I do a list every year but this one is rather challenging. But here goes…

1. Knock wood. My family and I managed to avoid contracting covid-19. This includes my son who chose to stay in Thailand. Because of the strict shutdown procedures there, he was probably safer than if he had come home.
2. Healing up. I was grounded from bike touring this year. This turned out to be a good thing because I destroyed my body doing a tour from Indiana to San Francisco in 2019.
3. A Gimpy Old Man. Hiking has also been off the table this year as I have developed spinal stenosis. When I walk (and sometimes when I so much as stand) my lower left leg hurts. It’s caused by a pinching of my spinal cord. I received some cortisone shots in my back. They provided temporary relief but were incredibly painful. Oddly, stenosis does not affect my biking at all. In fact, one of the telltale signs of the condition is being able to bike and walk pushing something like a lawn mower without pain.
4. Popping. Once I realized I had stenosis, I modified my stretching routine. I tried yoga that didn’t work. Then Feldenkrais which was intriguing but not for the impatient, A search of the interwebs yielded several gentle physical therapy exercises. I do them at a very deliberate pace. As my spine loosens, it pops. Not audibly but I can feel it. Not only do they help with the stenosis in my lower back, they also free up my upper back which gets tight from reading and riding. As of this writing, my stenosis pain has greatly diminished. Fingers crossed.
5. Will He Go Round in Circles. Despite all this physical nonsense, I managed to ride 10,000 miles. Mostly I rode out and back rides from my home. A couple of these were over 100 miles. Once convenience stores (and public bathrooms) re-opened I drove an hour or two away from home to do day rides. Winners included several rides on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, a trip between Fredericksburg, Maryland and Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, two rides in and around Williamsburg, Virginia, and a handful of rides in Virginia hunt and wine country. One oddity so typical of 2020 in general is that I had more flat tires this year than in the previous four years combined.
6. Reading the Pandemic Away. I read way more than I have in recent memory. In the process I discovered authors Amor Towles and Madeline Miller. Notable books include Circe (Miller), A Gentleman in Moscow (Towles), One Day (Gene Weingarten), Alexander Hamilton (Ron Chernow), This Is Going to Hurt (Adam Kay), Labyrinth of Ice (Buddy Levy), The Body (Bill Bryson), and Rebecca (Daphne du Maurier).
7. 50 States and a Couple of Mugs of Cider. In September, I rode my 12th 50 States Ride with Kevin W. as my lone companion. The Washington Area Bicyclists Association had to get creative to keep everyone Covid safe. They did a terrific job. I rode the WABA Cider Ride for the sixth time in November. This one was solo and a bit cold. Big thanks to the WABA staff and volunteers for pulling these two events off.
8. Take Me in to the Ballgame. One of my favorite things to do in the summer is to ride my bike to Nationals Park to watch baseball games. This year in a bizarre twist the season was shortened from 162 to 60 games, with no spectators allowed. I watched 59 of 60 Washington Nationals games on TV. They were all in the eastern time zone and limits to extra innings made this relatively easy. I listened to the end of the 60th game in the car on the way back from 50 States Ride. Sadly, the Nats were not particularly competitive this year. Opening day is April 1, 2021. Maybe.
9. Social Distancing to the Max: In March indoor gatherings all but ceased. This meant no Friday Coffee Club and no happy hours. Sad face. I quickly tired of Zoom get togethers, aided by a wonky mic on my laptop. Except for Kevin and the event volunteers and WABA staff, I saw only a handful of people all year. I avoided a social shut out thanks to Rocky, Chelli, Matt, Jessica, Leslie, and Charmaine.
10. The Year of the Child. With the assistance of my wife and daughter, I became a bona fide couch potato. Gaslight, 7500, Rebecca, a couple of Mission Impossible movies, Luther, The Crown, and Fleabag provided entertainment on shut-in nights. The Mandalorian brought us the Child. And because ten is not enough,
11. Tear Down That Wall! I avoided all the protests in DC. I was surprised to see that the massive crowds did not result in a huge increase in Covid cases. After the election I rode to DC to see people celebrating the Biden/Harris win. I look forward to the day in January when the disgraceful wall and fencing around the White House neighborhood comes down. How ironic that Trump wanted a wall and then put himself behind one.

Today was the day.

10,000 Miles

Three years in a row. And very nearly four but for some nasty blood clots in my lungs in December 2017.

It was mentally much harder to do this without a tour or rides with a purpose. From 2017 to 2019 I’ve done 9,000 miles on tours. Riding to Friday Coffee Club is worth about 1,000 miles a year. And Nationals games are another 900 miles or so. In 2017, when I missed 10,000 miles by 89 miles, I did 3,912 miles just riding to and from work.

I’m not done yet. I am chasing one more milestone in this godforsaken year.

With today’s storm in the mid-Atlantic bicycling outside was out of the question. I took advantage of the foul weather to change the rear tire on The Mule. The screw (likely a drywall screw) that caused the flat had a sharp point on one end and was about 1.5 inches long. I am surprised the tube didn’t explode. It had a ragged hole in it a bit smaller than a dime. The screw put a nice precision hole in my tire too. I actually had to use a screwdriver to get it out. It was in pristine condition. My tire not so much.

I tossed the tire and tube in the trash bin and installed a new Schwalbe Mondial tire. I was expecting to spend a half hour getting it on as Schwalbe tires are notorious for mounting difficulty.

To my surprise the Mondial went on without much fuss at all. I did change my technique a bit. I started mounting the tire from the valve end. (I usually start it opposite the valve.) When I got to the frustrating part where the last bit of the tire bead wouldn’t go over the rim, I let air out of the tube and pushed the valve end of the tire against my thighs. This created plenty of slack and the bead popped over the rim.

Of course, once I had it mounted the tire I realized it had a directional tread. And, you guessed it, I put it on backward. So I re-installed it. It took about a minute.

Tomorrow, after allowing for the roads to be safe, I’ll take The Mule out and see how it rolls.

Yesterday I said that the last 200 miles of my quest for 10,000 in 2020 would be harder.

About 2 1/2 miles into today’s ride, The Mule got screwed in the rear. Tire, that is. (Sorry. Couldn’t help myself. I’ve been watching Fleabag.)

It’s been an odd year for punctures. From 2015 to 2019, I toured with 40 pounds on my bike for 10,000 miles without a single flat thanks to my Schwalbe Marathon Plus tires. This year, despite using the same brand of tires and carrying lighter loads, I’ve had at least four flats.

Today’s flat happened after I rode through some debris in the roadway. I know my rear tire hit something because there was a metallic sound and the back of my bike deflected to the right. A half mile later I started hearing a loud click with every revolution of my wheels. Then the rear end started moving sideways. I hopped off the bike and saw that my rear tire was flat. I initially thought the culprit was a roofing nail. On closer inspection I realized it was a screw of some sort. I’m pretty sure that it gradually worked its way through the tread. I suspect that the tire is kaput. I put it on 3,500 miles ago.

In late summer I bought a Schwalbe Mondial tire. It’s lighter weight but not as puncture resistant as the Marathon Plus. With tomorrow’s storm I’ll have plenty of time to install it.

After getting a lift back home from my wife, I took my CrossCheck out to continue my ride. I rode an additional 32 miles. The only time I felt remotely uncomfortable was when the sun started to set and the temperature dropped.

65 miles to go.

About a mile and a half into my ride today I came upon a full grown fox. He was just ambling along in someone’s yard. No worries. Never even turned his head in my direction as I rode past.

Fast forward about 12 miles. I am riding south along the Dyke Marsh area on the Mount Vernon Trail. The area to my left is filled with trees along the edge of the marsh. I hear a barking sound. Another fox. It’s off a ways. I can’t see it, but I can hear it clear as day. As I ride the sound follows along. It gets louder. I am half expecting the fox to pop out from behind a tree. After a half mile, the barking stops and I pedal onward.

I continue south on the trail. I am about 3/4ths of a mile from the trailhead at Mount Vernon when there is a burst of activity immediately to my left. It’s a bunch of vultures, perhaps 8 or 10, packed together. I startled them and several of the beasts flew up into the air, two directly in front of me.

Not wanting to crash and become dessert, I focused on keeping on the trail and never did discover what the vultures were eating. My guess from the number of birds is that it was a deer. Ew.

I did a little research. It’s a good thing I didn’t stop to further investigate the wake (that’s what you call a group of vultures eating together) because vultures have been known to puke on people who upset them.

And now a word from Mutual of Omaha.

I managed to make it a week into December before running out of gas. I woke up tired and with dead legs. I was expecting some snow to give me an excuse to take the day off from riding but alas the snow stayed to our south. Still with temperatures in the high 30s for most of the morning I gave myself permission to slag off for the day.

The day was not without it’s productive bits. I got some Christmas shopping and a load of laundry done. During the former I walked about a mile in Old Town Alexandria. There was some stenosis discomfort initially but it faded as I kept moving and I managed to walk a nice loop through Covided streets. Covided streets are nearly empty of people and full of odd tents outside restaurants. I felt bad for the lonely waiters. Not much lunch being served today.

I went to Old Town to shop at Old Town Books, a new independent book shop. There are only a couple of types of stores that I enjoy browsing in and bookshops are one of them. Amazon nearly killed the small bookstores off. Oddly, Old Town Books is located across the alley from the location of Olssen’s, a bookstore that Amazon killed ten or so years ago. I loved Olssen’s so I am going out of my way to give Old Town Books as much of my business as possible.

In addition to being tired, I have been famished all day. I think the brain confuses fatigue with hunger at times. Naps are like fuel for the system. I have become quite good at napping during the pandemic. Whenever tis nonsense ends, I am wondering how I will be able to bike tour without a nap.

I’ve also taken to reading obituaries over breakfast. I suppose it’s a way to thumb my nose at the fates over Cheerios and coffee. Anyway, there was an obituary of a local man who was down in Florida. He was on his bike, waiting at a red light. He was hit by a motor vehicle and killed. He and his bike were on the sidewalk at the time. It brought to mind the death of my friend Dave who was killed in a similar fashion about 18 months ago.

Gruesome coincidence aside, the Florida victim was a 77-year-old retiree who led week-long bicycle tours. I’m out there everyday grinding away in my mid-60s complaining about fatigue, sore knees, and headwinds and this guy was a decade older leading bike tours! There’s hope for me yet.

When I am not biking, I am either reading or watching TV with the fam, as they say. My book du jour is Daphne de Maurier’s Rebecca. I am reading it so the family can sit down and watch the original movie and the recent remake.

On weekends, my wife, daughter, and I have been watching three shows. The Crown raises the interesting question: with only fraction of the US population, how does the UK produce so many great character actors? If you watch enough episodes you may catch yourself saying things like: “One never knows, does one?” and “Extraordinary”.

We’ve also become big fans of The Child, known in most circles as Baby Yoda. The series is called The Mandalorian. It could easily be called “Have Ray Gun, Will Travel”, because it’s really just a space version of a western with a mysterious hero travelling around and righting wrongs every week. I half expect him to say “Hi Yo, Silver! Away!” at the end of every episode. The vibe is the thing.

The third series is Luther, a police procedural set in London. It stars Idris Elba as the titular Detective Chief Inspector John Luther, a sort of hulking, black Sherlock Holmes. Luther has all kinds of personal and ethical quirks which encumber and sometimes facilitate finding the bad guy. He wears the same clothes in every episode and investigates crime scenes with his hands in his coat pockets. He doesn’t carry a gun, preferring to talk suspects into submission, which doesn’t always work out particularly well. Oftentimes, he makes a Holmesian observation from seemingly innocuous evidence at the crime scene. “Our killer was in the service.” He has yet to say “The games afoot!” though.

This pandemic riding is getting old. I went around in circles for another 855 miles in November, riding 26 of 30 days. I managed one event, the WABA Cider Ride which was 55 1/2 miles long. All the rest of my rides began and ended at my house. I long for the day when I can point my bike in a direction and not end up where I started.

Riding around aimlessly may be somewhat boring but the effort keeps the demon depression at bay. I have to say that riding long solo tours has really been a godsend for my longer term mental health, especially in the world of social distancing. I miss my friends but solitude can be a comfort if you learn to let it be.

Another aspect about these pandemic rides is the occasional odd memory that pops into my head. I recall camping in a town park in Illinois with two men my age. We went out to dinner at the town family restaurant (a diner without the stools). They were headed east and I was going west.

From time to time I’ll remember a place that I can’t, well, place. Where was that? What state? Nothing remarkable happened but the experience of being there was stored in some recess of my mind. Circle, Montana. Salem, North Dakota. A trailer park in the north woods of Wisconsin. Ducks waking me on the Erie Canal in west central New York, Lord, knows so many dusty near-ghost towns in Kansas.

9,510 miles down, 490 miles to go to reach 10,000. Because I am not getting up at before dawn to ride to work, I am not acclimated to cold weather. The coming week with daytime highs in the 40s will test my resolve to get out and ride with layers on. Time to break out the wind pants, the holey wool sweater, and shoe coverings. It’s really not so bad once you warm up. Self delusion is my middle name.