The Wovel Dies a Hero

We are in the midst of a nasty winter storm. Just before midnight, snow began falling as a fine mist. By 10 am we had about four inches on the ground as the misty snow changed to misty sleet and freezing rain. I went out to shovel. For about an hour I used a conventional snow shovel to clear the walkway to the house. Thanks no doubt to my recent weight training, my body seemed to tolerate the workload.

Using the same shovel I cleared the snow off our two cars and then cleared the snow from around my wife’s car in the driveway.

It was time for the Wovel. The Wovel, also called a Snow Wolf, is an ingenious contraption. An oversized shovel pan is mounted on a shaft. The shaft passes through an axle. A large wheel is mounted on the axle. The wheel is a sandwich of two wheels bolted together.

To move snow, you push the shovel pan into the snow and then push down on the cross bar at the user’s end of the shaft. The real advantage of this design is that instead of lifting and throwing the snow, you push down on the crossbar while stepping forward, casting the snow away. In addition to being ergonomically clever, it clears snow much faster than a conventional snow shovel.

Another advantage of the Wovel is transporting the snow. Instead of carrying a heavy shovel-full, you let the wheel bear the weight.

I admit that the Wovel looks weird but you can’t deny the physics of the thing. It appeals to the recumbent rider in me.

I made short work of the rest of the driveway. I cleared a spot on the street for our garbage cans. (Pick up is scheduled for tomorrow but that ain’t gonna happen.) I then cleared the street out to the point where the snowplow had passed. As I worked the continuing precipitation made the snow heavier and heavier.

The Wovel started to wobble. As I finished the area in front of our driveway, the Wovel’s plastic wheel started to disintegrate. Two metal bolts that hold the hub of the wheel together had fallen off. Now each time I turned the Wovel the right half of the wheel started to slide away to the side. I kept putting it back together but each successive shovelful of snow put more stress on the plastic blades that act as spokes of the wheel. After another ten minutes one of the blades broke. My Wovel was kaput.

The Wovel was made by a small Connecticut company that is apparently no longer in business. My online searches have all come up with “No Longer Available”. Even on Amazon. Bummer.

I continued clearing snow for another hour the old fashioned way. I am sore in places that I didn’t know I had.

My wife took the second shift, mostly clearing sleet and ice.

Our fingers are crossed that the power doesn’t go out.

There’s Cold, then There’s COLD

What’s the coldest you’ve ever been? I can think of three days in particular when the cold made me truly miserable.

One reason I moved south to the mid-Atlantic over 40 years ago was to get away from winter in the Northeast. I grew up in Albany, went to college in Boston, and then went to grad school in Providence. I can recall running in sub-0 weather in Albany when my ears froze about half way into a 2 1/2 mile cabin-fever-escape run. The cold was bad but the thawing out was worse. In Boston the cold temperatures were worsened by brutal winds. Providence isn’t as cold but that only means that the side streets become glaciers. Another of my coldest days was spent on a day trip with my girlfriend to Boston in running shoes. The streets were frozen slush. By evening my feet were screaming in pain as we rode the bus ride back to Providence. The half mile walk to my girfriend’s apartment had me in a world of hurt.

My coldest memory dates back to camping in Yellowstone National Park in 2023. My tour mates, Cory and Mark, brought sensible camping gear. I had brought my flimsy REI sleep sack (rated to 60 degrees F) and a silk sleeping bag liner that would have kept me reasonably comfortable down to about 50 degrees. Having spent a chilly night in my tent in a National Forest campground east of the Grand Tetons, I decided to buy a thin fleece blanket at the Grant Village general store. Sleek sack, liner, and fleece should keep me warm right? Not even close. Grant Village sits at 7,800 feet. That night temperatures dipped into the low 30s. Dang. I twice walked to the campground bathroom to warm up during the night. My guess is that the bathroom was about 45 degrees inside. By sunrise I has slept exactly 0 minutes and my feet were purple. There are no words to describe the relief I felt when I walked inside the heated restaurant at Yellowstone Lake.

Last Friday morning I rode 14 1/2 miles to Friday Coffee Club in DC. It was 24 degrees outside. I wore all the things and used chemical hand and toe warmers. I even broke out my over boots, which I used when I commuted to work in temperatures even lower. The first two miles were uncomfortable but I took solace in the fact that I was nowhere near as cold as Yellowstone.

I stopped to take a photo of the emerging sunrise. Even after the sun came up, the temperature barely budged.

Daybreak at Dyke Marsh on the Mount Vernon Trail.

Just before taking the picture, I passed two runners. One was wearing shorts. He had on layers on top and a ski cap and was clipping along at well under 8 miles per hour. Based on my running experience in Providence I could tell he was reasonably comfortable. To be honest I was not going much faster on my bike, the better to keep the wind chill down. A mile later I came upon the runners stopped near their cars at a parking lot. They seemed pretty happy having braved the cold for their morning miles.

I kept moving. After another couple of miles, I could see the planes flying into National Airport were landing to the North into a light wind. Ugh. About 12 1/2 miles into the ride I crossed the Potomac River on the 14th Street Bridge. Midway across the span I passed a runner. He had on a thin long-sleeved shirt under a thin t-shirt. He wore flimsy running pants and nothing on his head or neck. Insanity. Total insanity. He seemed not to care a bit about the conditions. Runners are like that.

To my surprise about ten people showed up for coffee. We are a hardy bunch.

My wife keeps reminding me not to complain. It’s January. She grew up in northern Indiana were schools close only when the wind chill is life-threatening at the school bus stop.

In a few days we will be plunged into a polar vortex, several days with highs below freezing. And, on Sunday, we expect to see our first significant snowfall of the season. Needless to say, I’ll be riding Big Nellie in the basement. Except for Sunday when I expect I’ll be putting all my recent weight lifting to use clearing the white stuff with my Wovel. It’s like a triceps press on a wheel.

Cooling Down and Lightening Up

Ah, we find ourselves in the coldest week of the year. Or so the weatherman says, T. S. Eliot be damned. My memory says that mid February is worse but what do I know.

We are definitely getting more sunlight by the day. I must say that I haven’t succumbed to the winter blues yet, probably because recent weather has been conducive to outdoor riding. The Mule and I did 40 miles a couple of days ago. Sadly, I discovered that my cruising speed has dropped another notch. It is depressing to see 9.8 on my speedometer but it is what it is. I suppose when I get the layers off and get back to riding in shorts that I will see double digits again.

I’ve also been doing a fair amount of riding indoors. Today’s wind chills were in the 20s so a session on Big Nellie in the basement was in order. Riding inside also means I read a lot. I’ve knocked off five of the books I received as Christmas gifts. Book six, from an unknown donor, is next. I’ll give my impressions at the end of the month.

I have finally given up on my Surly CrossCheck. It no longer agrees with my body, specifically my upper back and neck. I offered it to a friend and he seemed somewhat interested. If he doesn’t want it, I’ll donate it to a local charity.

One of the gift books I read was about the town of Deadwood, South Dakota in the Black Hills. I have always wanted to ride the Michelson Trail (which ends in Deadwood) through the Black Hills and this book rekindled that idea. I checked and the southern start of the trail is about 1,100 miles from my in-laws’ place in Indiana. I’d need to launch by mid-May to avoid the summer heat of the Plains. The trail itself is about 110 miles. After that would come a two-day ride to Devils Tower which I’ve never seen. I honestly don’t know if I still have a big tour left in my old bones. We’ll see how I feel in April.

Nothing quite perks up the start of a new year quite like having a colonoscopy which I did last week. The prep seemed to take much more out of me (no pun intended) than ever before. Fortunately, no cancer was found so now I can go back to growing more polyps for my next procedure in 3 years.

At the start of the month, I made a list on my phone of adulting chores to do in January. I’ve knocked off several such as getting a new battery for the car, re-registering the car, taking disused clothes to Goodwill, taking old books to a used book store, and the like. I also spent far too many hours trying to gain online access my Social Security account. I finally succeeded and learned why the security software was rejecting me; I had fat fingered my phone number when I set up my account. Doh.

I am trying my best to avoid the news on TV. It is incredibly depressing. Newspapers as flawed as they may be are less stressful.

I have become addicted to word games. These suck up an hour every day. Which reminds me: today’s Waffle puzzle was posted 20 minutes ago.

My Year on the Wheel 2025

I made it to 10,000 miles for the eighth year in a row. It wasn’t easy but I pulled it off. Of the 10,164 miles that I rode, 723 were indoors on various contraptions. After we joined the local rec center, I decided to ride there and use the recumbent bikes for an hour, saving me from the elements. The rec center machines are cruel masters; the feedback from the display screen gets me riding much faster than I do outdoors. At the end of the year, I brought the CrossCheck indoors to try it out on my resistance trainer. It still beat up my body. By comparison, Big Nellie, my recumbent, on the trainer is almost as good as a massage.

The Mule was my bike of choice for most of the year, except July and August when I rode Big Nellie, my recumbent, exclusively. I experimented with an underseat steering recumbent, an HP Velotechnik Streetmachine, and found it just didn’t work for me. I rode it 119 miles before throwing in the towel after tipping over and injuring my right shoulder. I rode my Bike Friday only 201.5 miles. I rode my CrossCheck 1,142.5 miles, mostly during the Spring. That’s about 2,000 or so miles less than 2024. Since then, except for using it on my resistance trainer, it has gathered dust.

My biggest mileage month was April – 1,019 miles – mostly because of the tour I did on the Natchez Trace Parkway. My shortest month was February – 676 miles – no surprise. My mileage during the warm weather months was assisted by hiring a lawn service. I’ve learned that I would much rather ride than mow.

My longest ride of the year was 90 miles which came on the Natchez Trace tour. This is the first year in ages that I didn’t do a century (100-mile) ride. I did ride my age on my 70th birthday, albeit in kilometers. When you get old, kilometers rock.

I did my usual event rides, the WABA Spring ride (20 miles plus 30 riding to and from), the 50 States Ride (62 miles), the Great Pumpkin Ride (62 miles with my rear wheel falling off) and the Cider Ride (60 miles of hurt).

And then there is this:

Clockwise from upper left: Big Nellie, The Mule, The CrossCheck, and Little Nellie. 196,121 miles in all.

So my first goal of the new year is to put 3,879 more miles on my bikes. Check this space in May.

I had hoped to buy a new bike (or trike) in 2025 and get rid of one of my little-used ones but that didn’t happen. I also thought about an inn-to-inn tour in County Cork, Ireland but I let that slide. As for this year, I have no plans at all other than to avoid big metal things.

December 2025

Reading

Going Up Down East – My journal of my 2023 bike tour, a big circle from DC to Bar Harbor to Erie PA to DC. I had forgotten how much it rained. Also, I seemed to do much more walking than any other tour except 2024’s Kentucky fiasco.

The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin. (My first 2025 Christmas present book.) Rick Rubin is the answer to the question: what do Johnny Cash, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Adele, Tyler Childers, and Run DMC have in common? He produced all these acts and many more. He claims that when he began producing rap acts as a student at NYU he knew very little about music (he played some guitar in a punk band) or music production. Oddly, this book mentions only a handful of musical artists in passing. It’s more about how you go from a vague idea to final product, one that first and foremost pleases yourself. It’s not surprising that the book is woo woo as all get out, given the fact that he’s been a practicing meditator and Buddhist for over 50 years.

Why Fish Don’t Exist by Lulu Miller My second 2025 Christmas present book, also non-fiction. Miller’s romantic live crashes and burns. She falls into despair. How to climb back out? By studying the life of a world-renown taxonomist who rapidly recovers from one crisis after another. Interesting enough. But when the story takes a series of incredible twists and turns. And about those fish….well, you’ll just have to read it.

Watching

The Beatles Anthology Episode 9 – This new installment tells of how the “Threetles” reunited to make the Anthology series, and rejuvenate two John Lennon demos, Free as a Bird and Real Love. The abandonment of Now and Then, a third Lennon demo is briefly explained. Not worth the time.

Train Dreams – A meditation on a long life through the eyes of Robert Grainger, a logger, a railroad worker, and a hermit who’s story runs from the late nineteen century into the 1960s in the northwestern US. Absolutely wonderful. Great acting (Joel Edgerton, William H. Macy, Felicity Jones, Kerry Condon, among many others), great cinematography, great editing, great score. On Netflix. Worth every second of your time.

Jay Kelly – Noah Baumbach’s tale of an aged actor – played with more than a hint of irony by George Clooney – who agonizes with regret over the life choices that enabled his rise to mega stardom. Despite terrific performances by Clooney and many others (including Greta Gerwig, Laura Dern, Jim Broadbent, and Stacy Keach), the story just didn’t connect with me. For the record, I am no fan of Adam Sandler but he’s really quite good in this.

Nick Johnson’s TransAmerica Bike Tour – On a way-too-cold day I decided to ride my CrossCheck in the basement. To keep me amused I watched this series of videos on Nick’s 2011 ride across the country on the TransAm. His experience was very similar to mine. (And yes the dogs of Appalachian Kentucky made him absolutely miserable.)

Sheelagh Daly’s Trip Across the Wilds of Scotland. This relatively short video tells the tale of Sheelagh’s 10-day solo ride across the Scottish Highlands. Mud and rain and cold and winds and fierce looking livestock didn’t deter our heroine from having an epic journey.

Riding

On the 16th, I managed to reach 82,000 miles on The Mule. As the month wore on, I became increasingly anxious about reaching 10,000 miles for the year. After all, I had twice been surprised my medical calamities in late December of prior years. I pulled it off though, reaching 10,000, for the eighth year in a row, on the 20th. A couple of days later I donated blood as a celebration. Here’s a helpful hint: do not lift weights and ride a bike for an hour before donating. I was knocked for a loop.

For the month I rode 684.5 miles, 168 was done indoors on various bikes: the CrossCheck and the Tour Easy in the basement and the recumbent torture device at the fitness center. I deliberately took it easy after the 20th, reaching 10,164 by year’s end. Instead on some days I went for long walks with my trusty cane.

I finished the month at xxx miles.

Reading and Watching in 2025 – Stuff I Liked

Reading

I read a couple dozen books this year. There were no duds in the bunch but these five books were the cream of the crop.

Mark Twain by Ron Chernow is a 1,000 page biography of America’s “first celebrity”. I’ll admit it helped that I had toured the Twain house in Hartford, Connecticut recently, but the book stands on its own.

Truman by David McCullough. Another 1,000 page biography by the master of popular American history. It deservedly won the Pulitzer Prize.

James by Percival Everett. This is a re-telling of the Huckleberry Finn (which I also reread in preparation). Very clever and insightful.

Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe. A history of the Troubles in Northern Ireland during the late 20th century. Absolutely riveting. It literally gave me nightmares.

Why Fish Don’t Exist by Lulu Miller. Miller is “stuck” after a failed romantic relationship. To get unstuck she researches the life of a remarkable scientist with an uncanny ability to overcome tragedies. What she learns about him, about American society, and about herself is mind blowing.

Watching

Looking back I was surprised at how many good shows, movies, and other things I watched in 2025. Here’s an abbreviated list of the best.

The American Revolution – A six-part, twelve-hour miniseries on how the US came to be. Another gem from Ken Burns with collaborators Sarah Botstein, and David Schmidt.

Say Nothing – A nine-part miniseries based on the book of the same name (see above). Excellent but disturbing and depressing.

Andor Season 2 – Star Wars for grown ups. The prequel to Rogue One (which I also watched). Way better than that sounds. Featuring Diego Luna, Fiona Shaw, Stellan Skarsgard, Andy Serkis, Forest Whitaker, and Adria Arjona.

Michael McIntyre, Showman – A Netflix stand up special. Absolutely hysterical.

American Primeval – A tail of blood and hate and deliverance from director Peter Berg. Taylor Hirsch, long left in the dust after playing Tim Riggins in Berg’s Friday Night Lights, makes a stellar protagonist.

Train Dreams – The life of Robert Grainger, a logger, a railroad worker, and a hermit who’s story runs from the late nineteen century into the 1960s in the northwestern US. Absolutely wonderful. Great acting (Joel Edgerton, William H. Macy, Felicity Jones, Kerry Condon, among many others), great cinematography, great editing, great score.

A House of Dynamite – Kathryn Bigelow’s latest masterpiece about the 19 minutes after a nuclear warhead is launched toward the US. It is told from three perspectives: the military, the White House, and the President. Whoa.

Baseball. I watched dozens of Washington Nationals games, both in person and on TV. Utterly depressing how a team with such promise utterly failed to deliver. Fortunately, my interest in baseball was redeemed by an absolutely amazing World Series and The Comeback: Red Sox 2004, a three-hour documentary about the 2004 Red Sox post season with commentary from (among others) Ben Affleck and Matt Damon. Affleck’s memories matched mine to a T.

Pictures of the Year

My baby girl in front of the Connecticut Capitol after her admission to the bar.

Getting ready for carpal tunnel surgery. Quite the get up for ten minutes under the knife.

I added pedal extenders and huge platform pedals to The Mule and Big Nellie. My knees and hips are happy campers.

The Streetmachine I test rode. It tried to kill me. I sent it back. Cool bike, though.

A lotus blossom from Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens

The Mule at the northern end of the Natchez Trace Parkway

Sunrise on the Potomac River at Dyke Marsh.

We had several heat waves and some fierce wind storms this year.

Top Ten of 2025

May It Please the Court: Our daughter Lily took two months off to study then crushed the Connecticut bar exam! She was admitted to the bar in November at a

ceremony before the Connecticut Supreme Court.

Trolls: The day after the bar ceremony, my wife, daughter, and I drove to Rhode Island to check out four troll statues. This might be the coolest thing ever. When is the DC-area going to get some?

Natchez Tracing: I signed up for a nine-day, van-supported tour of the Natchez Trace Parkway with the Adventure Cycling Association. This road goes over 440 miles from Natchez, Mississippi to Nashville, Tennessee. No commercial traffic, no stop signs, no traffic lights. Perfect weather and 14 other riders whose sole objective is to have fun on two wheels. Not half bad. The hardest part was the 16-hour drive home.

70 Years: My personal odometer passed 70 years in August. Over the last three years the effects of aging have started to creep in, but I am still on the green side of the lawn.

Speaking of the Lawn: When my lawn mower died this Spring, I decided to hire a lawn service. Given the fact that the best mowing days are also the best riding days, this should have been a no-brainer years ago. The cost was reasonable. Also, it was entertaining to watch the crew mow the lawn, something that took me over an hour, in less than 15 minutes.

Crash, Crash, Crash: For the first time in memory, I crashed my bike three times. The first one was during a traverse of the empty C&O Canal at Riley’s Lock. It looked easy but the incline on the opposite side of the canal was much steeper than it appeared. Fortunately. the only thing that broke was a wee bit of plastic on my right brake lever. My next crash came when I was test riding an HP Velotechik Street Machine, a two-wheeled recumbent with underseat steering. I false started in front of two friends and fell to the side, with my right foot entangled in the pedal. I hit flush on my upper right arm causing a sever shock of pain to shoot from my shoulder to my elbow. (I also cut and sprained my left ankle.) I decided not to buy the bike. My third crash happened on The Mule as I was finishing a day ride on a very hot day. My head was down as I slogged up a slight incline near home. I hit the back of a parked car. Doh. Although I fell to the left, the deceleration caused a sharp pain in my injured right arm, setting back my recovery from the previous crash by a week.

Ahhnald: When the $70-million renovation of our local recreation center was finished, my wife and I signed up for recreating. We both do weight training two or three times per week. She also does yoga classes. I rude recumbent bikes. The weight training has helped stabilize my messed up back. Also, my damaged right shoulder seemed to improve markedly.

Another 10,000 Miles: For the eighth year in a row, I rode 10,000 miles. I also perfected the art of the late afternoon nap. Coincidence? I think not.

Carpal Diem: I had carpal tunnel surgery early in the year. I was back to normal in a couple of weeks.

Getting the Band Back Together: I did four bike events this year. The highlight of them all was my 17th (?) 50 States Ride. (I’ve lost count.) We had a great posse with Chris, Michael, Kevin and I joined by Sara, and Neena, as well as the long awaited return of Domitille, and Timothee.

And as is tradition, the 11th highlight of the year….

It Is The Heat After All!: Whoever said “It’s not the heat it’s the humidity” didn’t live around here this summer. We had multiple triple digit heat waves. To add to the mayhem, there were windstorms that brought down beaucoup trees, killing two motorists near my home.

On Average. The Weather Is Lovely

Most people around here have probably already forgotten that this summer was peppered with heat waves that made going outside an exercise in stupidity. (Didn’t stop me though.)

Lately, we’ve been dealing with what you might call the polar opposite, frigid air with no end in sight. Temperatures have been running 10 to 15 degrees F – and I mean F – for the last couple of weeks. I should be basking in 50 degree weather, borderline riding-in-shorts weather. Instead, I spend a good ten extra minutes finding layers to layer and sticking toe warmers in my shoes. I have not yet broken out my balaclava and my winter overboots, which I usually use only in January and February, but I can hear them calling from the dresser filled with winter gear in my basement.

So, on average, it’s been a run-of-the-mill year weatherwise. Now if we could just work on the variance we’d have a meteorological hoedown, statistically speaking.

Thinking ahead to decent riding weather in December I took Big Nellie and The Mule in for service. They are ready to rumble. Then snow came. Just an inch but enough to make me wary of a crash, a circumstance that my beat up right shoulder wants nothing to do with. I brought my CrossCheck inside and mounted it on a resistance trainer. I managed one hour before the boredom and intensity of my workout damned near did me in.

The snow, all one inch of it, melted in a day so I’ve been riding outside. I have about 20 miles in me before I start raging at the weather gods and dreaming of spring. (Just four months to go!)

Then it occurred to me that our newly renovated rec center has stationary bikes. I tried the recumbent model our and really liked it. You can mount reading material or plug in your phone for entertainment. It even has a fan to keep me from overheating. I did an intense workout, expecting to ride for an hour before the digital fitness overlords terminated my session with an automatic “cool down” feature after 30 minutes.

Today I mixed and matched. I rode The Mule 7 miles from home to the rec center then rode a half-hour session on the rec bent. Next I lifted weights for a half hour before a second session on the rec bent. Then I went back outside to discover that the temperature had dropped during my time inside. Windy 34 degrees is not my cup of tea but The Mule and I managed to do another 10 miles before headed inside for hot soup.

All of this is aimed at my inane goal of riding 10,000 miles this year. Entering December I had 520 miles left to go. Given the weather, holiday festivities, and shopping, I felt the goal was going to be a serious challenge. So far so good. I have 319 miles to go with 23 days to go. In 2017 I finished the year less than 100 miles short of 10,000 because my cardiovascular system gifted me blood clots for Christmas.

The frigid temperatures have brought out the weirdness in our local critters. I have seen more vultures this week than I have all year. This may be because I’ve been riding Big Nellie with it’s panoramic view combined with the lack of leaves on the trees. I saw four vultures along the Mount Vernon Trail at Dyke Marsh the other day. The other day there was the big snake in my backyard. It turned out to be a harmless garter snake but it was very feisty, trying to bite whenever it was approached.

Today, I spotted this sign in New Alexandria about a mile from the rec center.

If the weather don’t get you, the wildlife will.

November 2025

Stick season has arrived in the DC area. I’m adjusting to riding in 40-degree weather rather well but the winds are a bit of a challenge as always.

Watching

The World Series – On a par with the very best baseball games I’ve ever seen including the fabled 6th game of the 1975 Series that resurrected baseball’s popularity. The 2025 Series was so good that my wife (not a big baseball fan) watched most of it with me.

The Fantastic Four: First Steps – The latest Marvel movie. Orders of magnitude better that A House of Dynamite. Not! When the best thing about the movie is the set decoration (early 60s NYC meets The Jetsons), you know you’re in for a long two hours.

Say Nothing – A nine-part miniseries based on the book of the same name (see below). Excellent but disturbing and depressing. I had nightmares after watching this.

The American Revolution – A six-part, twelve-hour miniseries on how the US came to be. Another gem from Ken Burns with collaborators Sarah Botstein, and David Schmidt. Your school history lessons will seem utterly incomplete after watching this.

Ryan van Duzer’s Natchez Trace Tour – Ryan rode the Trace in October. It was fun to re-visit the ride I did this spring.

Riding

I rode the Cider Ride with Chris, Michael, and Kevin. The No-estrogen Ride. First time I’ve ridden one of these with just the boys in forever. I knew I was in trouble when they dropped me on the first hill at the half mile mark. Still I slogged my way through 60 miles. This was the longest ride of the month.

I rode 787 miles in 24 days during November. I took the CrossCheck out for a 20-mile ride but otherwise the whole month was on The Mule. Big Nellie spent the month in the shop for much needed maintenance. I dropped The Mule off for work yesterday. This will give me a jump on bike maintenance for next year. Also, my local bike shop’s service area is dead so I get The Mule back by mid-week.

For the year, I’ve clocked 9,479 miles. Just 521, or 16.3 miles per day to get to 10,000. Fingers crossed.

Reading

Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe. An account of the dystopia that was Belfast during the Troubles in the 1970s and later. Absolutely riveting. To quote dialog from A House of Dynamite: This is insanity. This is reality.

Mediocre Follow-Up (The No-Name Tour) – My journal (created from posts on this blog) of my 2019 tour from Northern Indiana to San Francisco. I was surprised over and over again at how my memories seemed to get all jumbled with time. And how much I walked to get over mountain after mountain after mountain.

Connecticut Road Trip – We took a four-day mini-vacation to Connecticut where we witnessed our daughter get sworn in to the Connecticut Bar, saw some awesome trolls in Rhode Island, and had dinner with friends we hadn’t seen in over a decade.

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	Rootchopper on March Madness
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