ahead of 10,000-mile pace. Barring a crash or other interruption, I should bad another 10,000-mile year by Christmas.

Reading

Intermezzo by Sally Rooney. This is Rooney’s fourth novel. I thought her third book, Beautiful World, Where Are You was awful. This one was much better. The story involves two Irish (of course) brothers who must sort out their interpersonal and romantic relationships after the death of their father. I found it hard to get into Rooney’s writing style at first, perhaps because my reading was interrupted by beaucoup baseball playoff games. Still, a definitely welcome rebound.

Watching

The VP Debate – I did not watch this. I heard some of it on the radio in the car. J D Vance performed way better than my expectations and Walz worse. I doubt it matters unless the debater is utterly incoherent (see Biden, Joe).

The Rick Rubin Interview with Rick Beato. Rick Rubin is a record producer who has worked with a crazy array of musical artists including Run DMC and Aerosmith, a 16-year-old LL Cool Jay, Tom Petty, Slasher, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and an aged Johnny Cash. He started producing when he was an undergraduate at NYU. He founder Def Jam Records and used his dorm address as his business address. It’s fascinating to hear how he went from a music fanatic to learning how to make amazingly good records.

Baseball – The Nationals season ended. May the 2024 Nats memory be a blessing. Watching the playoff teams tells me that the Nats have a long way to go. Maybe they’ll be a playoff team by 2026. Maybe. Meanwhile the playoff games kept me glued to the TV. The Dodgers dominated the Yankees for three games in the World Series. The Yanks came back with a monster game four only to fall utterly apart in the fifth game. Shohei got his ring. Freddie was Freddie and Kike did a decent imitation of Reggie Jackson.

Bicycling Videos -I was hoping to actually meet Mat Ryder when he rode through DC but his videos lag his riding by about a week so I missed him. As it turns out he spent four nights at a home a couple of miles from my house! His series is the best tutorial on cross country solo bike touring that I’ve ever seen. Watching it episode by episode is time consuming but watching the whole series helps convey the enormity of his task. (I imagine he’ll create a single, condensed video of the entire trip at some point.) Congrats to Mat.

I also started watching Sheelagh Daly‘s videos about bike touring and nutrition. For her first bike tour, a solo one at that, she flew to Scotland and rode alone to Croatia. (I suspect that the English Channel was a bit of wet slog.) I can’t even. Sheelagh has loads of videos on the ins and outs of bike touring so she’s a great resource for someone planning a tour.