Tag: bike

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.

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.

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.

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.

Horse Dentists and Wonky Wheels

Yesterday I rode the Great Pumpkin Ride in Fauquier County, Virginia. I have a closet full of the shirts they give out to attendees so I am pretty sure I’ve ridden this event more than a dozen times. The long-sleeved, lightweight shirts are made of technical fabric; they are excellent base layers for cold winter rides.

On Friday night, I stayed up to watch Game 2 of the World Series. I woke up before my alarm at about 4:45. Nothing like riding a 62-mile event when sleep deprived, I always say. After persuading Big Nellie onto my bike rack in the dark, I drove an hour to Warrenton and checked in a little after 7:30. The temperature was a toasty 33 degrees. Ugh.

While waiting around I found myself in conversation with another rider with an interesting English accent. He told me when he came to this country many years ago he worked as a jockey. He raced at east coast venues like Saratoga. After his riding days were over he became a horse dentist. Open wide! He goes from place to place filing down the irregularities on horses’ teeth which allows them to chew their hay better. Who knew? He loves his work. To each his own I suppose.

At 9 we set off, a mass start on a narrow rail trail. I waited a bit to avoid the insanity so I waited for most of the field to get underway. Being a slowpoke and the only recumbent in the field I took care to avoid the impatient lycra-clad roadies who were desperate to set a record on the ride. (I am pretty sure these are the same people who stand as soon as the plane reaches the gate.) Ugh again. In prior years I’ve seen these same folks crash along the course. No two-wheeled karma this year though. I suppose there is hope for the future.

In the past the course took a counter-clockwise route but this year it was reversed. The familiar seems novel when seen from a different perspective. Mostly we rode through farmland, post-harvest and pre-peak foliage. The pallet was dominated by brown leaves and fields of dirt offset by sunny blue skies. (Sorry no pictures. I was busy suffering.)

The first eight miles headed more or less downhill and east into the rising sun. Visibility was difficult. I was cruising down one hill at about 25 miles per hour when out of the sunlight I saw a road rider coming my way. WTF! He must have dropped something but he was unaware that he was backlit and nearly invisible.

The next eight miles were rolling hills through farmland. I noticed that my pedals felt funny on the uphills. Onward. I came to the first rest stop (normally one of the last) at 16.5 miles. I was expecting in a few miles later but grateful as I had a need for a blue room visit. With temperatures soaring into the mid 40s (thankfully it wasn’t windy) I changed into shorts and a vest then joined the long line for relief. The wait was about 15 minutes. Not wanting another 15 minute wait for food, I grabbed a quarter bagel from the crowded food table and set out into a more wooded section of the course.

As I negotiated each hill, that funny feeling in my pedals returned. On hills I use my granny gear, with the chain on the smallest chainring in front. The low gear creates some slack in the chain. The slack is taken up by an idler roughly under my seat.

The ride progressed uneventfully. I managed to avoid two wrong turns along the way. The terrain was rolling. With each climb that funny feeling while pedaling returned. Is my pedal or crank arm coming loose? The more I rode, the worse the feeling became. It became clear that the problem was emanating from the rear of the bike. Was my cassette (the cluster of gears in the back) coming apart? Oddly, the chain wasn’t skipping across the cogs; it was completely disengaging.

The problem worsened. I stopped using my granny gear, opting for my middle chain ring for climbing. After a few miles, the chain problem began to happen in that chainring as well. I’d been riding bikes with gears for over 50 years but nothing like this had ever happened before.

After the rolling wooded area, the course flattened out a bit. An small oncoming SAG (Support and Gear) car came by. The driver could see that I was distressed and asked if I needed help. I waved him off but he did a u-turn and pulled over to make sure I was okay. We agreed that I would continue on to a rest stop in the town of Remington where a bigger SAG vehicle could give me a ride to the finish.

As I continued to ride, I though that maybe the problem was with the rear wheel itself. I made it to a half mile before the rest stop when the back of my bike went totally wonky on the short rise to a railroad crossing. I pulled over and inspected the rear end of the bike. I picked up the back of the bike and the rear wheel dropped off! Somehow the quick release on the wheel had become disengaged. The chain had been keeping the wheel from falling off while I was riding. Dang.

Doing roadside repairs on a long wheel base recumbent is difficult. I managed to get the chain entangled with the right brake pad and to knock the left brake pad cassette out of its holder. I wrestled with the chain, then after a couple of attempts, during which I wrenched my lower back, I seated the rear axle into the frame. Finally, I coaxed the left brake pad back into its proper orientation. I lifted the wheel and gave it a spin. Bob’s your uncle.

Crossing the tracks, I immediately took a wrong turn, adding a half mile to my ride. Eventually, I found the pit stop where the SAG drivers were breaking down the food tables. (No soup for you!) They had heard about the recumbent rider in distress and were ready to help me out. No need, gentlemen. I thanked them and headed out for the next six or seven miles along the rail line, blissfully devoid of hills.

Since we rode downhill out of Warrenton at the start, it was only fair that we’d ride uphill to the finish. I felt very sluggish as I rode. At one point I stopped to see if my rear wheel was properly aligned. No problem. Right as rain. Maybe it wasn’t a good idea to ride 62 miles on a quarter bagel and a Clif bar. Ya think?

On the way home I dropped off Big Nellie for some TLC at Bikes at Vienna. Take care of my baby, Tim.

As for riding, I’ll do better next Saturday when The Mule and I take on the Washington Area Bicyclists Association’s 60-mile Cider Ride. Stay tuned and check those quick release levers, y’all.

Big Nellie near the starting line (at the caboose in the background).

How Terribly Strange to Be 70

My odometer clicked a mighty big number this week as I turned 70 years of age, emphasis on “age”. How the hell did this happen, anyway?

Just for kicks I thought I’d look back at a selection of things I did during my 60s.

Work

Work is a four-letter word. I retired on my 62nd birthday. My first act as a free man was to purchase a seniors pass to the US National Parks.

Reading

I discovered several new authors and re-acquainted myself with old ones. A partial list includes Amor Towles, Fredrik Backman, Barbara Kingsolver, David McCullough, Eric Larson, John Green, David Grann, Michael Lewis, Bill Bryson, Richard Osman, David Goodrich, Ron Chernow, Sue Monk Kidd, Percival Everett, and Neil King.

The Arts

I am not a big concert goer. My favorite performances were by Elbow and Le Vent du Nord. I saw them both a couple of times. Similarly, plays don’t much float my boat but Patrick Page as King Lear at the Shakespeare Theater in DC was phenomenal. And when the time came, I didn’t throw away my shot to see Hamilton at the Kennedy Center. Superb.

Sports

I was at the last Washington Nationals game of the year in 2016 when they lost to the Dodgers in the playoffs. With the final out, the home crowd went from sounding like a jet engine to total silence. It was if someone threw a switch. So strange. Three years later they reached the mountain top and won the World Series against a cheating Houston Astros team. After that they began their “rebuild” which continues to this day. Well, at least I can ride my bike to the games.

Travel

With my wife as travel agent and my daughter as tour guide, I went overseas three times. First, we visited Australia, New Zealand, and Thailand. In Thailand we met up with our son who lives on Phuket. Next was Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Iceland. We finished with a fab tour of England.

Bike Riding

I did pretty darn good in the bicycling department. For my last year and a half as a worker bee, I commuted by bike to the office full time, year round. It turns out that bike commuting 30 miles per day is pretty good prep for touring.

All told, I rode a bit over 103,000 miles since I turned 60. My peak year was 2018 when I hit 11,807 miles, thanks largely to my coast-to-coast tour. I rode over 41,000 miles on The Mule, my trusty old Specialized Sequoia.

A few years ago I became a lifetime member of the Adventure Cycling Association.

Bike Tours

I rode eight bike tours, all of them on The Mule. Easily, the highlight was my self-supported solo ride across the United States in 2018 at the age of 62. Focusing on one day at a time, I pedaled 70+ miles each day through 15 states. Before I knew it, I was smelling the salty air of the Pacific. Mind blown. In two months, I rode 4,300 miles from home to Portland, Oregon. Dang. A totally unexpected post-ride sense of afterglow lingered for weeks.

My eight tours took me through 32 states, bringing my total to 40. Alas, I think the two years lost to the pandemic (and my fear of dogs) will keep me from bagging all 50.

Of course, I didn’t ride these tours without loads of help from family, friends, Warmshowers hosts, and trail angels.

Bike Events

I rode the big three local events, the 50 States and Cider Rides in DC and the Great Pumpkin Ride in Warrenton, Virginia nearly every year. My efforts were interrupted only by the pandemic and the trip to Australia. I also rode the Backroads Century and Vasa ride (now defunct), assorted charity rides in Northern Virginia, Montgomery County, Maryland and in Baltimore as well as the Seagull Century on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.

Hiking

On my 60th birthday I managed to climb Old Rag in Shenandoah National Park. I did a few other hikes in the park, along the Appalachian Trail, in Great Falls Park, and in Prince William Forest Park before succumbing to lumbar spinal stenosis.

The Medical Merri-Go-Round

When you get old, you need to take care of your body. Things break.

At the end of 2017, I developed pulmonary embolisms from a deep vein thrombosis in my left calf. It was unfun and downright scary, especially when my right lung collapsed. I was hospitalized for three days. The recovery was gradual and by late April my hematologist gave me the green light to ride across the country.

My back succumbed gradually to lumbar spinal stenosis. After multiple cortisone shots, failed to offer relief, I began a daily routine of physical therapy. It has not been very helpful. I use a cane when I walk long distances.

Chronic left hip and knee pain during my 2019 tour from Indiana to San Francisco were resolved temporarily by edibles in Colorado. Back home, a doctor gave me some cortisone shots that set me right.

I endured a painful twelve-month recovery from whiplash after being rear ended on my recumbent by a dude in an SUV.

I had carpal tunnel surgery on my right hand this year. It seems to have done the trick.

I fell over on a recumbent I was test riding and managed to screw up my upper right arm. I had hopes the pain would go away after a while but it looks like I’ll be headed to the orthopedist this winter.

I had three colonscopies. If you get one, I’ll buy you some Ex-Lax. My cancer fun continued with four blood tests and an MRI for prostate cancer. Fortunately, I remain cancer free. Knock wood.

I continued on a routine of weight lifting until the pandemic hit. Last month, when my local fitness center re-opened after an impressive renovation, I started lifting again. It helps my old body cope.

Goodbyes

Jim Burgess, known to me and many others as Chet, died of colon cancer in 2017. He was a roommate of mine in grad school, Chet had an infectious laugh and an encyclopedic knowledge of rock and new wave music. He was the master of the mix tape.

Christian Maimone died from a heart attack in 2019. I helped him finish his first event ride, the very first Cider Ride. A couple of years later we did the Seagull Century together. He kicked my ass. He was a charming man, a devout Catholic, and a devoted husband and father.

Dave Salovesh was killed by an out-of-control driver on Good Friday in 2019. His death devastated the DC bicycling community. And me. He was a stellar human being. No words.

Anytime

As I advanced through my sixties, I learned that I have mastered a new skill: napping. In the decades ahead (who says I’m a pessimist), I intend to raise my napping competence to new levels until I take that last great big nap on the couch. In the meantime, I’ll take each mile one at a time with the rubber side down.

Little Nellie Born Again (Again)

I bought my Bike Friday New World Tourist, the bike I call Little Nellie, about 18 years ago. It was a fun bike to ride but it was tough on my back. I bought a shorter stem which helped a lot. As my body aged, the bike became less and less comfortable.

A couple of years ago I had all but given up on riding it. Nearly every day I saw a local man riding a green Bike Friday on the Mount Vernon Trail. He seemed perfectly contented with his. I noticed he had different handlebars. Mine are drop bars; his were flat bars.

In an effort to revive Little Nellie, I bought some flat bars. It made a remarkable difference in ride quality. For a while, that is. As my back aged, even the new bars were not enough to keep aches at bay. Over the last year or so, I rode Little Nellie for only about three percent of my miles. Basically, it was just taking up space.

I thought about selling the bike but there is not much of a market for Bike Fridays these days. Bike Fridays are designed to pack into a checkable suitcase to avoid oversize baggage charges. Now a days, many airlines treat bike boxes as a regular piece of luggage. Bike Friday also fold but there are better folding bikes like Dahons, Terns, and Bromptons.

Little Nellie before I changed the stem and lowered the seat.

I decided to try one more thing before giving up. I pulled the old, longer stem out of storage and put it on the bike. After doing this I compared the seat height to the seat height on my two other non-recumbent bikes. The Bike Friday’s seat was one-half to one-full inch higher. I lowered the seat a half inch.

I took the newly configured Little Nellie out for a 30-mile test ride. It rode great and didn’t make my back ache. The next day I rode it 15 miles to Friday Coffee Club. And back. Same result. On Saturday I did a 40-mile ride to and from the National Cathedral in DC. The Cathedral is the highest point in DC so this climb put Little Nellie to the test. No problem.

I woke up rather stiff this morning but still rode Little Nellie to Nationals Park for a ballgame. This was another 30 miler. No problem.

One thing I like about the Bike Friday is that its small wheels make it easy to maneuver in traffic. It turns and accelerates much better than a conventional bike. The small wheels also make the gearing lower which made the ride up to the Cathedral much less of a slog than usual. (I have often wondered why Green Gear, the makers of Bike Fridays, doesn’t make a non-folding version.)

So, long story short, I’ll be holding on to Little Nellie for a while longer. Until my back catches up to it again.

While all these shenanigans were going on, Little Nellie broke 26,000 miles.

Recent Doings

I haven’t been posting pictures lately so I thought I’d remedy that.

I was on my last test ride of the Streetmachine when a passing bicyclist on the Mount Vernon Trail asked if I had a pump. I did and after much struggle he had fixed his tire and was on his way.

Almost fixed!

A local homeowner has humorous road signs outside their house. Here’s this month’s sign.

My backup eyeglasses are falling apart it’s time to replace them.

Time to ditch the metal frames after 25 years or so.

My in-laws live in northern Indiana where you can get an awesome Italian beef sandwich. My wife and I recently were bemoaning the fact that you can’t get one anywhere near home. A day later I stopped for lunch at a deli in Alexandria’s Del Ray neighborhood. The special of the day was Italian beef.

Not bad.

A short-lived but very violent thunderstorm passed through our area the other day. Winds whipped through the trees and rain fell at times like it was poured out of buckets.

Two people were killed near my home when trees fell on their cars in separate incidents. Our power and cell service went out. We were literally in the dark and had no idea how much damage had been done. We feared a repeat of our experience with the derecho of 2012, when we lost power for ten days during a heat wave. Luckily our power came back on after a day. Our property was undamaged. Others were not so lucky. (My friend Reba’s shed took a direct hit from a tree fall. )

One part of the storm came straight up this road, Morningside Lane. The neighborhood to the left was a mess. A half mile behind me a car was crushed by a falling tree killing an occupant.
A widow maker hangs above the Mount Vernon Trail just yards from the fatal tree fall.
Just one of several unfortunate homes in Hybla Valley near US 1
The George Washington Memorial Parkway was closed for a few miles for storm clean up.

With the Streetmachine experiments done, I put the Catalyst pedals on Big Nellie, my long wheel base recumbent. They weren’t an improvement over my usual mountain bike pedals and Power Grips so I tried them on The Tank, my Surly CrossCheck. As the Catalyst manufacturer recommends, I lowered the saddle a half inch or so. It was a big improvement. I did a bike-about into DC and went by my friend Dave’s ghost bike. It’s a memorial placed where he was killed by the driver of a stolen van whose speed topped out at 74 miles per hour.

Dave was a vocal proponent of protected bike lanes. A few years after his death, the city redesigned the section of Florida Avenue NE where he was killed. The protected bike lanes serve two purposes. First, they give bicyclists a safe place to ride. Second, they effectively narrow the street making it harder to reach absurdly dangerous speeds.

Dave’s ghost bike next to the bike lane he should have had

A Better Ride

Today’s weather was good enough for another test ride of the Streetmachine. To be honest, after Saturday’s 31-mile ride, I had very low expectations. In fact, I had all but decided to take the bike back to Bikes at Vienna, tip my helmet to Tim Fricker for letting me try it out for a week, and moving on.

The ride started with yet another precarious bike mounting. I then rode the 3/4 of a mile circuit around my neighborhood. I made it a point to consciously keep my shoulders against the seat back, something I didn’t do on Saturday. Within a couple hundred yards I could tell the bike was handling much better. I suppose the change in position had put more weight on the big, fixed rear wheel and less on the underseat handlebars and the small front wheel underneath the seat.

After one lap, I stopped. Instead of planting my left foot, I slid off the front of the seat and popped up to a standing position, just as I had seen in a YouTube video and just as I do on my Tour Easy recumbent. Bingo. I dismounted surprisingly smoothly. After an awkward re-mounting, I slid back on the seat, pushed my shoulders into the seat back, and pedaled. I wobbled a bit but I was underway more or less in a straight line.

As I did another lap I tried to focus on technique. Shoulders back, arms relaxed. Find a comfortable gear. Head up. Success. This time the pop stop worked better. As I slowed to about three miles per hour I slid forward and let the momentum of the bike push me into a standing position.

Now it was time to leave the cozy home loop and try some other skills. I rode to a nearby neighborhood and went down about eight different cul de sacs. Initially, I tried to consciously steer the bike with the handlebars. Nope. After a few 180s I learned the secret. Pedal, lean, relax. Let the bike do the work instead of my arms. Success. After a few left handed 180s, I did a few right handed ones. No problem.

I rode over to Fort Hunt Park and took the bike on less-than-perfect road conditions: asphalt with some gravel, slick spots, and tight squeezes through orange traffic barrels. After a couple of 1.75 mile laps I had things down. I also learned that after the pop stop I could easily reach my water bottles. While I’d prefer to drink while riding, I don’t think that’s a skill I am ready for just yet.

I left the park headed into two more neighborhoods, each with a circuit and a small hill. As I rode and gained confidence, each passing mile was a bit faster. I did notice that if I was distracted I tended to drift a bit. A few times I seemed to be headed for a curb. Relax. Lean. Recover.

Next up was a bigger downhill and uphill. The downhill was a little sketchy (I tensed up) but the uphill was straightforward using the granny gear.

The last challenge of the day was crossing the George Washington Parkway. I was in a too-high gear and my bike was pointed up about one degree making the initial push of the pedal difficult. After a couple of false starts, I made it across easily.

The last mile or so my form deteriorated. I can’t say I was tired physically but my mental focus was pretty much gone. I turned onto my street, rode past my house and did a low-speed u-ey. I didn’t quite have the room to complete the turn and ended up pivoting on my left foot. Bad idea. My knee did not like it one bit and is barking a few hours later but I am sure it’s fine.

So lessons learned: (1) the pop stop means that my left hip doesn’t bear nearly as much stress as on my first rides. (2) The bigger stress to my left hip comes from my awkward mounting of the bike, not the dismounts. (3) The more I ride, the better my technique becomes. After Sunday’s ride, I was exhausted from mental stress and my upper body was spent from trying to physically control the bike. After today’s ride, I finished feeling very good both mentally and physically. My upper body was not the least bit tense.

Another thing that is working well is my choice of pedals. I took the Catalyst pedals off The Mule and put them on the Streetmachine. These pedals are extra long and have grippy studs. My feet are pretty happy.

So, tomorrow afternoon, I do another test ride. This one likely will feature bigger hills and more starts at road crossings.

Stay tuned.

My Year on the Wheel – 2024

This was my seventh straight year of riding more than 10,000 miles, 10,394 to be more or less exact. I put more miles on two of my bikes than I did on my 2009 Honda Accord (it’s going to last forever).

The big event as usual was my bike tour but this year was the first time since 2003 that I quit early. In that year my rear tire blew out, my gears and brakes stopped working, I was sick as a dog, and it was raining. You don’t have to be a genius to know that the bike gods are not on your side. So it was in 2024 when I found myself struggling to ride up even the most moderate of hills. The final straw was a ride of less than 30 miles into Charlottesville. I felt like I was dragging both brakes the whole way. I decided to take the train home and let my body recover.

A week later I lit out from home on a bee line back to Charlottesville. It worked out okay except for nasty traffic on a narrow two-lane road just north of town. I persisted and, the next day, was back on my original route, the eastern third of the TransAmerica Trail. There were some good days after that. I hiked the Blue Ridge tunnel, stayed overnight at the Cookie Lady’s house in Afton, Virginia, rode a short, but spectacular stretch of the Blue Ridge Parkway, and had a fabulous ride on the roads to Damascus, Virginia.

The rest of the ride was not so great. I rode past several hypdermic needles on the road outside Lexington, survived a scary thunderstorm, felt lousy when I was pedaling up hills, pushed my bike up several mountains, and was attacked by dogs over and over again. By the time I reached Hazard Kentucky, I was totally stressed out mentally and physically. When the caretaker of a bike shelter 50 miles west told me to buy bear spray, I rented a car and drove home.

The rest of the year featured my usual array of local rides: three one-way rides from the western end of the Washington and Old Dominion Trail to home, several rides on Maryland’s eastern shore, and three rides in Virginia hunt country. I also did five event rides including my 16th 50-States Ride in DC.

As usual, The Mule won the prize for most mileage: 3,912 in all. Despite nearly getting rid of the Tank in March, I ended up riding it 3,795 miles, thanks to some smart wrenching and advice from the good folks at Bikes at Vienna. Little Nellie saw very little use, if you can call 839 miles slacking. Big Nellie racked up 1,847 miles, albeit 583 miles connected to a resistance trainer in the basement during reading season.

The end of year odometer readings.

December 2024

Riding

Once I hit 10,000 miles on December 14, I tapered my riding. Mostly I was focussed on getting used to the new Catalyst platform pedals on The Mule. They work great. I did develop some left hip pain at the end of the month so I need to tweak my saddle position some more.

I rode 28 days out of 31. My long ride of the month came on the 30th when I rode 47 miles (in shorts!) to Bikes at Vienna and back to drop off some bicycling books. (They have a mini-free library.) I totalled 771 miles with 171 miles indoors on my Tour Easy recumbent. The Mule, and all that pedal testing, kicked in 418 miles.

Maybe my best move of the month came off the bike when I discovered a few new stretches for my upper back. These greatly reduce the discomfort from the pinched nerve in my upper back and allow me to hold my head up instead of hunched over like a mad texter.

Watching

After Sun. Paul Mescal plays a divorced dad on vacation with his 11-year old daughter (Frankie Corso) on the Turkish coast. A coming-of-age character study of the girl; a portrait of clinical depression of the father. Mescal was nominated for best actor.

Walking from Boston to New York City on the Old Post Road – A YouTube video of a man who (nearly) goes the distance. I lived in Boston and Providence and have visited many places along his route. The old New England clapboard houses, stone walls, and graveyards made me realize how I didn’t appreciate my time there. The traffic and scuzzy businesses not so much.

All the Devils Are Here: How Shakespeare Invented the Villain: A one-man tour de force in which Patrick Page takes us through the progression of villains in Shakespeare’s plays. Just incredibly good.

Conclave – Ralph Fiennes, John Lithgow, Stanley Tucci, and Isabella Rossellini and a host of others in a suspenseful story about the election of a Pope. Dang them Cardinals are nasty. Excellent.

Reading

Call for the Dead by John Le Carre. Le Carre’s first book and the introduction of George Smiley. My mother was a big Le Carre fan but this is the first time I’ve read one of his books. Le Carre describes secret agent Smiley as “Short, fat, and of a quiet disposition, he appeared to spend a lot of money on really bad clothes, which hung about his squat frame like skin on a shrunken toad.” Hardly James Bond. It seems odd that Smiley is played by Alex Guiness and Gary Oldham in movies.

In the Woods by Tana French. French’s debut novel is a police procedural about Dublin detectives working to solve the murder of a tween-aged girl. The contemporary crime is complicated by the disappearance of two similarly aged kids 20 years before. An entertaining who-dun-it.

The Likeness by Tana French. The follow-up to In the Woods. It’s a good read but the story is based on an utterly unbelievable premise; an undercover cop assumes the identity of a murder victim (who was using the name of the cop’s previous undercover identity). The victim’s housemates, thinking the victim survived the attack, completely believe the undercover cop is their roommate. Give me a break. Aside from this, it was an entertaining book.

Bike Tripping by Tom Cuthbertson. My friend Beth posted a picture of this book, published in 1972, on her social media. I knew I had a copy, purchased in 1979 during my summer in the Bay Area. I decided to re-read it and found it very interesting from an historical perspective. In my adult lifetime, bicycles, bicycling, and bicycle gear have changed markedly. Today’s bikes are orders of magnitude better than 50 year ago. Components and lights are vastly improved. And, thankfully, bicycle infrastructure is also more widespread and better designed (for the most part).

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan. My first Christmas gift book of 2024. A novella about a man who is encounters the evil of the Magdalen laundry in his small Irish town at Christmas time. Wonderful.

On Bicycles: A 200 Year History of Cycling in New York City by Evan Friss. Another Christmas gift. This book tells the story of the wheel from the first short-lived velocipedes in 1819 to the boom in bike infrastructure and the Citibike bikeshare system in the 2010s and 2020s. I wasn’t expecting much (oh how I hate New York City parochialism) but this was a very well written and informative history.